Mehfil Indian Restaurant (Roseville)

food: 2.5/5
experience: 3/5
overall: 2.5/5

Since I was in the north area I decided to take the opportunity to try this highly-rated Indian restaurant. First time I came I thought a basic fish curry masala would be a good start.

As you can see it turned out to be pretty damn watery. Surprising since I don't believe I've ever had watery curry; Indian curry is always thick and creamy. Putting that aside I still gave it a shot. They use swai fish, which is fine, I actually eat swai regularly. But this was bad. It's spicy, sure, but 1) the flavor isn't there and 2) it's essentially just fish soup like I said. It did come with a heaping box of their rice which is surprisingly delicious in spite of being plain old white basmati rice. It's spiced with cumin and potentially some other things. If the rice is the star of the show at an Indian restaurant you're doing something wrong.

Ah well, I thought I'd give it another shot a few weeks later. This time I tried the fish korma. I didn't want any rice so they gave me some papadum instead, which are like lentil chips.

I've had these before as appetizers at Indian places and they weren't very good. Now that I know their proper name, I have to say these are tasty. They taste like lentil potato chips.

The fish korma I got medium spicy. I forgot how spicy that was last time I ordered it. Whew. Not enough to burn my tongue but be forewarned. I can only imagine what mild is like. Or hot, God forbid. This curry is still more on the liquid-y side than creamy. I guess they use coconut milk and not heavy cream, which is probably healthier. It's nicely seasoned. Definitely better than the first time.

I came back a third time to try their fish vindaloo. Now I knew this one would be spicy.

Indeed it was. However the first time they gave it to me they gave me chicken so I guess this is as much a review of chicken vindaloo as it is fish. The server insisted it was fish but I'm not stupid. They finally remade it. The fish they use doesn't absorb much flavor so it was spiciness, fish, spiciness, fish. Again the main flavor was spice. I like how they didn't bulk it up overly with potatoes though. At least they gave me a free iced tea, but they still charged me full price for fish. Wouldn't recommend this place for pescatarians if they serve meat to non-meat-eaters. That whole ordeal wasn't cool at all.

I went on to try the lamb after the fish kept dissatisfying me. First the lamb bhuna.

It's just another lamb curry to be honest. Nothing special or different except the vegetables (green bell peppers and onions). Lamb is always good though. But yeah this was whatever. I had it with roti.

Roti is like whole wheat naan. I'm not sure if it's just their version but this is a really chewy bread and honestly not that good. I might try this one more time somewhere else and if it's the same I'm gonna give up on it.

After all these curries not quite satisfying I decided to give up on ordering entrees. I did opt to try their buffet since it's a lot cheaper and you get a huge selection. They have a lunch buffet and Tuesdays they have a dinner buffet so I went for dinner. You also have the option to get a box to-go instead of sitting down.

I made a couple rounds. First was the vegetarian round I guess. They have salads, appetizers, and curries. 

As you can see I'm not fond of vegetarian curries so I only got a little of each. The chana and dal are really bland. The vegetable korma is by far the best of these. Creamy, sweet coconut curry. Among the appetizers are egg rolls, pakoras, samosas, and aloo tikki. The egg roll is fine I guess but I'm no egg roll fan. Pakora is just basic fried veggies. The others are fire. Aloo tikka isn't something I'd normally order but this is nicely spiced and reminds me of a falafel. And that samosa, hot damn. The flaky pastry crust and the filling just, mm. Perfection. Oh yeah, there's something called badhora that's fried bread (I think it's also spelled "bhatura"). It tastes just like it sounds. Not bad, just whatever.

Next was the carnivore round. They had a lot more meat selections than vegetarian which is great. I tried six of them (there were seven or eight).

The only fish item was the fish pakora (fried fish cube). It tastes like, well, fish with batter. Fine, whatever. That chicken drum is the chicken tandoori. This tastes just like a roasted chicken drum but for some reason it is bright red. It's good though. The goat (punjabi bakra) is on top. It has a lot of bones in it but it's decent, though not much spice. Below that is the chicken tikka masala. This is the best of everything, creamy, savory and tender. The chicken curry on the top right is the worst of the bunch though. While it is tender, it lacks flavor. And the lamb vindaloo (I think) on the bottom right is pretty good. I mean, it's lamb after all. It just tastes like plain lamb to me, with a few subtle spices.

The buffet comes with a basket of naan.

Their naan is fluffy and delicious with just the perfect amount of butter. It's not the best I've ever had but it's solid.

They had a few other dishes I wanted to try but, overall, even though the owner is amiable, I just had a few too many not-so-pleasant experiences with the food here. And it seems like the flavor isn't always there. The spiciness dominates the dishes and without it there doesn't seem to be much of a flavor profile. I gave it a good shot but I'm definitely not impressed and honestly wouldn't recommend it after consistently being disappointed.