Indian Buffet @ Rasoi

I hope I'm not being offensive, but here's the scoop: I'm honorary Brown. In college, I'm pretty sure 99.98% of my friends were Indian. And we were all in Boston, land of even more Indians. As such, I've had my share of Indian food... from the delicious, to the mediocre, to the awesomely home-cooked (shout-out to Auntie Oza's aloo gobi!!! SO GOOD. Greesh, I'm waiting my turn to come to your parents' chateau for some home-cooked goodness... hehe).

I've decided that when going for an Indian meal out, lunch buffet is the way to go. (Unless you live in New York City, where you can order amazing things like gigantic dosas all the time.) Lunch buffets are less expensive than a la carte dinners, and you get to try a little bit of everything. I didn't have high hopes for a great Indian buffet in St. Louis, but thankfully, this grand ol' city in the midwest surprised me. Rasoi's lunch buffet is reaaaaaally good. I forget how much the lunch buffet is, but it's something around $13. The buffet offers a variety of some quality dishes, good naan (and rice of course), pakora, salad of some kind, and a dessert. (If you're lucky, you get kheer. We got mango custard that day, which was still pretty good.)

The choices aren't incredibly diverse, but diverse enough. There a few meat dishes, a few veggie dishes, and often one seafood dish. What Rasoi lacks in sheer number of different dishes, it makes up for in quality. Yum-factor!! Here's my plate. I know, not very pretty.

I loved everything I ate. The veggie korma and chicken tikka masala were probably my faves.

Here's Abby's plate. A little more normal looking.

My favorite part of any meal... bread:

Naan-o-licious. Try to grab it when it comes right out of the kitchen, when it's hot and puffy and buttery and perfect. This may include stalking the buffet line, but hey, there's no shame in stalking.

Here's the mango custard. Or rather, my dish that used to hold the mango custard.

Apologies for the bad picture (as Julie warned me when I was taking it!), but I got too excited about dessert before I could nab a photo. The scary neon orange color is misleading - this thing is actually pretty tasty. It was light, sweet with a sufficient mango flavor... a great ending to an equally great meal.

As you can tell, we are serious about our Indian buffets! Please also notice the uniquely awesome wall decor.

Rasoi
25 N. Euclid Ave.
St. Louis, MO 63108
314.361.6911