Ottawa Foodies

Went on a Sat. Excellent buffet until 2pm. Love their fried buttered chilis. We ordered mutton rolls for the table. You really must get the mutton rolls. Deep fried with breadcrumbs. Comes with a tangy red sauce. Delish!

Their naan is average. Tandoori chicken average. But you don't really go to Ceylonta for that. Try ALL the other dishes. Everything's very good to excellent. The curried chicken used to be excellent but they've toned down the spice level a few years ago and it seems like something's missing.

You can opt for the dosa option too. They'll bring you a huge dosa (fried rice flour crepe filled with spicy potato stuffing) with sambar. It's worth the extra price.

This tiny restaurant is on Merivale, south of Hunt Club. The buffet isn't huge but what they have is of high quality for a buffet. The food is "Canadian" Chinese with an unusually generous selection of vegetables (all with meat though - no purely vegetarian choices other than onion rings). Two of the dishes have a little bit of spicy heat to them.

Highly recommended if you like Chinese buffets!

Every time we have colleague moving to another department or leaving the company, this is the place for lunch. I am a bit sick of the buffet lunch. I only eat the curry beef with their freshly oven baked bread. Not a fan of it. But go there because of majority votes.

I checked this place out yesterday and I have to say that the food was quite good for a lunch buffet. The butter chicken was really yummy (quite rich) and the beef vindaloo was great - spicy for a buffet, but not as spicy as vindaloo typically is. The Naan was also pretty good, but maybe a bit chewy - probably from re-heating. My only real criticism is that the vegetable pakoras were a bit over cooked.

I will definitely go back!

Just a note of caution with respect to the parking lot - if you are going for lunch, go early as this strip mall has a few restaurants and it tends to get really busy - parking is at a premium.

Tried out the buffet. All the currys were cold. There was only about 4 or 5 others when I was there, and they were asking the staff to heat their food up for them. I think there might have been an issue with their buffet warmers when I was there.

The service was quick, picked up dirty plates before I could sit down with a new plate.

The pakora was awesome (and hot), best mint chutney I've ever had too.

Soup was tastey, some variety of lentil soup.

Don't know if they have changed management. Food quality has deteriorated significantly since our last visit in Feb/07. The food was cold (not even lukewarm). The taste was pretty bad. I will not return.

The lunch buffet here has quite a few choices, and many have no shortage of curried sauce. I've been a few times, and the flavours have seemed consistently good. Caveat: I'm not yet a connoisseur of Indian food, but I do seek it out from time to time, as the buffets tend to have more than a token vegetarian option.

Sure it's bad for you, but at $6.99 it's one of the best deals around!

$10 for all-you-can-eat requires horrible food for it to be a bad deal.

This isn't horrible food.

It's pretty bland fare, but. Mr Kmennie is a meat-and-potatoes sort, a fan of N American stodge; there're lots of people like that, and I like it once in a while, and it fits the bill quite well for that.

The vegetarian's review:

-- pasta bar is a good idea. Mine needed more sauce, but it was good pasta.
-- some of the little cold salads are quite good. Potato salad was surprisingly tasty, for one.
-- hard to dislike a baked potato 'bar'
-- veg crisp and fresh; it's so busy that nothing sticks around for long
-- ratatouille a little too cooked, though
-- blah corn chowder
-- fruit: fresh

Really, the only problem is blandness. But it's quite easy to assemble a tasty meal, and a large tasty meal to boot. I went back twice for the cold salad-y stuff.

It does make me think of a 'New Yorker' cartoon of a 'bar bar' -- a buffet of vats labelled 'gin,' 'rum,' etc. Would that they had such a thing...

lunch buffet only good if you want to try some of the stuff on the menu that's out of the ordinary....

Yes, it's pretty standard buffet quality here but I'm impressed with any buffet that offers freshly prepared sushi (the sushi chef is busily preparing a wide spectrum of maki and nigiri behind the counter). Not the best sushi either (the tuna salad roll is a bit of a WTF), but awesome in a buffet.

The dishes on offer are switched up a bit from visit to visit. Last time they even had battered and fried whole sardines...

The tasty Thai salad (see photo) is a nice touch too.