FOOD

The food story at The Indian Bistro begins with range, but not the anonymous kind that comes from simply adding more pans. The restaurant’s larger menu is deep in North Indian curries, tandoori cooking, vegetarian specialties, biryani and breads, and the Friday-Saturday buffet draws from that same kitchen vocabulary. The lineup rotates, so this is best understood as a changing cross-section of the restaurant rather than a fixed weekly checklist.

Chicken gives the buffet its most familiar center. Tandoori chicken brings yogurt marinade, spice and roasted edges; chicken tikka masala moves in the opposite direction with a tomato-onion-butter sauce; chicken makhani turns richer and rounder. Chicken tikka saag shifts the plate toward spinach, while the restaurant’s home-style chicken curry strips the idea back to tender chicken in a lighter onion gravy. Those contrasts matter because each spoonful changes what the rice underneath it is doing.

Lamb adds a more substantial counterweight when it enters the rotation. Lamb korma is especially well suited to buffet eating: creamy, gently spiced and distinct from the tomato-heavy chicken dishes around it. The broader kitchen also works with lamb curry, rogan josh, saag and vindaloo, giving the buffet more possibilities than the usual chicken-versus-vegetarian split. Even one lamb pan changes the center of gravity of a plate.

The vegetarian side has enough depth to build an entirely separate meal. The kitchen’s repertoire includes aloo gobi, bhindi masala, mushroom matar, saag paneer, paneer makhani, navratan korma, tarka dal and dal makhani. That range moves from dry vegetables to spinach, creamy paneer and earthy lentils instead of treating vegetarian food as one interchangeable curry. Choley and potato-based preparations add still another direction, especially beside sharper pickle or cooling yogurt.

Fried starters and rice create the interval pieces between the curries. Vegetable samosas and pakora bring the necessary crisp opening, while chicken biryani can turn the rice portion of the plate into a dish of its own. Plain basmati remains the practical choice when several sauces are competing for attention. The restaurant’s bread program is unusually broad beyond the buffet, from garlic naan and paneer naan to Kashmiri naan stuffed with sugar, coconut, cherries and raisins, a useful clue to how much variety sits behind the weekend line.

Cold accompaniments and sweets keep the richer food from running together. Katchumber brings cucumber, lettuce and tomato; raita cools things down with yogurt, cucumber and tomato; hot pickle adds a sharper edge. Dessert stays close to the classics, with gulab jamun and kheer forming the restaurant’s regular sweet vocabulary. They make sense after a meal built on sauces and spice: soft, milky, syrupy finishes rather than another round of savory intensity.

The useful way to approach this buffet is not to chase completeness. The compact line makes comparison easy, and the rotation rewards a first plate built for contrast: something tandoori, one creamy curry, one darker curry, a vegetable dish, rice and a crisp starter. The second trip can then become specific. That is where The Indian Bistro earns its place: not by pretending to be enormous, but by letting a small buffet carry the depth of a much larger Indian menu.