FOOD

Baba’s buffet makes the most sense as a compact survey of its North Indian and Punjabi kitchen. The restaurant’s larger menu reaches across vegetarian curries, chicken, lamb, seafood, biryani and tandoori cooking, but the buffet works by editing that repertoire into a manageable lunch. There is usually a familiar backbone with movement around the edges, especially among the fried starters. The result rewards repeat visits without making a first visit feel like a scavenger hunt.

Tandoori chicken is the natural place to start. Yogurt, mild spices and the dry heat of the tandoor give the chicken a roasted, lightly charred character that stands apart from the sauced dishes around it. Bone-in chicken curry provides the opposite pleasure: soft meat and gravy meant for rice or naan. Together they establish Baba’s central buffet contrast — roasted food on one side of the plate, curry-soaked food on the other.

The creamier side of Baba’s menu supplies another layer. Chicken tikka masala and chicken makhani are built around tomato, onion, butter and cream, with the makhani carrying nuts and raisins as well. Those dishes are useful reference points for the restaurant even when the exact buffet rotation changes. They show why the line benefits from plain rice and bread: a spoonful of sauce is often doing as much work as the chicken itself.

Vegetarian cooking is not a side category here. Saag paneer combines house-made cheese with spinach and cream; paneer makhani moves the cheese into a richer tomato-cream sauce; aloo gobhi brings potatoes and cauliflower into a drier spiced preparation; dal makhani supplies the slow, mellow pull of creamed lentils. Mushroom mater, chickpeas, eggplant and mixed vegetables give the hot line plenty of ways to change direction without simply repeating another version of chicken.

The appetizer section is where the buffet can loosen up. Vegetable pakora, samosa and other fried bites bring crisp edges and a break from the spoonable curries, and this is one area most likely to shift between visits. Baba’s chutneys matter here. Green, red and mint versions can move a mild buffet plate toward herbal, sweet, tangy or hotter territory without requiring the entire pan to be cooked at one spice level.

Rice and bread are the structural pieces. Naan gives the plate something warm and tearable for curries, while rice catches the sauces that would otherwise stay behind. Baba’s broader kitchen also includes vegetable, chicken, lamb, shrimp and goat biryanis, so seasoned rice is part of the restaurant’s vocabulary rather than an afterthought. On a buffet plate, that matters: the starch is not filler so much as the thing that lets several curries share space without becoming one flavor.

Dessert is worth protecting a little room for. Carrot halwa — carrots cooked down with milk and cream — has a natural place after the savory buffet, dense and milk-rich rather than icy or delicate. Kheer cools things down with rice pudding and pistachio, while gulab jamun brings syrup-soaked sweetness. Baba’s best buffet strategy is therefore simple: start with tandoori and one curry, give the vegetarian pans real space, use the fried starters and chutneys as resets, and do not discover the carrot halwa only after deciding you were finished.