The buffet line has a fairly good number of choices, but almost all of them lack the spice I normally expect in Indian food. Most of the fried dishes are not on my list of favorites, but the majority of choices are curries or other items that I think give me a good meal. Of course with the buffet you get a choice of one or more desserts, and I think this is a plus. The soups are good, but honestly this is not something I miss when I order dinners from the menu.

If I further restrict myself to vegetarian items (which I like to do in an "all you can eat" situation such as a buffet), this is where I think the buffet at Gopuram falls short compared to other restaurants. I have mentioned that the Tuesday buffet has good choices, but when I went on Friday and they told me none of the vegetarian items were spicy, I decided to skip the buffet. I expect that I am more picky about my food than many people, but for me the buffet here is not always a good deal.

Some of the chutneys and pickles available from the buffet are good but there was one occasion when I did not care for any of them (unfortunately this would also apply when you order from the menu).

On my first visit I tried several of the meat items in order to get a sense of how they were. I am not ready to say any of them are the best items at the restaurant, but I will say that the Chicken 65, and Indo-Chinese dish, was my favorite of the ones I tried. The Chicken Tikka Masala had good meat but the curry was not very flavorful. The Tandoori Chicken was something that I just thought was not as good as it should be (after trying the same dish at several other restaurants). The chicken 65 was a Tuesday special, though, and is not available all the time.

On large plate: daal makhani on (left), mixed vegetable makhani (bottom right), palak paneer (top right) To the rear: aloo gobhi (right), mushroom soup (middle), naan (left)

The plates pictured above show several of my favorite vegetarian dishes (these were all from the Tuesday buffet). Daal Makhani was flavorful and spicy, and is probably my favorite dish at the restaurant (but it is only available on Tuesday). I saw on one food show that daal makhani is one of the few Indian dishes that is not really very healthy, so it figures that this would be my favorite! In any case, the one at Gopuram is about as good as any others I have found in the city (so this is a good thing).

Aloo Gobhi (potatoes and cauliflower) was the other dish of note that I thought was very good. It was spicy, had a good flavor, and was vegetarian. Again, this was a Tuesday buffet dish (so I would say that if anyone else is like me, and likes spicy vegetarian dishes, Tuesday is the time to come).

The Mixed Vegetable Makhani had a sweet tasting tomato sauce, and was not spicy. It was a good complement to the spicy dishes, though, and is another example of the good dishes I have had on the Tuesday buffet.

Palak Paneer was not spicy, and I thought was significantly less flavorful than ones I have tried at other restaurants (but still I will not pass it up if it is on the buffet).

Chana masala

When I went on a day that the buffet did not have any spicy vegetarian dishes, I ordered Channa Masala from the menu in order to try it (so far this is a dish I have not seen on the buffet). This is usually one of my favorite dishes, and I liked the one here, but I thought it was not as flavorful as the one at Ajanta. It was flavorful enough, though, and really my only complaint about the channa masala is that it seems you have to order it from the menu to get it.

I should mention a little bit about my experience of ordering from the menu. It really costs about the same as getting the buffet, and ordering from the menu is "all you can eat" because they will bring you refills of rice and naan if you want. They also let me get chutneys from the buffet (the lemon pickle was very good with this dish), and they even gave me a dessert. I was happy that I got a spicy vegetarian dish, but of course I missed the variety of the buffet.

The really negative part about ordering from the menu, though, was that I waited for my food the whole time that other people had come in, eaten from the buffet, and left. They told me that they had a lot of take-out orders they had to prepare, but I think this is not a good enough reason for me to have to wait as long as I did.

For now I would advise people to get the buffet. If it is not spicy enough you can add a chutney to it (although one out of the the three times I went I could not find a satisfactory chutney or pickle). Still, the buffet will always have at least one dish which is spicy, although it might be a meat dish (I am the opposite of most people in that I would prefer that the buffet be mostly vegetarian).

The desserts were good but not particularly memorable (and I do not think I could point to one as my favorite).

They have chai tea although I have not ordered it because the prices of the buffet and menu items are already quite high.