$5.95 for all the Indian food you can eat? Must be too good to be true, right? Well relax. There's a catch.

Shalimar Indian Restaurant is a good deal if you're looking for a lunch buffet that's reasonably priced. If you're looking for tasty Indian cuisine, however, you won't find much of it there during buffet hours.

First off, there's the flat bread, which comes complimentary with the buffet in a little basket. To say the bread tasted of raw flour would be an overstatement, but to say it was unsatisfying would be a radical understatement.

I'm not sure exactly what pakora is, but I know that I like fried pakora more than pakora karhi, which I think means "pakora in yellow stuff that vaguely resembles curry." The yellow stuff made me nauseous for an hour or so after I ate it and the pakora that was in the yellow stuff had an awkward texture to it that made eating it equally unpleasant. I kind of liked the fried pakora, though, because it was fried and thus addictively crunchy.

None of these were spicy or tangy, I should add, though it sure tasted like they were trying to be. Particularly the yellow stuff, which, to be fair, did have a kind of tang to it; but, it was not good tang like the tang that puts hair on your chest and a kick in your step. It was more like the bad tang that stays in your breath all day and makes your mouth all phlegmy.

Chana saag, however, was a smooth, delectable dish with just the right touch of sweet. I got seconds and thirds of it and the flavor almost made me want to stand up and sing.

My elation subsided, however when I tasted the abysmal roasted "patota," which I assume was potatoes, because they looked and tasted like potatoes, albeit stale ones. They were laborious to chew and rather unappetizing to taste. I decided I was done with the foods and turned towards the soups.

Strangely enough, I didn't detect the presence of any vegetables in the "vegetable" soup although this didn't bother me much, because the broth was actually quite good.

The only dessert I tried was rice pure and it was blissful, layering a pleasantly sweet aftertaste on an otherwise so-so meal. The hot spice tea I had with dessert was not so blissful, but it was not so bad either.

Interestingly enough, the items on the lunch buffet do not match the items on the dinner menu. This doesn't surprise me. I would bet that the dinner selections probably taste a lot better than the lunch freebies.

All in all, I'd say Shalimar's lunch buffet is the Mio Zio Bottomless Pasta Bowl of Indian food: not the tastiest choice, but a darn good value for your money.