Amul India Restaurant — Restaurant in Columbus

This has been our favorite Indian restaurant in Columbus for the last eight years. Like any restaurant, they have had their occasional slips, but by far the service has been fine and the food flavorful, and a great value. I was very surprised to see a couple of poor reviews recently, all I can think is that the cases were exceptions. I love the buffet, and on our trip there within the last week the Shahi Paneer was the BEST I have EVER tasted. Their paneer dishes are great and with plenty of paneer, I think the person who couldn't find enough in the buffet sauce must have come behind someone who had scooped a lot out from the sauce. I would ask the person who wrote that review to try the buffet at a different time. Their buffet is a very good value during the week. The weekend buffet is a little more, but they offer more variety on their entrees, have a special appetizer samosa/chat station and special desert choices. The staff do check the buffet bar VERY frequently and do a good job of bringing out fresh dishes. They have dishes ranging from mild to spicy (which are identified). We eat both vegetarian and meat dishes, and have enjoyed both here. The bar always serves Dahl soup, a lovely basmati rice, samosas and/or assorted vegetable pakora, naan, batura, saag paneer and a salad bar. For entrees there are always vegetarian and chicken biryani, tandoori chicken. They usually have 3 more vegetarian dishes which vary but often include a paneer or vegetarian Kafti (fritter) dish, a chickpea or lentil dish, and a potato dish such as Aloo Gobi or the like. The meat dishes usually include Chicken Mahkni which is a nice milder tomato based curry dish- good for "beginners", a chicken curry, a goat curry, and an additional dish such as chicken vindaloo. The salad bar has basic salad mix, add ins, their chutney/sauce area and some other lovely cool relish choices. Their mango custard often has fruit cocktail or tropical fruit mix in it. We also regularly order off the menu. -Yes you can order off the menu during buffet hours unlike some other Indian restaurants in town. We LOVE their Lamb Korma and Mater Paneer! Yumm! My husband will often order the lamb while I get the buffet and I admit that I have made an extra trip to the buffet for a piece of naan so that I can get the last bits of Korma sauce out of the dish! It is soooo good! So please give this restaurant a try. We like to bring friends here that are curious about Indian food because the dishes as so savory and they have such a nice variety. Once we bring them- they always want...

As a white boy from Ohio, I can't tell you if this is authentic. I would say I thought it was. They used a lot of flavors and combinations not used at your typical place. There were mostly Indian people eating here. The staff seemed to be immigrants as well. Most spoke English, but not all.

We liked our meals. We ordered different items off the menu. They have a stocked bar, I don't know that they have everything, but you can get liquor here. We had tea, and enjoyed it.

They seem to have both a buffet and menu items. I think much of the menu was on the buffet, but we ordered off it. You can choose your spice level I guess. You pick between 1-6. The server seemed to push the buffet. Since we ordered off the menu, I can't speak for the buffet.

I can understand that the food is different and not for most Americans. We heard a staff member make an underhanded comment to a guest on her way out. I don't think she ate much, as I don't think she liked it. Again not your typical spices and flavors in America. He kept pushing her to get her to say she didn't like it, as to why she didn't eat much, and she would just give pass answers, than he made a comment about her only eating fast food. It's rare that a server is being rude to a guest, and not the other way around. It makes me want to rate the place lower, but we did like the food.

I know when English is not your primary language, people can be rude. I think really anywhere you go, if you don't know the primary language people treat you bad. I'm sure with your surroundings being comfortable you may lash out. People go to a place like this to try something new, different, or in many cases comfortable. We like eating other cultures cuisine. We don't mind mingling with people of different backgrounds than our own. Maybe that server had a bad day. I don't know. It just seemed uncalled for to treat a guest that way. We did not have any problems. We enjoyed our meals, and would go again. Everybody was nice to us. Did I mention the...

I love Amul India, so far I think this is the best Indian food in Columbus, but I haven't tried them all and feel free to reply to my comment and inform me on what's up.

I always order the ginger lamb at a heat of 6 and I love it. So much flavor, and always enough food to have leftovers as an extra meal the next day. I also thought the fancy little mango yogurt drink was really good. We've had several other curries and varieties on naan bread, love it all.

We've also been there for the afternoon lunch buffet on numerous occasions and feel it is excellent as well. Will return many more times.

Edit over 6 months later. Amul India is currently my favorite restaurant in Columbus. I've gone there for the Saturday lunch buffet every weekend for many weekends in a row. I always get the buffet and focus on butter chicken, whatever the chickpea fried dough in yellow sauce is, rice, mango ice cream, and the noodle rice-pudding-like dessert. It's amazing every time. We haven't done the night menu in a while now and by now I'm much more interested in Amul's chicken dishes than any of the lamb or goat dishes.

Also with the lunch buffet I highly recommend paying a $12 upcharge for a to-go box. You can fill this bad boy to the brim with delicious butter chicken then put a sheet of foil over that and fill it to the top with chicken rice, then put it in two bags so it doesn't leak in your car. That's over 3 pounds of food for $12 and it reheats extremely well, sometimes I wonder if it's better reheated than right off the buffet. It makes a good 4-5 meals out of that to go box over the next 2 days and it's so worth it.

If you're passing through Columbus or you've never been to Amul and you're reading reviews trying to make a choice, stop looking and choose Amul. I'm fat and I've eaten all over this...