Because of its South Indian bent, the lunch buffet at Udupi Palace presents seasoned Indian buffet-ers with a new experience. This isn't just because of the baffling way they've set up the buffet. (I had a hard time figuring out at which end to begin.) The food at Udupi Palace is all vegetarian and tends not to be as spicy as the North Indian dishes you find at other Indian buffets.
As with any buffet, you won't get a lot of help from the servers in discerning the contents of one dish from another. They seem to rely much more on daal (lentils) and on coconut and nut bases in their recipes, which is great for me because I like those flavors. Not so good if you have allergies. The only way to figure out what's what is to fill your little metal cups with this and that and taste lots of different dishes. Luckily, you'll mostly find hits instead of misses.
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