Rajdhani

Orange County isn’t particularly well-known for Indian or Pakistani restaurants, though there’s no shortage of acceptable to interesting and pretty great options if you search for them. Just north of Orange County in Artesia, however, you’ll find Little India – home to multiple longstanding Indian destinations, including one that notably caught the attention of L.A.’s late but famously well-informed food critic Jonathan Gold nearly 20 years agoi: Rajdhani. This vegetarian restaurant specializes in Gujarati cuisine from central India, serving all you can eat Thali lunch platters most days of the week, as well as weekend dinners.

Fans of more typical Indian food will find the Rajdhani experience to be distinctively different, though not entirely unfamiliar. For $29 per person – up from $11 when Gold visited – each guest receives two empty cups, a large but similarly empty silver plate, and a collection of empty bowls. After one server explains that you can select optional drinks and side dishes from a printed menu on the table, others take turns returning to fill your vessels: one cup with water, the other with a sour and salty yogurt drink called chass; your plate with chutney and tamarind sauces, spiced pea-filled potato balls, sour bread squares with sliced jalapenos, puri puffs, greasy roti, and/or rice; then your bowls with soup, curry, and stewed vegetables such as turia dana okra, spicy Northern Indian Rajasthani potatoes, and brown kala chana chickpeas. Rajdhani calls the latter items entrees, though they’re dispensed in four- to five-tablespoon quantities and meant to be eaten with the breads and starches.

Note that Rajdhani offers no choice with the Thali meal beyond to say yes or no to more when servers offer to refill your cups, plate, and bowls, so although this is all-you-can-eat, some guests may find it to be more of an “all-you-care-to-eat” experience than typical Indian buffets that let you self-serve as much of a few favorite items as you please. Between our group of two, one person tried everything but didn’t like almost any of the Thali items, while the other tried everything and liked most of it, but didn’t love anything, as much due to thin sauces as the over-reliance on breads and starches. Your mileage may vary, and as the menu apparently can change daily, you might wind up with a more compelling collection of choices than we did for a Sunday lunch.