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During the summer I stopped by India Palace several times for their lunch buffet. With the coming of fall and the return of weekday working hours, those pleasant times have come to an end. The good news is that the bell choir that Cally rings in has resumed their rehersal and performance schedule, and Monday evenings are now free for me to find my own dinner. Tonight I found my way over to India Palace.
Faced with too many choices, I fell back on picking one of the "special dinner" selections. The Maharani Bhojan was the middle-sized one, but in the end it turned out to be just a bit too large after all; however, the flavors were absolutely all right. The papadum was thin and crisp, of course; it was also nice and spicy, which I don't recall from previous encounters. It encouraged me to sample the garnishes thoroughly: the marinated onions, the mint sauce, and the tamarind. I found each one to be good in its own way, but if it had been a contest I think the tamarind would have won.
Then the feast itself arrived: a couple pieces of Tandoori chicken, ditto each of two sorts of kabob whose names I didn't catch, and half servings of chicken tikka masala and mutter paneer. And of course the nan and the rice. The kabobs were stunning, one chicken that had been marinated until it became a creamy delight, the other lamb, I think, with a tamarind-like marinade/coating. One soft and rich, the other solid and toothy. The tandoori was excellent, but due to the intense competition I ate only one of the pieces before reaching a full stop. Before that I found both the tikka masala and, especially, the mutter paneer to be even better than they had been when they appeared in the buffet. Hardly a surprise, but the paneer was particularly fine, and it was the first of the dishes to be finished. I should mention that although I enjoy mutter paneer, I would never have predicted it would finish first like that. Nor was it for lack of competition...
I'm not deeply familiar with Indian food, but this was some of the tastiest dining I've had in a while. As good an opinion I had had of India Palace based on the lunch buffet, having dinner there has raised it to another level. I just hope they stay for a while - that location has had at least three restaurants that failed to survive their initial one-year lease. I expect I'll be there many Mondays between now and the end of Cally's bell choir's season next spring.
Oh, and the staff all appear to be as authentic as the food. And the times I've been there when there was a good crowd, it scored well on the "patrons look like they would know the cuisine" scale, though the weekday lunches seem to draw a good mix. So maybe they will last...
India Palace
242 E. Geneva Road
Wheaton, IL 60187
630 681-8002
lunch 11:30 to 3:00 (buffet closes a little earlier except Su) dinner 5:00 to 10:00Chicago, IL
India Palace - revisited for dinner
NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 16:15:03 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: MT-NewsWatcher/3.4 (PPC Mac OS X) Xref: usenet.INS.cwru.edu chi.eats:27113 Tony A. wrote: > Martin M. wrote: > > > Tony A. wrote: > > > Sounds yummy. Thanks for the review. Geneva Road is only a mile away > > > from the Great Western Trail, so all you city weenies who are afraid to > > > ride into the 'burbs, you have NO EXCUSE this time. > > > > This week I had the chicken vindaloo, which was wonderfully hot. I > > didn't much notice it at the time, but none of the very yummy items in > > the Maharini spread last week were very hot - the papadum was probably > > the warmest, actually. This week things warmed up after the entree > > arrived. Mmmmmm. :-) > > "Wonderfully hot" is not something I expect from suburban Indian joints. > Of course my experiences are somewhat limited, but the common theme at > the places I have tried in the suburbs has been, a distinct lack of heat. I rode out there yesterday - ~2 hours each way. I agree with Martin that it is not worth it if the only only reason one is riding out there is to eat at India Palace. One can do much better on Devon, or even downtown. But the Prairie Path and the Great Western Trail are generally a joy to ride on. Pretty much any excuse is good enough for me. I concur also that the food is pretty good. It is among the best suburban Indian food I've had. The buffet featured an impressive variety of flavors and spiciness levels. There were about eight vegetarian items on the buffet, not counting the salads and desserts - far more than I usually see at Oak Park's Khyber Pass or the Himalayan Restaurant in Niles. Devon could learn something about Sag Paneer from these guys - it was delightfully creamy and yet not at all heavy. Delicious. Also yummy, and not a common sight on Indian buffets was Bangan Barthi, an eggplant dish. Another buffet rarity was Khadi Pakora - a mild yogurt curry which allegedly contained Pakora (vege fritters) but by the time I got to the buffet at one thirty, it was just a pakora-free sea of sauce. The only vege item on the buffet that I did not like was the Channa [something] - the chick pea dish. It was just uninspired and had an unpleasant slightly metallic edge. The star of the buffet was the mango ice cream. It tasted exactly the same as the mango ice cream at Khyber Pass. That stuff is just beyond amazingly great. The ambiance was a mixed bag. The place is not too jam packed with tables, and there is a half-wall running down the middle of the place to add a bit of quiet and privacy, but unfortunately during my visit a teevee was on. At least it was playing Indian soap operas, but even so it was pretty annoying. The service was fairly bad. I did get a couple of refills of water, but toward the end of my meal, my water glass sat empty while the sole waiter cleared other tables. If there was a line of people waiting for that table I could forgive such a thing, but at that point there was only one other party in the place. The waiter also neglected my desiccated water glass as he began to clear the buffet promptly at 2:29 PM. I was done eating by then, so it was not a big deal for me, but I noticed that one of the women at another table jumped up and tried to grab some fruit from the buffet as he was clearing it. The service also sucked in the not-uncommon assumption that everyone wants to eat decaying bird flesh. Perhaps there are no vegetarians in Wheaton? The lunch buffet is $6.95. There is beer available. India Palace is in a god forsaken strip mall, so there is plenty of death-machine parking right out front. There are no bike racks anywhere, but I found a sign to lock up to.