LAHORE BUFFET
Verdict: 7/10 (some dishes were fairly good).
On 24 March 2008 (Easter Monday), in snow and hail, a friend and I went to Balti Triangle for a walk. I have a kind of warm affection toward this area and visit sometimes to stroll.
It was lunchtime that we started to feel hungry, and the friend especially was VERY hungry. So we decided to visit the most adequate place to visit when hungry, Lahore Buffet. It is almost at the end of the restaurants row of Ladypool Road walking from the Highgate road side.
This place is open from 17:00 to 0:00 Monday to Friday, and from 13:00 to 0:00 Sat. & Sun. We entered there at about 14:15 (it was open also for lunch as was Bank Holiday Monday), and there were maybe 10 other diners.
The place is huge, but there were only 1 waiter and 2 chefs at that time. It was ok, as everything was self-service.
The waiter told us to seat wherever we wanted and brought us two dinner plates and one small plate. He should have brought us also a jug of water, but he must have forgotten about it. The instruction he gave us was that we could go get food as many times we wanted and could eat as much as we wanted. He did not say anything about time-limit, so I guess there isn't. Anyway, the waiter was polite and friendly all through.
They don't sell alcohol, but there are soft drinks. (I seem to have read that we may bring alcohol in paying small charge to them, but I am not sure).
As to food, there are papadoms, dips, starters, dips, curries (chicken, lamb and veggie), rice, nan, and desserts, i.e. everything.
This is my first serving. From the shish kebab (sausage shaped brown stuff) in clockwise, tandoori chicken, okra curry, mix daal, saag aloo (potato and spinach), and chana (chick peas) at the centre. I had this with a piece of naan. As starter, there were also onion baji and veggie samosas, but I did not try them.
The key to succeed in buffet restaurants is, 1) try as many types of food you can in small quantity, 2) go back and get more of the food that you liked the best. In this case, for example, the best are mix daal and chana. On the other hand, saag aloo smelt stale and tandoori chicken was dry. The okra was fine, but very very oily (in fact, the food here was oily overall).
This is my second helping. There wasn't seem to be luxury to change dishes every time, so sorry for the messy look.
From the salad in clockwise, lamb balti, chicken saag, lamb saag, vegetarian biryani and boiled rice. The best choices here were both of the lamb curry and biryani. The chicken tends to be overcooked in buffet restaurants, so the lamb dishes probably are better choice. The rice was not bad, but below average, like 40/100.
This is my third, last serving. Apart from the mix veggie curry in front, all the rest were the things I tried and liked.
The mix vegetable curry in Lahore buffet was not usual frozen mix veggie curry, but cooked from fresh vegetables, and inclusion of tinda made it even more interesting. Telling you the truth, I was expecting more boring food in a buffet restaurant like this, but I must say it was much better than I'd thought. Some of the foods were fresh, too: the shish kebabs were made from mince and cooked on fire by one of the chefs, and also nans were made from dough one by one. I also liked that they used meat-on-bones for some of the curries.
As puddings, there were sponge cakes in custard, semolina halwa, and vermicelli in milky cream. They are very sweet and turned out to be too much for us stuffed with curry. There are ice-creams and kulfi as extra, but there isn't anything refreshing like fruits salad.
Again for extra, they can serve coffee, tea and masala tea (any for £ 1). I ordered a cup of coffee and the friend a masala tea so that we could digest a bit. The friend was impressed by the authentic masala tea, while I was taking photo of the saucer with Shell emblem.
We paid £ 7.95 + £ 1 = £ 8.95 each. It is probably as much as we pay at cheap balti places. Difference is that while in restaurants we might make crap choices and have to finish them regretting £ 10 we just wasted, here we probably can find something we like. And we have freedom to eat main dishes before starters, or eat main dishes with salads that usually come as a part of starter in restaurants. It is certainly not an haut-cuisine but balti should not be haut-cuisine. This restaurant offers a valid way to enjoy this working-class food.
Lahore Buffet
357-363 Ladypool Road, Birmingham, B12 8LA (Map)
Tel. 0121 449 9007
Open: Mon-Fri 17:00-Midnight ; Sat. & Sun. 13:00-Midnight
