Bombay Garden, Santa Clara

Bombay Garden
Indian cuisine in Santa Clara, most famous for its buffet

Recently, we've been quite turned on to the idea of Indian buffets. Passage To India is our nearest local one (not counting the place on Castro Street that I got stomach cramps from once, which has a new name and might be worth another try), but Bombay Garden is the king of Indian buffets in the area so far. Where Passage To India is only a weekend dinner buffet, Bombay Garden has a permanent lunch and dinner buffet. Though you don't have to eat at the buffet, we've never done anything else there.

We first went to the Bombay Garden over in Fremont, at the advice of a friend who said it was the best Indian buffet he knew. Soon after, this one opened at Lawrence and El Camino, so we tried it out. The service was better--it didn't take us twenty minutes to get a basket of nan--and the food was just as good.

Unlike Passage To India, they only serve one type of nan, but it's enough. It comes out hot and fresh in the baskets, and you should eat it while it's hot, because it's not as good once it cools. By the time you get back from your first buffet trip, the nan should be waiting.

Bombay Garden has a nice setup where one side of the buffet is vegetarian and the other has meat dishes. Everything is delicious, and it's a little spicy, but not too bad (except where noted). Don't neglect the southern Indian cuisine on the side table near the desserts (or maybe it's northern; I mix those up all the time). We love the malai kofta there, and the lamb sausage (cooked on skewers, so you can still see the small center hole). The sag paneer is always good, and this time around, the veggie masala was terrific as well. Everything has a good, distinct flavor, not too spicy, and it's popular enough that all the dishes remain fresh.

The gulab jamun are good, but nothing special, and in fact that describes all the desserts. But the rest of the food is good enough to make up for it.

The biggest problem with Bombay Garden is that you'll have trouble getting out of your chair at the end of the meal. But that's okay: they keep on a rotating cycle of Indian movies, so there's entertainment until you feel well enough to leave.

Temptations

For the second time in a row, our restaurant exploration group went out to our chosen restaurant only to find it closed. This time, the Kauai BBQ Grill was not only closed, it was shut down, about to be replaced by Tina's Cucina. Fortunately, in downtown Mountain View, there are plenty of interesting restaurants and a few we haven't explored, so we headed down Dana Street toward Temptations, an "Indian-Chinese Fusion" restaurant on Castro Street just bayside of Dana.

Temptations is a small place, but they seated the six of us immediately at a high table near the front of the restaurant. It's a very pleasant place to eat, decorated in a generic Asian style and not too loud for conversation. The service was fairly attentive, faltering only when Mark asked about a house specialty, which the waiter didn't seem to understand. Still, the menu is pretty extensive, with an Indian section, a fusion section, and a Chinese section.

We ordered chicken vindaloo, hot garlic chicken, hot garlic shrimp, the vegetarian ginger dish (minced vegetable balls in a ginger sauce), and chicken tava as our entrees. The coktail [sic] samosas were quite good, and the Orinoco Brazilian mojitos, I'm told, were quite satisfactory. Temptations has a nice full bar, and I'm sure the drinks are a big attraction.

All the main dishes we tried were very good, and surprisingly spicy, as the coktail samosas were not spicy at all. For me, with my more sensitive palate, the ginger veg and chicken vindalu were right on the edge of acceptable, and I was warned not to try the hot garlic dishes (though it seems the chicken was spicier than the shrimp, for some reason). The chicken tava was, I think, the least spicy, though it was hard to tell after having tried the ginger veg.

We were all impressed that they actually carried out the fusion aspect of the cuisine. The hot garlic chicken/shrimp and the ginger veg dish seemed to be Chinese-inspired dishes with Indian flavoring to the spices. Many of them were heavy with onions and peppers, recalling Chinese dishes more than Indian, but all the sauces were very Indian in nature.

The other excellent feature was the assorted bread basket, which is a menu item as it is in most Indian restaurants. This one included butter nan, tandoori roti, and onion kulcha, all of which were quite good. Unfortunately, we'd finished most of it by the time the spicy food arrived. But I'll be honest, the spice didn't linger too long, and the tastes were good enough to keep me eating. We'd definitely come back here to try some of the more unusual dishes, but for pure Indian food, we'd likely stick with Shivas or Monsoon, up and down Castro from this place.

Amber Cafe

We're fans of Amber India in Mountain View and Santana Row, and we'd often driven past the Amber Cafe down the road on El Camino, but hadn't stopped in before last night. When we found ourselves in the mood for Indian last night, we decided to give it a shot.

We tried the Bombay Lamb Frankie wrap, spiced lamb wrapped in an egg paratha (like a thin tortilla with cooked egg on the inside); the chicken khaas combo with chicken curry, nan, dal (yellow lentil curry side), and salad; and cholewale samose (samosas stuffed with cumin potatoes, green peas, and garbanzo beans). It's a fast casual dining setup, where you order at the counter and take a number, and then they bring it out to you.

Service was pretty quick. The samoses came out first. With the tamarind sauce and the mint chutney they provided, they were delicious, warm and crispy, and they came with a side of garbanzo beans, onions, and cilantro with a barbecue-type sauce. Once the cilantro was brushed off, the side was pretty good too.

The main course arrived promptly after we were done. Mark started on the wraps, while I started with the chicken curry, which surprised me by having bones in it. It was good, and I didn't really mind de-boning the chicken. I have a pretty low tolerance for spice, and this curry wasn't too bad. The curry and wrap both came with a coleslaw-like salad of beans, cabbage, and carrots that was nice and vinegary. I guess the salad of the day gets changed up depending on what they have, but this one was pretty good.

Nan is one of my favorite parts of an Indian meal, and the nan they served us was hot and fresh, not quite the best nan in recent memory (that honor goes to Bombay Garden), but definitely top notch. I liked the dal, too--it wasn't spicy at all, was nice and flavorful; if anything, a little soupy for my tastes.

The wrap was surprisingly good, and it came as a pair of thinly rolled wraps, so we each got one. Good flavor to the meat, and I liked the egg paratha.

We were both very full when we left. This one definitely goes on the list of places we'd recommend. Hot, fresh food, not too expensive, and fast.

Passage To India buffet

We went to the buffet at Passage to India in Mountain View. Being fans of Indian buffet in general and Mountain View residents, it seemed a little silly that we hadn't tried it.

Overall, the food was very tasty. The chicken tikka masala, malai kofta, chicken roll, and rogan josh (lamb) were outstanding, as was the nan, kept piled on a warm grill. I love nan, and had to stop myself from going and getting more even when I was too full to move. Everything we had was pretty tasty and not too spicy (I stayed away from the chili chicken, which one of our friends said was "OMG hot"), though I had a little burn in my mouth at the end of the meal.

The gulab jamun was among the best I've had: soft, sweet, and warm dough ball in sugar water, which could've had a little more rose in it. They also had a small cake (rather, a large cake in small pieces), which was good, and mango frozen yogurt, which I didn't try.

Overall, you can tell that the buffet is only available Tuesday nights (vegetarian) and weekend nights (full). The access and variety aren't as good as Bombay Garden, though the steam trays are smaller and except for the chicken tikka masala, they did an excellent job of keeping the food fresh and warm. The slightly better quality is probably worth the extra dollar in price, and it is closer to where we live, but I can see us going back to Bombay Garden just for variety. Passage to India is a very good Indian buffet, but here in the Bay Area that just gets it into the rotation.