Midtown Lunch

We’ve all been there: You go to a by-the-pound buffet and have to hold back on the heavy items for fear of paying $20 for lunch. A couple of Indian restaurants in Tribeca offer all-you-can-eat lunch buffets, including Salaam Bombay on Greenwich St. (btw. Duane & Reade) and Taj Tribeca. But they’re also both a few dollars over the $10 mark that I try to not top unless it involves Russian spa cuisine. So when I saw that in addition to the eat-in buffet at Salaam Bombay, you could also stuff a takeaway container for $10 I smelled a challenge.

You’re pretty much left to your own devices when you walk into the restaurant that’s normally out of ML Downtown price range. The plastic containers are sitting on a table by the door and other than the workers minding the buffet and other greedy people you can survey the options and throw as much stuff in as you want.

There are a couple of salads which I wasn’t going to waste precious space on and a few appetizers like papri chaat, mixed pakora and medu wada (aka, Indian donuts). The buffet itself had a number of main options, more of which were vegetarian than meaty, alongside a pinkish dessert dish involving rice. There were also a bunch of bowls with chutney and other sauces sitting by a cauldron of soup.

The tricky part was figuring out a system for fitting as much stuff in the three separate areas without everything blending together into one big Indian food hodge podge. Basically I put the non-saucy items on top of the rice and then everything else got put into the largest section. The daal was put by itself just because it was so soupy. Truthfully, I probably could have fit a couple more things in there and still crammed the lid on. After twice putting more food in and making sure the lid fit I was starting to get the stink eye from the buffet attendants, one of whom asked me if I needed help with anything.

You go up to the bar to pay and they had a bag all ready with silverware and a full naan in it. So for $10.89 with tax this is a lot of food.

My favorites were the papri chaat, although it suffered by being thrown in with everything else, the tandoori chicken and the chicken murgh. The daal was a little too sweet for my taste and the other items were just fine. You could easily get two meals out of this, especially if you load up on the carby items and get more rice than I did. It’s a little bit out of the way but if you work in Tribeca, Battery Park City, or the upper reaches of the FiDi it’s totally doable to walk there on your lunch hour, load up and then do a little desk or outdoor dining.

THE + (What somebody who likes this place would say)

• The buffet is well-stocked with appetizers and mains.
• You can really stuff a lot of food into that container!
• All of this food and then they give you naan.

THE — (What somebody who doesn’t like this place would say)

• I’d rather pay a few dollars more to eat in so all of my food doesn’t blend together.
• It’s pretty out of the way. I’d rather go to Paki Tea House.

Salaam Bombay, 319 Greenwich St. (btw. Duane & Reade), (212) 226-9400