Antique Indian Restaurant Bar & Grills — Restaurant in Milwaukee

Can't get much better than this place!

Genuinely, this is one of the best restaurants in town, and the lunch buffet on weekends is too good in terms of taste and value for money. Do not pass this unassuming, charming little restaurant. The number of dishes on offer during the weekend lunch buffet is limited compared to typical Indian lunch buffets, and thats 100% a good thing! The buffet is restocked and refreshed frequently during service, everything is the proper temperature, none of the curries end up over-reduced or dried out, and unlike some Indian lunch buffets I've had elsewhere, they do not try to offer the entire dinner menu during weekend lunch, which means the dishes they choose to serve are turned over quickly and given proper attention by the kitchen staff. The buffet options are different every time I visit, but the delicious naan, the incredibly balanced and fragrant Chai, the perfectly-cooked rice, and underlying flavorful touches are consistent and much appreciated.

Your only regret visiting this place for lunch on the weekend is that your stomach is not big enough to thoroughly enjoy everything on offer during a single meal. Insanely good food, and the prices are honestly too low for what they serve.

You can see my first impressions from initial visit below but came back to re-review and increase my rating based on subsequent visits and to review the buffet.

First impressions:

Dined in the restaurant at 4:30pm on a Friday. The service was top notch, food was excellent in taste and quality overall.

The mango lassi is very thick and almost overly-sweet, but delicious nonetheless. In my humble opinion as someone new to Indian cuisine, the heavy-cream (they offer heavy cream or dried fruit versions) version of gravy in the butter chicken dish was slightly over-salted and would be improved with a touch more acidity to cut the richness. The rice served with the curry was aromatic and made me feel warm and happy. My dining partner and I ordered two styles of flatbread and both were quite tasty. Overall, the meal was absolutely gorgeous, and the service from the hostess/waitress and also the business-owner himself (seated in the dining room) was so hospitable, it almost felt overwhelming.

On the issue of cost/value for money... one meal here is all it takes to realize how much we're all overpaying at fast-casual chain restaurants like Noodles or Panera Bread. The amount of meat, gravy, and rice the kitchen sent out for my order of butter chicken had me eating almost a full second meal at home... which is a smart business move, because all that made me do was crave more Indian cuisine when I'd emptied the to-go containers! $13-15 per main dish is a bargain based on my first visit.

The ambiance and decor are charming as heck, though perhaps in an ironic way at some points... The Indian music-videos playing on the television screens were fun to watch from a vanilla Westerner's perspective, but it may become grating on the nerves during a full dinner service when the noise level would be high regardless.

The place-settings were a bit confusing. I wasn't sure whether the dish at my seat was a plate or a charger. It was the plate meant to be eaten off of, but the heft, size, and texture of the ceramic led to some "stranger-in-a-strange-land" doubts. It is a small nitpick, but confusing nonetheless.

Otherwise, the serving-wear and even the water cups and carafe were shockingly fancy for a strip-mall Indian restaurant. It should go without saying that the tables, dishes, linens, and silverware were spotless. Even those most tragically-fearful of Indian cuisine would be hard-pressed to question the hygiene and safety of the food, kitchen, etc.

Short story made long, I'm so happy to have found such a charming, nondescript, almost invisible Indian joint in my neighborhood and I am seriously considering playing bingo with their menu,...

Would love to give this place better review but cannot based on last visit. Service was friendly and well attuned to our needs, however, restaurant was dead so could one actually expect worse? Appetizer of fish pakora was pretty decent, good enough seasoning. Drinks were fine. Naan decent but entrees were probably the worst renditions of their kind I have ever had at an Indian restaurant (butter chicken). It is traditional to serve this dish with leftover tandoori chicken but in this case the leftover chicken seemed to be quite old, cold, of particulary low quality, and minimal quantity; maybe that was a good thing given the former. Specifically, the sinew/skin/bone to meat ratio was far too high and considering the general oldness of taste made for quite a grotesque experience. ICK! The "gravy" part of the dish tasted about the same as everywhere else in Milwaukee that serves this dish, just average. An overall pretty lazy effort was given. Shrimp Malabar was similarly disappointing but better than butter chicken. Just a few really overcooked shrimp in a somewhat bland curry, nothing to celebrate. Rice was good but basmati rice might be one of the world's easiest to cook foods and people of unusually limited ability could probably make excellent basmati rice, so no real credit is given for that. It was an almost offensive dining experience foodwise. I would expect the cooks to show more pride in their cooking and present quality food instead of basically "phoning it in" because it was slow--it really showed. Honestly, it was about as worthwhile as eating microwavable Indian food from Metro Market, really not restaurant level quality. All of the 5 star reviews this establishment has earned seem perplexing, especially all of the rave reviews from people hailing from the subcontinent. Given my experience with the food here those kind of really enthusiastic reviews seem either laughable or incredibly sad for India, I am not sure which. Despite all of the negative observations I have provided I would be willing to give this place another shot, especially to try the buffet; wasnt available when I visited. I don't know maybe they just had an off day. I will remain cautiously optimistic things will be better next time. Milwaukee really does need a 5 star level Indian buffet. That would be amazeballs, sadly this...

We came into Antique Indian on a Saturday afternoon to try the lunch buffet.

Let me start by saying, I’ll be reviewing this establishment again when we order off the menu; we simply wanted to try the buffet so this review is reflective of that.

All of us ordered the buffet. I had goat curry, a paneer and the butter chicken for my first course. The butter chicken was good but it’d been sitting a bit and the sauce was separating some; flavor was 7/10 visually it was a 6/10. The goat curry was a 8/10 but the meat was hit/miss. The pieces in there were mostly bony but the few good pieces were excellent. The paneer was a excellent - I believe it was a tofu dish, the sauce had a pleasant heat to it and flavor was excellent 9/10

We got all you can eat Garlic Naan - it was literally the best naan we’ve ever had and we’ve had quite a bit 10/10

My second trip, I got more of the goat curry, I grabbed some chicken Manchurian and more butter chicken.

All in all, this was the best Indian buffet I’ve been to. Buffets can be real hit or miss, this one was mostly a hit - I’d like to try it when it’s busy and the dishes being constantly refilled.

I’d give this place a 8.5/10 but out of 5 I’ll go 5. I go 5 because I don’t want to draw it to a 4 since it’s definitely...