“I want Indian.”
“I want to eat a lot.”
“Let’s go to Aladdin.”
These things go together.
Aladdin’s Y1200 lunch buffet is the thing to do when you want to eat a lot of mediocre curry and tasty lamb (used to be Y1000 but has increased due to ‘rising food costs’).
Let me skip the service and atmosphere dimensions. The buffet includes soup, several kinds of rice, salad (of a presumably Iranian type that has chopped tomatoes, onions and somewhat unidentified green things), pita or this interesting fried rice cake thing (imagine taking watery rice, spreading it thin in a pan, and cooking it until the bottom dried out and got brown and toasty), three curries, a meat item (lamb patties or lamb chops), and a bizarro item (today, spaghetti!). And dessert, always some kind of pudding, often rice (today basmati, which was nice except for the skin on top).
I kinda like the food. The spices are different – today one of the mystery Iranian items was a vegetable-based cakey thing that included a lot of mint. The spinach-y looking curry is definitely not saag; it includes a lot of a spice I can’t identify. It’s worth mentioning that the lamb items are a high point; it was the lamb chops that Bjorn first mentioned when he was trying to convince me to go there (I was opposed because Scott decided years ago never to go there again after getting poor service despite being a very regular customer). The lamb chops are beautifully soft, with the fat rendered out, and come in a big ol’ bin that means you can eat as many as you want. In Australia this many lamb chops on a rack used to cost me $30.
Right now I feel a little sick, but that’s just the buffet action in action…
We guarantee that your lunch fees will not be used to fund nuclear research.
03-3401-8851
It is worth mentioning that it is not an authentic iranian or arabic restaurant. It is ran by indians and pakistanis resulting in stews all look like curry and the kebabs all get the same consistency as those in samrat: dry inside and far from juicy. The herb mixtures are all wrong and what you get is some culinary abomination that is good only for indians. You know what I mean if you ever tried any of the other authentic iranian restaurants in town. The menu is all wrong…if you order the typical Olovie salad, they serve you plain mashed potatoes and mayo. And ordering Torshi (mixed pickles) gives you chopped raw onions +salty cucumbers (seriously) considering this, the place is overpriced especially at night and as for lunch buffet you get a much better deal eating at any normal indian joint with lunch buffet, not pretending to be something they can't do.
Don't hold back, Anonymous. How do you really feel?
It is worth mentioning that you work for a competing restaurant around the corner.