Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Rice Indian Cuisine (Burlington,ON)

4460 Fairview Street
Burlington, Ontario
905.681.3301
website

Two of my co-workers, R & K, had been raving about an Indian restaurant near our office. Rice Indian Cuisine serves a lunch buffet for $8.99. About a month ago, we headed there with my colleague K, for R's birthday and had a marvelous lunch. I was lucky enough to be taken out for my birthday last week and we decided to return to Rice with 2 more colleagues!

Rice Indian Cuisine Buffet

Rice is situated in a nondescript plaza (steps away from another favourite Bahn Thai), and keeps very busy with office workers at lunch time. While lower quality food may come to mind when thinking of Indian buffets, the food is actually quite good and fresh. All the curries were delicious. Most importantly, the naan bread was hot and passed the freshness test! Even the pakoras were crispy!

Buffet Dish
My full plate (and no, I did not just have one!).

My favourite curry, that I kept thinking about after my first visit, was the mushroom matar, mushroom and peas in a cashew, onion and tomato gravy. Pieces of mushrooms and peas swim in a rich sauce with fried onions. What's not to like? I will definitely be attempting to replicate this dish in the near future! Other curries that I enjoyed: aloo ghobi (cauliflower and potatoes), mixed vegetables (with a good spicy kick) and butter chicken.

Pakora Butter Chicken
Naan Bread
Pakora, butter chicken and tasty naan bread!

Not only were all the savoury dishes excellent, but Rice also serves two of my favourite Indian desserts (really the only two I know and like...). With R & K's influence, we combined the gulap jaman (donut-like dumplings in syrup) on top of the rice pudding. While the gulap jaman's are good, I just love the rice pudding. It's rich and creamy but not too sweet: my perfect dessert. (Side note: you don't even want to know how many jokes about balls were made. Yes, we were all women...)

Indian Dessert Time Indian Dessert Time
Gulap jaman and rice pudding.

Rice Indian Cuisine has great food, and at $8.99 for lunch, offers great value. I was harshly reminded yesterday that not all Indian buffets offer good food (unfortunately, my poor boyfriend A and I did not have such good food at another Indian restaurant). My only word of advice is to wear comfy pants when you visit, because you won't be able to stop eating!!

Rice Indian Cuisine on Urbanspoon

3 comments:

Gastronomer said...

If I ever get the chance to visit this resto, I will be sure to wear my FAT PANTS!!

Anonymous said...

I think fat pants would be a must for the lunch offers at this restaurant, not sure I could get away with them in the office though. We'll have to see.

Priyam Gandhi said...

I never knew about this amazing restaurant. gotta look for some amazing deals for my next dining here ;)