When my Canadian friend Jane and her family are eating food they simply love, they hum while they chew. My stepdaughter Jennifer, on the other hand, pretends to cry: “This food is so good!” she will mock-sob. At INDIA VILLAGE RESTAURANT, I feel like doing both – for the warm, spicy flavors and also because it’s such an incredible bargain. Yes, it’s another one of those “all you can eat” lunch buffets, but even if it weren’t just $6.50 – six dollars and fifty cents! – You’d simply have to try it. If you like Indian food, this place is too good to miss.
My first clue was that my friend Nita, who moved here from Bombay at the age of 13, loves the place and eats there quite often. So of course I took her along on a recent visit.
Many of the dishes change from day to day. When Nita and I were there, the buffet featured pappadams, salad greens, rice with peas, Tandoori chicken, chicken curry and a variety of vegetarian dishes. There were also sauces like mango chutney and mint sauce, and side dishes – like yogurt raita – to cool the palate. Naan – flat Indian bread – is served at every table, warm and flavored with fennel seed.
Lovers of Indian food will be familiar with pappadams – or “pappad,” as they’re also called: thin, crunchy, spicy crackers. When they’re fried, they’re almost like potato chips, but they are equally addictive baked – as they are at India Village.
Tandoori chicken seems to be a universal favorite – almost like barbecued chicken without a lot of heavy sauce. The Tandoori here is mild, it’s outside dry and a bit chewy, the inside moist, and it is served on a bed of onion – which, by the way, you should not overlook when you help yourself to the chicken. Onion appears regularly in Indian cuisine because of its remarkable ability to cool the palate.
However, you won’t need anything to cool your tongue after a bite of chicken curry. I’ve tasted a couple of different varieties here – one with chunks of boneless chicken in a thick sauce, another featuring bone-in chicken pieces – and while the curry flavor is rich, it is also mild. I remember my mother making my father’s curry so hot I could see heads of perspiration on his brow when he ate; that was how he liked it. He would not doubt find India Village’s chicken curry far too mild, but for most of us Westerners, it’s about right.
Even Nita, who grew up in a region where the food is much hotter and spicier, revels in the flavors here. “Did you try some of the baigan bharta?” she said to me, pointing at something I had dolloped on my rice but whose name I had already forgotten. “It’s the best!”
It was indeed wonderful – eggplant that had been roasted and mashed with tomatoes and spices. Like many of the vegetable dishes, it appears to be more of a sauce with a great deal of body and lots of tasty ingredients.
Another time, the featured eggplant dish was eggplant masala, or eggplant with mixed spices. “Masala” is a handy word to know because you’ll see it often on Indian menus – with chicken or fish as well as vegetables. While it might be a good idea to ask just how “spicy” or even “hot” the mixed spices are, you’re in good hands here.
On any day at this buffet, you’ll find dal (also spelled “daal”), a staple of the Indian kitchen. Dal is made from lentils and is very nutritious as well as potentially delicious. It can be simple, like a thing soup for eating by itself or adding to rice, or it can be rich and complex with flavors rivaling anything that ever came out of your favorite Italian kitchen.
But lentils are lentils, right? And how tasty can a lentil be? Nita informed me that there are many different kinds of lentils, and dal can also include kidney beans as well as chiles, tomatoes, onions, garlic, cream, yogurt and of course and array of spices.
The dal makhani that appears frequently at India Village’s buffet table is hearty and thick and a wonderful topping for rice. Worth a second trip to the table for more of it, in fact. Hey, the sign does say “all you can eat”!
How important is dal in the Indian diet? On a recent visit with a family in the Darjeeling district, I was told that while my Nepali hostess generally served meat just once a week, she prepared dal every day, and every day it was enjoyed with great relish.Want more vegetables? Have some vegetable and potato fritters – crispy and deep-fried, and heavenly when topped with a spicy mint sauce.
And speaking of sauces, don’t bypass the dish of onions the color of beets. The surprise here is that the onions are crunchy, almost raw, and there’s also a nice bite of garlic. Could be a side dish, could be a sauce, but add a spoonful to your plate and mix it in with a bit of rice and dal for a taste that will make you weep with happiness.
For dessert, there’s a large bowl of rather unprepossessing rice pudding sitting in a dish of ice, next to a stack of small plastic cups. It’s worth a taste – the rice is very fine and is flavored with cardamom and almonds.
Nothing elegant about the thermoses of coffee and tea, but for $6.50, you wanted elegance? Just be aware that the tea is served as it would be in India: Milk and sugar were added in the kitchen. And sometimes the tea is cardamom (bonus!).
We’re not talking fine dining, here. Even though the Indian background music is charming, and the copper serving dishes are stunning and are several cuts above your basic “steam table” buffet, the interior of the restaurant is a bit cramped, and the carpet has seen better days. But none of that matters when you take your first bite of dal makhani or chicken curry.
Lunch at India Village will have you humming for the rest of the day.
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