We were looking for an Indian buffet place for lunch, so a quick search on Yelp threw up Everest India's Cuisine with good reviews so we decided to give it a try. As usual I was skeptical of any Indian place with good reviews but decided to give it a try hoping to be proved wrong. Mount Everest is located on Sahara Avenue not too far from the strip and has sufficient parking so location and accessibility is fine.
When we entered at peak lunch hour on Sunday the place was packed which I took as a good sign. As the restaurant is small and tables are cramped close to each other so seating is very uncomfortable and navigating to and from the buffet is painful as you void bumping into other diners.
The dishes were standard fare that you will find in any Indian buffet. The appetizers included tandoori chicken, samosa and some fried potato dish. Butter chicken, saag, chili chicken and mutton curry were entrees. Then there was steamed rice and dal and lastly gulab jamun and sweet rice for desert.
Taste wise what stood out to me was that every dish was bad. Not just one or two items but everything that I ate was the text book definition of bad Indian food. Tandoori chicken seemed to be boiled and then doused with a lot of color as it lacked any flavor at all and was stone cold. The samosa seemed to be undercooked. The pan fried potato were limp and seemed to be days old. The butter chicken was barely edible. Chili chicken tasted gross and the goat in the mutton curry was undercooked so was chewy (not one person in our entire group could eat the goat). The naan provided at the table was thin and overcooked so it felt like a crispy flatbread. We asked for garlic naan which was better but it came at the fag end of the meal so it was almost useless. The gulab jamun was one of the worst that I'd ever had and the sweet rice was forgettable. I also noticed that there was no biryani in this buffet.
Service was also slow. As mentioned garlic naan was provided at the end of the meal. Plates were not cleared quickly so we ended up stacking them in one corner which made the small table feel even more cramped. Even stacked plates did not prompt quick service and at one time we were scared that the plates would topple over and cause a mess but that did not deter our servers from ignoring them.
At the end of the meal I was happy to be out of this small, cramped, claustrophobic place with terrible food. A sentiment echoed by each and every member of our group that ate here.
Price wise it was $10.99 which is typical for Indian buffet's but what I can't get is the high ratings for this place. unfortunately another Indian restaurant that did not live up to its sky high ratings. Obviously won't make the mistake of returning again.