India Kitchen

India Kitchen is, in short, a tale of two restaurants. At night, there’s a place with great service producing very good Southern Indian and Indo-Chinese dishes – no easy task, and one honed over 10 years in business. Yet during the day, the same kitchen was okay churning out some of the least appealing AYCE buffet food we’ve eaten at an Orange County Indian restaurant in years. Which of these experiences are you likely to encounter today? We’re not sure.

After visiting at night, we decided that we’d found a new favorite Indian restaurant in Orange County. From sweet peshwari naan and lamb korma to Indo-Chinese items such as chilli chicken and chicken 65, everything we ordered was delicious and – surprisingly for an Indian restaurant – overflowing rather than meager. We left filled, appreciated the reasonable pricing, and were excited to return.

India Kitchen’s buffet didn’t start out bad, but nosedived as an apparent result of the pandemic. There weren’t a ton of different dishes to choose from, the quality of individual items became barely tolerable, and filler items such as egg rolls took their place next to tandoori chicken.