jlawrence01 wrote:Several points:
4) If you are looking for a Sunday Brunch, I like the buffet at the Udupi Palace (Southern Indian) in the 700 block of East Schaumburg Rd.
Finally, Sizzle India moved about a year ago up Algonquin Rd.
There has been a lot of migration amongst the Indian population in Chicago,
almost entirely to the North-Western burbs. Thus Indian restaurants (and
pretty good ones at that) are springing up everywhere in Schaumburg
and its environs (so much so that "Schaumburg Indian" might actually
be a high compliment soon.. .wouldnt *that* be a turn-up for the books
All the South-Indian places have branches in the area - Mysore Woodlands,
Udupi Palace, Dakshin etc (a South-Indian friend was praising the Dakshin
outpost in Schaumburg the other day, but Ive never been).
Sizzle India has long been known as the best Andhra-style Indian place
in the Chicagoland area... they tried opening a branch on Devon, and
ended up failing badly (just not enough Andhra-emigres left in the
Devon area probably). They are still flourishing in Schaumburg, however,
and also doing quite well in Naperville from what I hear (a friend tried
it a while ago, eating off the menu rather than the buffet, and thought
it was very good indeed).
The same story was repeated with Indian-Chinese - the two best Indian-Chinese
restaurants in Chicagoland are both in Hoffman Estates. Hot Wok is the
veteran - they tried opening a branch (Manchow) on Devon, but failed.
The new one is Bamboo Garden on Golf Road, which is better (but
marginally more upscale, with more Chinese and fewer Indian-Chinese
offerings) than Hot Wok.
And now (the actual reason for this post

... there is finally a good
new Pakistani/Indian-Muslim place open, also just over the Schaumburg
border in Hoffman Estates. It is called Paradise, and its at 721 West
Golf Road (in a strip mall almost at the intersection of Golf and Higgins).
I tried this place last week, and in my (extremely biased) opinion, it may
currently be the best Indian-buffet in Chicagoland

That is because, of
course, the buffet suits my own peculiar tastes

They had about 4
veggie dishes (aloo palak and the like - I didnt actually try any, so can
offer no comment). They had potato-samosas, which were decent on
the day. Tandoori chicken, which was mediocre (sadly it isnt brought
to your table - if they did, it would improve things greatly). However..
they also had haleem on their buffet, which was very tasty on the
day. They had kadai chicken and kadai goat, both of which were solid
on the day. They had chicken-chapli-kababs (Ive never had *chicken*
chapli before... they had run out when I got there, and so prepared it
fresh, and fresh kababs can never be less than good). They had
a very tasty chicken biryani on the day. For dessert they had carrot
halwa (a mediocre version), and kheer (which was very very good
on the day, best Ive had in a while.. I was stuffed with food and was
intending to try only a spoon each of the desserts for "research
purposes", but ended up having 2 bowls of the kheer instead

And
all of it was, IIRC, 8.99 - a quite excellent value for some very good
buffet food. Maybe it is only living up to zim's "all Indian buffets are
good for the first month of the restaurant's existance" theory, but
as of last week it was very good.
I gathered from talking to someone that, despite liking the combination
of dishes on the buffet a fair bit, I had actually come on the "wrong"
day - their lunch buffet, it was claimed, has sometimes had chicken biryani,
goat biryani, haleem *and* nehari on it! I dont know of any such buffet
in the Chicagoland area (with *three* of my fave dishes on it!) The haleem,
as mentioned above, was good last week, and given that the chicken biryani
was as tasty as it was, I would like to try their goat biryani (a friend who
is, like me, an Usmaniya-partisan, has already told me he considers their
goat biryani second only to Usmaniya in Chicago - though he's tried it
only twice now I think, so the sample-size remains small).
Anyway. If one is into meat-oriented-Indian-food, this must surely be
an excellent addition to the Schaumburg/Hoffman Estates area. I know
I'll defintiely stop by the next time Iam nearby, at any rate (especially since
the last meal at Pepper and Salt, a couple of weekends ago, was somewhat
mediocre - Paradise's buffet, even if tried only once, was much superior
IMHO to P&S's off-the-menu items the week before).
c8w
P.S. BTW, Paradise also had a monstrously huge projection screen up
temporarily - they were advertising an all-you-can-eat-buffet plus
Cricket-World-Cup-watching for 20 bucks. However, with both India
and Pakistan knocked out of said World Cup, Iam pretty sure that
particular offer is dead-in-the-water already

The screen is still
up, and last week they only had highlights of an old match playing
silently in the background at no extra charge.