Rangoli — Restaurant in San Jose

Unlimited naan with the lunch buffet was all I had to read to come here.

I basically ate my weight in a heavy combination of naan, tikka masala and lamb vindaloo, but this was known well before I got here. I was prepared to be in some pain. I salivated the entire drive over. I was forewarned to come early for the saucier dishes. With my intention to eat a ridiculous amount of naan I needed that for mopping, sopping and dipping.

Wait what, champagne too? Aw shoot. Good food and alcohol are like 2 of my best friends. Lets get 1thing straight I'm here for the food first then drinks and frankly I'm more of a bloody Caesar then beer sort of day drinking.

It's actually kind a cool décor. Some historic design, but with a modern feel to it. Sure it's not quite as good as Gulzaar, but like I said I'm here for the buffet and that naan. Service is quick thought not attentive. I need plenty of water up front as I spiced things up and drank later to cool myself down. The plates are pretty ornate considering most places use monotone basic restaurant depo cheapo stuff.

Chicken tikka masala. The chicken had good color, it's always hard to get the spicing to color all the way through, but they do it well, even without the thinner cuts of chicken. It was tender, the spice blend was medium, but I had to add more. Normally I like rice with this and use the naan for the leftover, but with unlimited naan I basically made a naan boat. Think of the sourdough breadbowls you get at the warf. The chicken is scarce in quantity, not quality. Imagine a spicier butter chicken versus a true tikka masala, both of which I like very much.

I did the same thing with the lamb vindaloo. The chunks of lamb were small, but flavorful, even aside from the sauce. The tenderness was hit or miss, some were fatty others dry and harder, most were perfect though. After having the medium masala I went hot on this and was not disappointed.

After a few plates of each and truck loads of naan turns out I didn't drink much later in the meal at all. I didn't have to and frankly I didn't...

After getting some very important work done in Campbell, my wife and I were famished and wanted to get food fast. Yelp told us that there was a $$ Indian restaurant named Rangoli, a mile away and it carried great reviews. We figured, why not give it a shot. Less than ten minutes later we were standing at the lobby of a pleasantly welcoming Indian restaurant. The Indian-ness was everywhere but the decor was contemporary and the colors were muted. It felt pleasant and a nice change from the warm and bright 86F Campbell temperature at that time. We seated ourselves and promptly headed to the buffet area.

The buffet area was a surprise. Apart from being extremely clean and well labeled, the dishes were unique for an Indian buffet. The typical Indian restaurant salad is a sad assortment of store bought veggies thrown in to satisfy the requirements of a limited few non-Indians who consider salad an integral part of their meal. But its different in Rangoli. There were 5 different salads with all kinds of veggies and dressings, both Indian and western to make it a meal on its own. Two of the salads were pretty spicy while the rest were well balanced. All in all, the salad bar at Rangoli was a revelation.

The main curries were reasonable in number, about 4 vegetarian and 4 non-vegetarian. There was vegetable rice (more like a vegetable pulao) and also white rice. Hot naans were brought directly to our table and overall, the food was very tasty. Like with the salads, the desserts were interesting. Yes, there was a kheer. But no, there wasnt a gulab jamun or a dry gajar ka halwa. Instead there were mini delectables- cakes that looked western but with Indian flavoring and some nice petit desi sweets. Cant really describe them than to say...

Got takeout. We’ve gone to Rangoli for a few decades now first in Santa Clara and from the change of millennium to San Jose location. Haven’t been there much in last few years. This time they got one dish -wrong (we ordered chicken but got a spinach dish). We were okay with this. Mistakes happen — but all the food was drenched in oil. I tried to salvage one dish by removing maybe 10 tablespoons of pooling oil but it was still ridiculously oily. Unfortunately so was the spinach. Everyone felt Sick after eating a little and we threw away the rest (majority) of The food. Wont go back. Not sure if the family that owned originally has sold it or the woman who really seemed the driving force in Santa Clara and even the well meaning kid who was lead for this location when they owned (he’s got to be in his 40s at least so that’s not a fair description) are now out of picture

Crew behind counter different who I saw before.

Recipes are mostly similar but chicken seems bland just cooked or boiled no seasoning. Just crazy amounts of oil for curries etc and maybe the fryer temperature also wrong. Can’t be cheaper to cook this way so hard to understand why it is...