I’d said last week that if our weekend plans held I’d have another review from St. Paul this week (following last week’s look at lunch at Zao Bakery + Cafe). But our plans didn’t hold. The rainy weather on Saturday had us feeling too lazy to go out and the place we’d wanted to go to is not open for lunch on Sundays. But I do have a Twin Cities meal report for you anyway. I had an annual appointment in Eden Prairie last Friday and what is becoming a bit of a tradition, I ate lunch after at Godavari—currently my favourite Indian restaurant in the Twin Cities Metro. I was hoping to eat another lunch thali (having enjoyed it last year) but it turns out they don’t do lunch thalis on Fridays. No, on Fridays it’s a lunch buffet. I swallowed my disappointment and picked up a plate. Here’s how it went.

The cashier told me that the thali is still available for lunch on other weekdays, by the way. Though as I realized, the $16.99 cost of the buffet is just a couple bucks over what I paid for the non-veg thali last year, and gets you far more dishes. So, the buffet is clearly a better value if you’re looking for greater variety. I will say that I thought the quality of the items on the thali was quite a bit stronger, on the whole, but that’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy anything on the buffet. (By the way, though I did not ask, I assume the Saturday/Sunday buffet is quite a lot larger than the Friday buffet.)

The buffet is divided into vegetarian and non-vegetarian sections—though non-vegetarians can eat happily from both sides. Each side has a couple of North Indian restaurant all-stars on it (paneer butter masala for the vegetarians and chicken tikka masala for the omnivores) but the rest of the dishes are South Indian, some of them Andhra. I stuck mostly to these dishes. On my first pass I got the Chicken 65 (did not do it for me), the Pepper Chicken (much better), an idli (surprisingly decent for a buffet) and some sambar (good) and rasam (quite good). On my second pass I got the dum chicken biryani (quite good) and the Andhra goat (good) along with some raita to accompany the biryani. I could have stopped here but nobody ever accused me of not being greedy. And so on the third pass I got some naan (surprisingly good for a buffet) and some chicken tikka masala (decent) as well as some tomato dal (a good home-style dal) and some of the beans poriyal (decent). Finally, I got a bit of payasam (decent) to end things on a sweet note.

The restaurant was quite a lot busier than it had been last year. I assume the buffet pulls in a larger crowd. I counted at 7 tables other than mine occupied over the course of my meal (and new people were entering as I was leaving around 12.40).

For a look at the restaurant and the buffet and what I ate, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see what’s coming next on the food front.

Now, my parenthetical evaluations above of the things I ate might make you think this was a disappointing meal but keep in mind that I am not generally a fan of Indian restaurant buffets in the US—as far as those go, this was a pretty good one. And I suspect the weekend lunch buffet must be even better. Even so, I’d rather go back for dinner than lunch and get freshly made versions of their dishes that I really like.

Okay, what’s next from the Twin Cities? We are scheduled to eat at Alma this weekend. That report will go up in a week. We’re hoping to head the following weekend to the place we’d hoped to get to this past weekend. Before the Alma report next week, however, I’ll have a few reports from Seoul in July—and possibly a Delhi report as well. Let’s see how it goes.