Taj Mahal buffet: A jewel in the town
by Lanette Causey
Staff writer of The Dallas Morning News

If your daughter or son-in-law has turned vegetarian (ours, too), you probably already know you can feed them elegantly at an Indian restaurant.

But the best part is this: If you go to Taj Mahal during buffet hour (...for lunch Monday-Friday, ... Saturday and Sunday; ... for a fancier Sunday night spread), you probably can pay the tab with the cash in your billfold and have bucks left over to buy a round of elegant fruit smoothies - ask for a mango lassi.

Make a note of the Sunday night buffet. They're all too rare. The good thing about buffets is not so much that you get more food. (Here, the menu entrees would feed two easily, with enough to take home for lunch the next day. but, however good it is, it's all the same entree.) For us, the best part of dining at a good Indian buffet is the adventure of looking down a long table where every other dish holds something we haven't seen, let alone tasted, before.

There's plenty to try at Taj Mahal, starting with chutneys (sweet-tart tamarind and mint-cilantro-pepper, which bites back). Then there are eight or nine vegetables or salads, including raita, the veggie-spiked yogurt.

Vegetarian dishes on a weekday visit were pretty and varied. We loved spicy Madras soup, a steaming cream of tomato, nubbly with bits of vegetables and ground herbs. And the rice is the best on the planet; it's studded with spices, whole seeds (we counted five kinds) and infused with herbs and saffron.

You'll find no better aloo tika anywhere: small potato fritters, crispy outside, silky inside, and shot through with fresh cilantro and tender golden lentils. Spicy aloo gobbi masala is a standard here: a stew of potato chunks, tender-crisp cauliflower, tomato, onion, carrot and brown lentils. Steamed cabbage with onion, carrot and tiny tan lentils was tasty and virtuous.

And of course, there's almost always sag naneer, silky cheese cubes in spicy creamed spinach.

Meat offerings included boneless chicken vindaloo in a golden, mildly spicy gravy and beef muglai, a spicy reddish stew of beef chunks, small brown beans and finely grated vegetables. You can't overlook tandoori chicken; the brilliant scarlet hue of the pieces lights up the steam table. Skinless chicken pieces hold an afterburn that starts in the marinade (garlic, lime juice), ginger, chilies, yogurt and I don't know what else).

Rounds of naan (bread), soft on top and crisp under neath, are baked in the tandoor (clay oven). A waiter brings more of the steaming discs around to the tables.

Dessert is often rice pudding or gulab jamun, bout on one visit there was gajar halwa, a pudding that converted a carrot-hater to a carrot-over on the spot: the carrot pudding was tender but chunky, rich with cream, cashews, almonds, pistachios, butter and perhaps a hint of honey.

Taj Mahal's strip-center setting is small but serene: fresh flowers, glass-topped tables, crisp linens and quick, soft-spoken service.

A nice setting for excellent Indian fare.