We had originally wanted to go to The Bombay for some butter chicken since J said it was pretty good. Of course, we had to decide to go on a day it wasn’t opened though… Really? A random Tuesday. So yes, we ended up Googling another Indian restaurant closeby, since we were still craving for that butter chicken… And with the limited choices in the Port Coquitlam area, we ended up at Namaste Indian Restaurant. Wait hold on, where is the Namaste on the banner? We got kind of confused, but realized it’s printed on the very side of it vertically… So weird…

Surprisingly, the inside was really nice compared to the outside. It actually looked pretty fancy. They had their lunch buffet advertised at $10.95 outside, so we asked if we could take a look at what the buffet offered. It’s literally just that tiny section at the back corner of the restaurant and there is a salad bar, which to be honest, looked pretty gross. And then there was the meat, veggies, and curry area. Not a lot of offering, but what do you expect when it’s $10.95 and all you can eat. We also asked to look at their regular menu, and we saw that most entrees were probably more expensive than the buffet, so we ended up going for the buffet. What was funnier, was that we asked the man, who basically operates the whole restaurant, how much the buffet was, and he said it was $9.95! Okay, now that’s definitely a deal.

There’s Basmati Rice, and Kofta Curry, which I tried a bit of. It was just decent, and wasn’t one of my favourites. Let’s just say it was “alright”.

I also tried some of their Mixed Vegetables, which were just vegetables, like beans, potatoes, and cauliflower mixed in a seasoning. It was decent, but I felt like their warmer wasn’t heating the food hot enough. They were just warm, and definitely not that great. The Tandoori Chicken were also one of the more popular options. Definitely not the best, but it also wasn’t terrible. It could’ve been more well-seasoned though.

They also had something called Dal Turka, but I wasn’t too sure what it was, and didn’t really want to try it. It looked like no one had touched it! On the left were some Vegetable Pakoras. They were pretty cold, so they weren’t that great. A lot of batter as well.

And then there was what we came here for! Our Butter Chicken. It was alright, and definitely one of the repeat items for us, since there were limited items that were actually decent. There was tons of chicken, but we didn’t find it extremely moist. The sauce was on the creamier tomato side and I found it quite salty. I guess it worked well with the rice and Naan though.

The warmers also had some Naan, but it was cold and quickly gone. So the man occasionally came by and brought us some fresh naan. I found it really oily and it wasn’t flaky at all. Quite disappointing.

And here’s a picture of our first plates. Not a lot of food, since we wanted to try a bit of everything first to get a sense of what’s good and what’s bad (the key to eating at buffets!). I guess Namaste is alright for what you pay for. I mean, you can probably get really full if you keep going for the butter chicken, tandoori and some rice. And all for the price of $9.95 (since apparently it’s a dollar off now…). But then again, I’m not sure how fresh your food is, since the whole time we were there, there was only one other couple eating with us. So imagine your food being in those warmers for the whole lunch hours. I wonder if their regular menu would be better though.