Taj Mahal

I was in Salem, OR for couple of days and thought let me try Indian food in Oregon. I went this place called Cuisine India, previously under a different owner and was called Taj Mahal. I ordered tandoori chicken, chicken soup and gulab jamun. Let me say one thing, I have had tandoori chicken in north india, south india, Italy, USA (TX, NJ, NY, MA, RI etc), but this was the worst tandoori chicken I have ever had in my life. After having a single bite I threw it in the trash. The chicken soup was ok and the gulab jamun was good.

No longer called taj mahal and under new ownership we were told when. We asked.
Everything was tasty and fresh. The server was friendly and very attentative.

This restaurant is under new management and is called Cuisine India.
My husband and I came for the lunch buffet and everything we were served seemed fresh. The vegetable corma was especially good.
The restaurant is clean and the management is friendly. Tasty lunch!

It is named «Cuisine India» now. We had the veggie samosas, garlic naan, and lamb vindaloo for dinner. The food was very fresh and flavorful. The food came out very fast. The service was also excellent. We will definitely come back.

This review is for the new restaurant in the same location, Cuisine India. I have ordered take out from there twice, and both times they were great. I am vegan, and I find this place much more vegan friendly than the other Indian restaurant nearby. I will be a regular customer now, as this is one of the few places in town I have found to be very friendly to vegans. The man who cooked my food even brought it out to me and made sure to tell me he used oil on the naan, not butter, and was just very accomodating. Taking my mom and brother there next week.

It’s now called «Cuisine India».
Remodeled! New name! New owners! New food!
Way better! Could still be a bit better. Flavors, spices kind of on the bland side & consistence of temperature of the buffet. They say they rotate food daily but I’ve been here 3 times and they only change one dish, so everything is the same everyday except one item. They do charge for all drinks so don’t think it’s included in the price. Really good naan!
We came for buffet on a Friday. $ 8.99
Chicken butter
Chicken curry
Tandoori chicken
Channa
Dal makhni
Aloo gobi
Naan
Rice
Veggie pakora
Papadums
Mint chutney
Tamarind chutney
Ratia
Rice pudding
Salad
If you can’t find something to eat from that list… Well!

I’m giving them 2 stars, because I’ve only had their lunch «buffet» and it was very disappointing. Very limited selection and the use potatoes to cover their lack of other ingredients. Their menu items may be wonderful, but avoid the lunch buffet.

I hate to say this because the waitstaff was so pleasant. However, I suspect this was an attempt to overamericanize Indian food. Far too much sugar in the curries. I’ll leave this review as short and as sweet as possible!

Horrible. There were only 2 menu items that were available … Chicken or a. Vegetable dish. My lunch mates had the chicken, but there were only 2 small pieces of chicken. When questioned, they were told that is how it comes and they just had to accept it. My vegetable dish wax frozen vegetables … In an area if fresh vegetables to die for.
None of us will return, which we stated when we questioned the quality. Avoid this place …

Went here for dinner tonight and if I could give it negative stars I surely would. for $ 12 I got a little dish of rice and a little dish of chicken tikka masala, an empty plate and a glass of water. They don’t serve Thali style at all so you get zero variety unless you pay for an appetizer or side. You have to pay for nan for goodness’ sake. Not to mention the best thing about the meal was that glass of cool water. I have made chicken tikka masala at home many times and have eaten it at Indian Restaurants all over the place and this is by far the most lame attempt I have ever seen.
I ended up eating a couple bites while swatting fruit flies away from my food, paying and going next door to Adam’s Rib for BBQ. Not what I wanted but it was fantastic!
Here’s a tip: make this one a skip.

Walked in and there was no one around.anywhere. Should have taken this as a sign and walked down to Adams rib, but it smelled so good!
Finally a girl showed up, I got seated and headed to the lunch buffet.
I’ll just highlight my impressions–
1. Very limited selection that never changes, hardly any meat dishes.
2. The tandoori chicken was dry as sawdust (and you’re limited 2 per person– I thought this was an all you can eat buffet?!?)
3. The linens were dirty. All of them– the buffet curtain and the table cloths.
4. Last, and the ultimate deal breaker– found a hair in the rice. Grossed me out, so I left.

Lunch buffet review.
The selection for the lunch buffet is very small. It wouldn’t bother me so much if they had good quality food, but they don’t. Many of the sauces were actually seasoned nice, but the papadam is just shards, the naan was undercooked and the Tandoori Chicken was incredibly dry. Also I swear the Tandoori Chicken was deep fried. Many of the items seemed like they were previously prepared, refrigerated, then served for lunch. They put out small quantities of food for the buffet (which means they run out quickly and you need to ask for more) so I would expect each thing to be made to order and fresh tasting. What a shame. This place used to be really good the first year they were open.
I won’t be back. The only reason the got a second star was for the nicely seasoned mushroom chicken.

This is NOT Indian food. By far the worst Indian food that I have ever had in the USA. I have eaten in Indian restaurants all over this country and never had anything even close to as bad as this food was. The buffet did not have much choice. The tandoori chicken drumsticks looked dried out and 2 days old. The kadahi chicken was tomato soup with a couple chicken bits in it. Everything was bland and tasteless.
If you like this food, then you don’t like Indian food because Indian food is anything but bland and tasteless. where’s the onion, garlic, cumin flavors? Seriously, please shut down or change the ethnicity of your cooking to whatever country serves bland mushy stuff. You give Indian cooking a bad name

Had dinner here and i thought it was delicious. Ate the chicken makhani. Pretty quiet when we went, which made for hushed conversation. Staff were very friendly. I would eat here again.

Sad faces all around for Taj Mahal’s lunch buffet. Indian food is my favorite. I have dined in many hole-​in-​the-​walls and a handful of upscale Indian restaurants across the U.S. and unfortunately, the food at this restaurant is towards the bottom of my list. Minimal meat/​options and mainly vegetarian options. Chewy, stale, flavorless nan. The only redeeming dish was the stand out tandoori chicken.
Bottom line: Indian food induced coma was not a success.

The food here tasted really good. Service was decent. The cleanliness however, I found to be less than satisfactory, which is a huge deal to us.
You can see the kitchen when you go back by the bathrooms. The dirty dishes were stacked, grills were dirty, kitchen floor was a mess. If I had not seen the kitchen, I’d have given 4 stars. I still liked this place better than India Palace though, but Star of India is the best!

As a buffet, this restaurant varies in the freshness of its food depending on the time of day. Show up at the right time, you get something fresh out of the oven. Show up any other time, you get something tepid that’s been sitting for too long or the less than desirable orts left at bottom of the bucket. I prefer not to play the odds and to go somewhere consistent over time.

Good food. Don’t be deceived by the lack of customers. Everything we had was fresh, hot and tasty!

On Snap son… this place effin’ rocks!
Last Friday night the little lady asked me to come up with a place to have a nice dinner. I felt like Indian but having not tried any of the Indian places in town, I immediately began scouting through Unilocal and found the Taj Mahal… man, what a great little gem this turned out to be!
We started with the Vegetable Samosa and Garlic Nan as appetizers. Both were excellent.
I ordered the Chicken Masala and Rice which turned out to be pretty damn spectacular and I definitely recommend it to anybody trying the place out for the 1^st time. I went medium spice which ended up being a little on the mild side for me so next time I’ll be going spicy.
The little lady had the Paneer Tikka Masala, of course I took a bite and it was to die for. Nothing like cheese balls in a great Masala sauce… mmmmmmm!
For desert we shared Gulab Jamun which was a tiny serving but so rich is was just perfect to finish up the meal.
The place itself is very clean and cozy, exactly what you would expect from a family ran restaurant. The waitresses were obviously all sisters, they were polite and charming but a little shy in a cute way. The service was quick and the food came out perfect.
The best part was the price; two adults eating an excellent three course dinner, plus drinks for $ 30? SIGN ME THE FRICK UP!
We will definitively be comin’ back to the Taj Mahal for years to come.

It’d been close to a year since my last visit (not reviewed), and I certainly wanted to get my money’s worth on this all-​you-​can-​eat Indian extravaganza.
I was their first customer of the day, walking in just a bit after 11 a.m. on a Monday. No more than two steps inside, one of the employees greeted me with a heartwarming smile.
I filled up on salad (OK, it’s just iceberg lettuce and cucumbers, and some other veggies), cantaloupe, oranges, and grapes. I may have had a meal of titanic proportions, but at least I can say I kept it well-​balanced! Admittedly, by the fifth dish, my spicy panda side erupted a bit more, and I started putting the sambal on the fruit. It still tasted good to me. I guess I have a tiny spice addiction…
Each day brings two vegetarian options, two meat options (well, it’s probably chicken), and Tandoori chicken. You’ll also have naan, a couple of soups, and dessert.
I bypassed the naan this time, but tried their chicken soup. Well, it was labeled chicken soup, anyway. A much redder color than I imagined a chicken soup would have. It was good, but not totally heated yet. Guess I should have waited a little longer for that.
Yup, I had both vegetarian options. First, a cooked cabbage dish with potatoes and tomatoes, seasoned with Indian spices. It simmered in what was probably vegetable stock. I honestly couldn’t stop eating that entrée. The veggies all broke down very well, and eating a bunch of it should fill you up.
The other vegetarian dish, Dal Makhni was a lentil and kidney bean dish seasoned with various herbs. Quite delicious. Lentils and beans were perfectly cooked, having just enough bite so it’s not all «WTF mushy.» I didn’t think I’d be eating lentils, but lo and behold, pandas eat them! Perhaps this dish could have been just a bit thicker.
The chicken dishes were all delicious. The chicken saag was my favorite. If Popeye had Indian blood in him, he may have eaten this on a more consistent basis. Such a soothing array of Indian spices in this creamy brown sauce (which also houses spinach).
Chicken Jalfrezi is really chicken and vegetables in a gravy-​like orange sauce. It is more a tomato-​based sauce; turmeric and cumin help create that orange color. I’ve also seen pictures and recipes that feature this dish with a dark red sauce. Again, very hearty and flavorful. They have really mastered cooking vegetables in all their entrees.
Tandoori chicken = win. I don’t think I need to say much more than that. OK, fine: vintage magenta-​colored chicken exterior!
The rice pudding was fairly standard, yet very good. Each grain of rice maintained its noticeable texture and identity, even among the sweet creamy sea. I still think it would have been nice to have a separate side cart of toppings to customize the dessert to one’s own tastes a bit more.
I stopped at nine plates. I wanted to stay longer, but I guess I need to better train my stomach capacity.
Despite the lukewarm soup and the rather-​plain rice pudding (as in I didn’t see anything nearby to top it with), this is certainly one of the better buffets I’ve been to. At $ 7.95, hungry patrons should be able to get their money’s worth here. Some of the entrees may change depending on the day you go. I wish they had more seafood or lamb dishes at lunch. Check this place out!