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Nirvana, Southern Indian Downtown - Closed


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I've been there twice now and hadn't seen in mentioned on here.

Nirvana is a vegetarian Indian restaurant at K and 18th, NW. Weekdays they have a lunch buffet for $9.95 and every day features a different region of India. I looked at the list today and can't remember the 5th region (North Indian, South Indian, Guajarati and Rajasthani are four).

I am only a recent convert to Indian food, so I can't describe what I had in detail, but I have very much enjoyed both my trips. I am most certainly not a vegetarian myself, but I've never left unsatisfied. Between the breads, beans, veggies, soups, etc, there's plenty of food and you won't miss the meat.

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I've been there twice now and hadn't seen in mentioned on here.

Nirvana is a vegetarian Indian restaurant at K and 18th, NW.  Weekdays they have a lunch buffet for $9.95 and every day features a different region of India.  I looked at the list today and can't remember the 5th region (North Indian, South Indian, Guajarati and Rajasthani are four).

I am only a recent convert to Indian food, so I can't describe what I had in detail, but I have very much enjoyed both my trips.  I am most certainly not a vegetarian myself, but I've never left unsatisfied.  Between the breads, beans, veggies, soups, etc, there's plenty of food and you won't miss the meat.

Rocks will be deleting my motormouth responses any moment now, as I've posted waaaaay too many times today, but what the hell.

Nirvana was the site of the single worst restaurant experience I have ever had in twenty years of dining out (frequently) as an adult. The food was bad, the service insulting... oy. Ol Ironstomach, would you care to tell the tale?

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Ol Ironstomach, would you care to tell the tale?

Not really; I haven't been back recently, and it would be unfair to revisit the sins of old on them in detail. They were obviously unprepared for the crush brought on by rave reviews from both Monica B. and Tom S., and consequently our party, already seated, endured an evening of "service" that almost defies imagination. However, one does not stay in business for long if one operates that way, so it seems unlikely that you would have a repeat of our experience.

Regardless of what happened in the front of the house, I will say that at the time, the appetizers were pretty good, but our entrees were quite mediocre. Perhaps the lunch buffet is better than dinner, but I certainly wouldn't have chosen them over Udupi Palace or Woodlands (Langley Park) for veggie Indian.

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You know I have to say the food was excellent the many times I went and tried it before I wrote about it. Subsequently I did get many notes from people saying that the quality had nosedived. I hope all is better now.

I have not been there recently so I cannot personally comment on that.

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I went for the lunch buffet. The good news is that the staff were very helpful and friendly, getting me a special carry-out conatainer for the soup, chatting, being nicer than they had to be.

The bad news was the food. I was there on Friday, northern India day- I think. The options were a pale green soup- that was tangy and unapealing. Terrible roti, that tasted like they had been leftover from the night before.

Some kind of potato in cream sauce- I don't like cream sauces so I didn't try that one.

Potatoes with roasted peppers and tomatoes-think Indian homefries- they were ok, nothing special, I liked the peppers in them.

A dish that was labelled as mushrooms but was really mostly spinach-was tasty but too salty for my taste, although the few bites of mushroom in the dish were good.

There was a dish of the kind of beans you get in chilli- sorry I'm bad with names- and I know real chilli should not have beans- with tomatos and onion. That was very good espescially with the rice.

The rice was plain long grain rice with nothing mixed in.

There was a soupy looking indian desert.

Over-all not worth it.

Best,

Ed

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I went to a saturday brunch buffet about 2 months ago with a group of south asians. We were all pretty happy with the food,it definitely was like what many of us had grown up eating. and i remember that the ragda patties were pretty good. In general, i think their street foods and guajrati foods (try the aloo paratha, dal, or puran puri) are excellent, i haven't been happy with the paneer dishes and the south indian dishes aren't as good as those elsewhere, like amma.

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