Kamal Palace — Restaurant in North Arlington

Visited Sep 19, 2023, Thursday afternoon for lunch.

Please note that this place seems to have changed hands in ownership. They don't offer buffet anymore but you can still see the old buffet containers against the wall, not sure what purpose it serve but seems to just take up space and give a kind of wrong impression but anyway, I think not very important.

Ambience is good and the place is nice and clean. Was not very busy at the time of my visit. Currently, it seems to be run by a South Indian family, you can see the center piece decoration on the wall and the two paintings one on the right and one one left seems to have been left by previous north Indian owners.

Anyways, the food quality is very good.

Prices are good. Not too low, nor too high but right where they should be.

Service is good. Not the top notch as sometime the limited staff may be busy with other things like at the cash register, dealing with pick up orders and may not be able to pay attention to people at tables.

The parking is free and available for a bunch of shops in the small mini market/compound. You may or may not find a parking spot there based on how busy all the shops are at that particular hour.

Overall it was a good experience and I would recommend it but the only downside was they taxed each item twice, first the item was taxed and on the total amount it was taxed again. When it was brought to the attention of the staff they said they have recently updated their Clover POS system. But no apology was issued for the incorrect billing and in fact, no correct in the bill was made and they were happy to charge me double taxed sum, which I believe is illegal but I didn't want to ruin my mood for...

Although we have been coming here for years due to their reasonable buffet prices and they are local, the food taste, seasoning and flavoring is inconsistent. Here are a few honest and valid findings, good and bad: Although Infrequent, when their fried onion pakora is made authentically, it is great! Their Sag or Palak (no Paneer), made with a combination of spinach and broccoli (not traditional), is Usually tasty. Their Tandoori Chicken pieces are weirdly Small in size, Always over cooked and Always Very lightly seasoned. Their Chicken Tikka Marsala flavor is Always off. The chicken, when available (2-3X a week) whether off the bone, in balls or strips on the Tavi, with onions and peppers, is always quite tasty, although most of the onions are of the inedible outer layers of the onion. Although the sauce is sweet and of a good consistency, their Gulub Jamon is Always cold, weirdly small in size, usually cut in Half, hard and over cooked. Their Kheer is Only good about once a week. They do have Samosas, Chat and Pani Puri, Usually once a week. The owners/partners, staff, waiters and employees are not welcoming, attentive or even friendly at all. There is free parking in their kind of small, strip mall lot right in front if it is not packed as usual. There are plenty of metered on the street parking...

Ordered via UberEats for pick up for 5:45 on a Tuesday. The lot is pretty cramped but I managed to nab the last spot. I ordered the Dinner for Two (meat samosa, chicken tandoori, chicken tikka masala, saag paneer, raita, rice, naan). The meat samosa was good, no complaints there. The chicken tandoori was my fave - the meat was very tender. The chicken tikka on the other hand was kind of dry, even when drowned in the sauce. I really like the saag paneer. It was nice because this isn’t something I normally would have ordered, so I got to try something different. The naan was pretty standard.

The portions were more than enough for two people. We had enough leftovers for the next day so we ended up making our own naan “pizza”, using the sauce as the base and chicken as toppings.

I’m still on the fence if I would come back because chicken tikka is my favorite dish and it missed the mark here. But when I went in for pick up, I did see a buffet table (probably from lunch). I’ve been wanting to try an Indian buffet so that I can try new dishes without committing to a whole meal of it, but it has been hard to find since covid. So if they do have that, I would definitely give Kamal Palace...