Taj Palace Summerlin

FOOD

The buffet is built around the dishes that make Indian food especially well suited to an unlimited format: sauces, rice, breads, grilled meats and vegetable preparations that can be combined in dozens of small ways. Taj Palace describes its cooking as North and South Indian, but the lunch spread tends to begin with familiar buffet-friendly reference points rather than trying to reproduce the entire à la carte menu. Because the selection rotates, the exact lineup changes; the recurring shape of the meal matters more than any single fixed list.

A vegetable samosa is a sensible place to start. The crisp pastry gives the plate something dry and structured before the curries arrive, while mint and tamarind chutneys add cool herbal sharpness and sweet-sour contrast. Chicken tikka fills a similar role on the meat side: marinated chicken cooked with tandoor heat, carrying more char and less sauce than the curries that follow.

Then come the richer center-of-plate dishes. Butter chicken brings the familiar combination of tomato, butter and cream around boneless chicken, a mild, rounded curry that works especially well over basmati rice or torn naan. Lamb korma moves in a softer, creamier direction, with warm spice rather than aggressive heat. Some rotations also include goat curry, giving the buffet a deeper, more savory meat option and a reason to check the line before automatically rebuilding the same plate.

The vegetarian side is not treated as an afterthought. Saag paneer combines cubes of fresh cheese with a spinach-based sauce, while karahi paneer brings the cheese into a brighter tomato-and-pepper preparation. Dal makhani, when it appears, adds slow-cooked black lentils and kidney beans enriched with butter and cream. Those dishes make it possible to build an entire second plate without repeating the chicken-and-rice formula that can dominate a less varied Indian buffet.

Taj Palace’s wood-burning tandoor gives the buffet another change of texture. Tandoori chicken comes out of dry, high heat rather than a simmering sauce, so the edges pick up char while the yogurt-and-spice marinade stays close to the meat. Halal grilled and tandoori items sit comfortably beside the curries, and the contrast is useful: a piece of grilled chicken between spoonfuls of korma or saag keeps the plate from becoming one uninterrupted succession of gravies.

Bread is part of the meal’s pacing rather than a side note. Garlic naan is included with the buffet, soft and blistered from the tandoor with garlic and butter on top; butter naan offers the simpler version. Tear off a piece for butter chicken, use another to gather up saag, then let the rice handle the thinner sauces. That back-and-forth between bread and rice is one of the reasons an Indian buffet rewards multiple small trips instead of one overloaded plate.

Dessert closes the circuit with sweetness and relief from the sharper heat of many of the earlier dishes. Mango custard offers a cool, fruit-forward finish after the warm spices, while gulab jamun brings the classic Indian buffet ending: soft fried milk-solid dumplings soaked in syrup. Kheer also belongs to Taj Palace’s broader dessert repertoire, but the buffet’s exact sweets can rotate just like the savory line. By that point the meal has answered its own question: try broadly first, then return for the curry, paneer, tandoori or bread combination that earned another round.