Buffet Maharaja

1481, René-Lévesque Bld. West
http://www.buffetmaharaja.com/

I was told it was one of the more popular places to go.
I really can't imagine why.

Perhaps it's the sheer quantity afforded by a place that charges $14.99 Sunday to Wednesday and two dollars more the rest of the time for an meal unfettered by limitations in any realm but quality. To your left, bubbling, bland saffron curries and bobbing hunks of lamb, to your right, limitless stale desserts and strange cauliflower dishes not short of vinegar. A tandoori counter attendant will force far more skewered chicken on you than you could ever eat and there is no refusing for he has already cooked more than you asked for. The tamarind sauce will be your saving grace. The hot sauce will annihilate all pleasure from whatsoever it touches.

I'd brought my appetite and sampled a wide range of what the restaurent offered. It was, in short, lacking in the essential spiciness and the quintessential magic that makes Indian dining what it is. But we can afford more precision that this

The "lamb and lentil": a complete mystery, not made to impress but certainly palatable.

The Aloo Gobi: one of the more potent selections, and memorable for the wrong reasons. One bite was enough.

The Tandoori chicken: it is racked up unceremoniously as one enters the feeding trough. Mine was too cold and very dry, though the spices seemed about right.

The Butter chicken: more favourable review from Maggie than Etoile Des Indes received, and it was in fact one of the better selections.

The Vegetable Samosas: these large, potato-filled sides were easily my favourite element, despite losing a lot for flavour in apparent fear of the aftermath in washrooms across montreal (this speaks for most of what's offered there). They were ostensibly deep fried, given the transparent flakes, and Maggie and I argued whether this was the correct method. I had seconds with plenty of tamarind.

And all that aside, it must be noted that friendly staff can draw pity from the most dissatisfied diners, just as fine atosphere can convince them they are enjoying themselves. The brusque guidance of the balding caucasion fellow who showed us to our table, the poorly considered lighting, the energy spent attempting to procure a drink, and the pictures of Lord Ram and his escorts against a backdrop of creme-de-menthe bottles; these things coloured the experience in a way the unexciting food could not. It was my birthday, and I was quite dissapointed. A firm 2/10.

Etoile Des Indes

1806 St. Catherine Ouest.
New location at 5860 Sherbrooke Ouest.





http://www.etoiledesindes.com/

Etoile is not far from where I live, and after a week or so of
deliberation I decided I would stop in. Several passes at different times of day did little to diminish its apparent bustle, and I concluded, aided by perhaps the only dining universal, that an empty restaurant is to be avoided, that it was worth a try.

Maggie was hungry but wanted to stay in, and I convinced her, and myself, to try take out.
As I wandered in it was a dark 9pm, and the place glowed with a soft candle-lit warmth. The proprietor had the rounded leanness befitting Indian businessmen, and he spoke to me quickly but gracefully, looking over the top of his glasses. It did not begin well. They didn't have the samosas I wanted and at his suggestion I reluctantly ordered the vegetable Pakora. Maggie had explicitly requested butter chicken, which was available under a different name.

The wait would be about ten minutes, and I sat toward the back and looked longingly at the fare delivered and consumed. The atmosphere and decor were tasteful and plain, lined with the visual amenities typical of most Indian restaurants, yet without the tasteless, inconsequential display of postcard- pretty scenes alongside objects of worship.

My food arrived shortly thereafter and I hurried back. I quickly assembled a pair of plates and removed the Pakora, divided and drizzled them with the unfortunately thin mint sauce, and set the fragrant slices of garlic naan next to the portions of rice. I sat down next to Maggie and we eagerly opened the butter chicken.

I was enjoying myself and the general experience, having had the benefit of good service and ambiance; Maggie was predictably skeptical and was quick to critize the main course. It looks, she quipped, like a sad orange milkshake. She said the preparation was wrong, that it was too sweet and too viscous. The assessment took fewer that five mouthfuls, and she has declared herself finished even sooner. I continued to eat happily, vaguely mindful of my intention to later reflect on the experience, and noting, somewhat uninspired, that the Pakora was a bit dry.

This is a restaurant that is worth a second look. I intend to make one; they say the customer is always right, and however our first take-out experience concluded, Etoile Des Indes has plenty of others. Enough, in fact, that they have opened a new location. I take it that that's what we're seeing in the advertisement below, which doesn't look at all like the location on St-Catherine's.

For now, 6/10.

Overture

A select few worldly experiences confirm the expectations we divined from them, and very seldom if ever are they identically satisfying. I came to experience Indian food, for this reason, with everything to lose. My hopes and expectations were pinned on romantic notions of India that have not yet been dismissed, as I have never been there. We hope, most of us anyway, without knowing we hope, or whether there is anything to hope for; the cuisine of India had long held for me the promise of unfamiliar delights, foreign but familiar in the perfected divination of universal pleasure.

My fascination with Indian likely began at a time when without any concept of the composition of the world I attempted to categorize what I would see on television or in books. Images of camels and sheiks, picture books of Japanese block prints, the story of Oedipus narrated by an eccentric aunt all fell into the same faculty of discernment of otherness, and were as alike as they were different. The diversity I identified within the mix led to a keen wonder and curiosity in me for the lives in the other worlds. At a time when the idea that I lived in a country and not simply in a house was addressed to me delicately, I had a firm fascination with what was beyond, though, barring the books I was gifted with, I didn't know where to begin looking for it.

Toward the end of highschool and the beginning of my first year of my first year of college I began to gather my impressions of India into a single, desired experience. I remember confiding in my father, after finishing a presentation in Religious Studies class on Shiva and the Nataraja, that I wanted to leave for India and not return. Great loves begin with mistaken assumptions. I do not know if there is any truth in what I believed about India at the time. It is surely more vast and more colourful and mysterious than I ever believed, as well as more familiar, straightforward and mannerly than I thought possible. My father confirmed for me in that moment what I already knew; I could not afford such a venture, certainly without any purpose in mind but to arrive there. What ensued in place of energy I could have invested in attempting to travel was a side-track into the Baghavad Gita, the Puranas, and at one hopelessly optimistic juncture -- hopeless because at the time I could barely cook the food I'd eaten my entire life -- Madhur Jaffrey's A Taste of India.

Where this accute fascination didn't last a general interest prevailed. I learned, with the help of a college roommate, simple curries and other dishes, innovating and exploring at a slow pace. My first experience at an Indian restaurant was hurried and expensive, and I remember splitting a single dishes with a friend while looking aside in longing at the buffet. So it was with a great deal of apprehension, though I was certainly excited too, that I undertook my first true taste of Indian cuisine.

My girlfriend and I were living in Shenzhen, China, a boom town if ever there was one; it had evolved in 28 years from a fishing village on the Hong Kong-mainland border into a city of 13 million after receiving license to practice Capitalism as Special Economic Zone, the first such designation. The city was built entirely on migrant labour, and like Hong Kong, the Indian population comprised a significant minority. I found The Spice Circle after pouring over restaurant reviews, having found that imitations of western food were imitations at best, and we set off one Friday when the fabled buffet would be in full swing.

**TBC**