India's Oven (Brentwood)

food: 5/5
experience: 4/5
overall: 4.5/5

There are a couple India's Ovens in Los Angeles but this one is for the Brentwood location, which is actually upstairs in an office building. It's a place you gotta just know about. Insiders only, y'know.

Now obviously it's hard to go wrong with Indian food. We did have a little mishap with the samosas though, apparently they were too spicy for mom.


Bah. I thought they were perfect. The batter was so crispy and tasty, and the filling had only a hint of spice. I love samosas. Best Indian appetizer by far. That is, unless you count naan as an appetizer.

So this naan. The first time I went I basically fell in love with it. We just got the plain naan. And let me tell you, it was wonderful. This was possibly the best naan I have had in my life.


They put a bunch of spices in it including fenugreek and it's nice and fluffy. If you come here you have to try the naan, I don't care what kind of diet you're on.

I ordered a curry dish with my naan based off the recommendation of the server, the Goan fish curry. It's a coconut-based curry.


It was great, except for the fact that it was super weak. I wish he'd asked me how spicy I wanted it and thrown some of that samosa spice into the curry instead. That kind of ruined the flavor for me a bit. It was good, it just tasted too milky for what I was expecting.

Next time I came I tried the sea bass tikka.


I love me some sea bass. Unfortunately they only gave me about four or five pieces as you can see. Womp womb. It was delicious (if a little greasy) but for twenty bucks I expected more. This is Brentwood, so I guess the price makes sense, but dang, up the serving size a little bit eh?

Accompanying that was the garlic naan this time 'round.


Of course it was just as delicious, if not a bit more so, than the original naan. Nah, forget that, I don't discriminate. All their naan is amazing.

They gave us a complimentary kheer (rice pudding) for dessert. It was decent, just rice cooked in coconut milk.


On my final trip I tried the lunch buffet. I've never been to an Indian buffet but theirs is a good deal for less than twelve bucks on weekdays. Their buffet features several curries, a couple appetizers, and a small salad bar.


Not gonna lie, I made a few trips (okay, three). The vegetarian items are all on the left side of the buffet, namely the falafel, onion pakora, rice, samber, squesh, and spinach. I don't know what those last two were but the only things worthwhile out of those were the falafel and rice, the rest was just nasty. Their rice is actually really good.

The "carnivore" section featured fish curry (spicy), chicken heaven (also spicy), chicken tikka masala, and chicken tandoori. These were all awesome.


The fish curry was finally spicy! I was redeemed. The chicken heaven was also fairly spicy. It was bone-in chicken, hard to eat with a fork, but worth it. Masala is always one of my favorite curries because it's basically like eating tomato soup with meat/fish in it. And chicken tandoori was also on the bone, nice and crispy and perfectly seasoned. If you're not vegetarian you're gonna have a bad time at the buffet.

And of course the buffet came with even more naan. RIP my pants.


Needless to say, I didn't have any salad.

India's Oven is definitely on the pricey side, given it's in Brentwood, but their lunch buffet is totally a steal and has an awesome selection. The service is great too. The manager (Fadiq? Sorry, probably remembering it wrong) was really amicable and told us about his life in India. Good service, good food, good times. But expensive, yes.

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