Bad Indian Lunch Buffet tour

This is a long standing tradition with my friend Aman. Unfortunately, now we are separated by hundreds of miles and therefore cannot get large groups of friends together for lunch. Essentially the concept was that we would go to as many Indian buffets as possible in the suburbs of DC and then decide what was the worst buffet. I figure Aman's votes should have counted double at least at the Punjabi options, but as you might expect. We didn't really ever make it to the voting stage of this endeavor. After trying a plethora of places we all just fell into a comfortable format of one or two favorite locations. You can tell how serious we were about the "bad" portion of the tour. Once one of our favorite places had a fly in with the lentil soup that you eat with Idli and we realized that we were back to our original plan after all... the bad Indian buffet had crept up on us, when we least expected it.

So with my fond memories of checking out all of the Indian options, I decided to try a similar adventure here in PGH! My first outing with the Indian buffet group (although this time without the desire to find the worst) was a small but cordial bunch of coworkers. We all had previously had Star of India and thought it was time to branch out a bit. We decided to trudge through the slush on Craig up to Namaste (at Centre ave). When we got there, to our surprise... there was no buffet! A buffet table yes, but actual buffet, no. So we quickly turned around and visited Tamarind on Craig. Apropos of little, the name reminded me of the tamarind paste I love on South American snow cones, oh how I look forward to those. It was a Friday during lent, so I was quite happy with the vegetarian selections at this South Indian buffet. In comparison to Star of India I liked the vegetarian selections better at Tamarind, but the naan is far superior at Star of India. My meat eating companions seemed like the meat entrees could be better... aka meatier, but considering the other foods on the buffet were quite diverse, and the regional influence this did not surprise me. I was terribly disappointed with the fried lentil patties ( look like yellow indian falafel) that were reminiscent of hockey pucks. I had expected so much more from this mouth searing south indian delight that I had enjoyed from Amma's Vegetarian Kitchen in Virginia so many times. The potatoes with coconut were my hands down favorite of the day. In general though, I would say it is worth stopping through until I do find the veritable best Indian buffet in town.

So now the question is, where should the next stop be on the Indian buffet tour of Pittsburgh! I am contemplating Prince of India or Peoples. We will have to wait and see.