Ashoka have been steadily building an empire of Indian restaurants in and around Glasgow and have recently expanded out East. The first restaurant they have opened in Edinburgh is of the buffet variety and they offer a very competitive all you can eat lunch option for £6.95. With many oriental themed buffets close by how does it compete?
The drill was pretty simple, on arrival pickup up a plate, fill it with food, sit down and start eating. I decided to structure my plates on a course themed basis. The first plate consisted of mainly deep fried starters, plate two curry and rice and the third plate puddings. There were the usual suspects on offer, including pakoras, rice, naan, various meat curries and tarka daal. Also curiously there were some not very Indian sounding options including chow mein, potato wedges and prawn crackers. Pudding included ice cream, and the more authentic sweet gulab jamun.
The food to begin with is quite addictive and you feel the macho need to out eat your colleagues. After a while you start realise how salty the food and you should probably stop before you start to feel ill... There was also some complaints over the expensive 660ml cobra beers at nearly £6 a bottle, so be careful or you could easily spend more on drinks than food. I however had a mango lassi which was was a good accompaniment to the quite heavy meal.
Ashoka has polarised the members of our lunch club more so than any other option. The scores were all over the place, ranging from 2 to 10 with pretty much everything in between. Some people love stuffing their face with as much curry as they can stomach and others felt that spring rolls and chow mein at a Indian buffet is just wrong. One thing that we were all able to agree on is that it is hard to argue against the value of three plates of curry £6.95.
The drill was pretty simple, on arrival pickup up a plate, fill it with food, sit down and start eating. I decided to structure my plates on a course themed basis. The first plate consisted of mainly deep fried starters, plate two curry and rice and the third plate puddings. There were the usual suspects on offer, including pakoras, rice, naan, various meat curries and tarka daal. Also curiously there were some not very Indian sounding options including chow mein, potato wedges and prawn crackers. Pudding included ice cream, and the more authentic sweet gulab jamun.
The food to begin with is quite addictive and you feel the macho need to out eat your colleagues. After a while you start realise how salty the food and you should probably stop before you start to feel ill... There was also some complaints over the expensive 660ml cobra beers at nearly £6 a bottle, so be careful or you could easily spend more on drinks than food. I however had a mango lassi which was was a good accompaniment to the quite heavy meal.
Ashoka has polarised the members of our lunch club more so than any other option. The scores were all over the place, ranging from 2 to 10 with pretty much everything in between. Some people love stuffing their face with as much curry as they can stomach and others felt that spring rolls and chow mein at a Indian buffet is just wrong. One thing that we were all able to agree on is that it is hard to argue against the value of three plates of curry £6.95.
Quality Food 5.88
Quality Drinks 6.63
Value
Service
Ambience
Bill: Curry buffet, mango lassi, small tip: £11
Comments:
- Enjoyed my 4 dishes but I'm totally stuffed
- Good tasty food on a budget.
- Everything pretty average. Can't think of anything more to say. Lost the advantage of the cheap buffet spending the same again on 1 beer !!!
- Watery curry slopped up with dried rice and greasy nan. Just another eat all you can hell hole for the east coasters...
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