Kumari Restaurant & Bar! They even do take out lunch Buffet. I would stay away from Akbar, from what I remember, the owner would take the servers tips, thing could have changed.

[deleted]

I don't think they're still offering the buffet. I took my daughter over the summer and they only offered carry out off the menu. No buffet.

If you're referring to Nepal House, I literally went there two weeks ago and got the buffet.

Oops, that was for Human Gyroscope. I meant Kumari across the street. They were always my favorite. We ate at Nepal House, which was good. But it was scaled back and didn't have a great offering.

ACK! Just called and you are correct. What a bummer!

Kumari is solid

We use to walk in and do a quick assess of the buffet. It was obvious when they were on their A game. Best buffet down there when they were on. Still probably the best when they weren't...but they had high highs.

That is a shame. Hopefully they bring it back.

Nepal House buffet usually slaps

I'll have to try again. I ended up going to Cozy Corner and LOVED it!

$18 does not seem expensive for an all you can eat buffet. For comparison, Fogo de Chão lunch basic buffet is $15, but goes to $23 if you want chicken, and $27 for lamb. I think the weekend brunch at Ambassador Dining Room is around $22 now. A Denny’s Grand Slam (mostly just flour-based pancakes and garbage breakfast meats) is around $11-12 these days, and they have the advantage of scale and buying in bulk.

Can’t comment on the quality aspect.

Lumbini is not currently doing a buffet, neither are Akbar nor Kumari nor Indigma.

I think in general, it’s kind of hard for places to run buffet right now, in part because there’s generally less volume coming through for lunch.

For reference prices, all serve Chicken Tikka Masala as a dinner item, with prices ranging from $17 (Kumari, Akbar), $18 (Himalaya House, Indigma), $19 (Lumbini). Perhaps a decent proxy indicator of hypothetical buffet prices, although this of course makes some assumptions about quantity and quality of each of these Chicken Tikka offerings.

Sakoon is a bit farther away, and it’s kind of “fusion”, but at least from recent reviews they appear to have a buffet, and it may be around $14? I’ve been meaning to go there for a while but haven’t made it yet.

Incidentally, their Chicken Tikka Masala is $18..🤔

Thank you for your tremendous insight.

I got lunch from Akbar a couple of weeks ago and they did not have buffet.

[deleted]

Welcome

A little off topic, but a mainstay of Indian places everywhere else in the world is thali, which is basically a mini-buffet-on-your-plate, but no one here seems to do that. Why?

I imagine it's very costly to prep so many different dishes. But I'd love it if a place we're to do that!

Excellent question. I don’t really have a good answer for you, but I have the same question for the general scarcity of good dosas… ;-(

This Eater article has a nice listing of restaurants in the DC/Baltimore area with thali.

KUMARI

They don't offer it anymore unfortunately.

Charles Village but Sakoon has a $14 buffet

Ah crap. Sorry. Covid casualty I assume. Did you find any? I wanted to mention The Ambassador or Namaste, but I haven't been by in a while.

Nah, went to cozy corner instead and it was great. Going back today actually lol.