UPDATE: This place is closed, man.

Wednesdays I have lunch with my super adventurous foodie friend, and we go to awesome food places and eat awesome foodstuffs together. Now, I know it’s Thursday, but we went yesterday, so I present to you our “Wacky Wednesday” (that title will likely change or dissolve) restaurant of the week, the KABAB HOUSE!!!

The Kebab House, in New Tampa (on Bruce B. Downs, south of Wiregrass), is a delightful little Indian/Pakistani restaurant and market. They have a lunch buffet available between 11 and 3 every day of the week, which is pretty hardcore. And affordable! So we totally took advantage of that.

The restaurant occupies a pretty large space, mostly taken up by the market/grocery portion of the store. There is a small dining area, and the buffet itself is against the wall in the back. The staff is extremely friendly and fun, and let you “get to work” right away at the buffet.

The buffet itself is filled with a variety of different foods, with a small salad section at one end. There are little labels conveniently located above the food items, but unfortunately my favorite dish was left with a blank label! WHY GOD?!? Ah well. Everything there was pretty awesome, though.

Here’s a typical plate of some of the many items found on the buffet. My favorite is the dish that is shown front and center, which was a real delight. Going clockwise from there (6 o’clock), we have some plain rice (which actually was outstanding for “plain” rice), then a bit of the karachi goat dum biryani (with goat meat in it, which was delicious with the saffron flavor), what I believe was the palak paneer (a strong spinach flavor, very accessible), then the red tandoori chicken (delicious, nicely spiced, the star of the show), the chana masala (chick peas, which normally I don’t care for too much, but were well cooked and seasoned), the navaratan curry (mixed vegetables in nut sauce which was alright, but definitely not the most exciting thing there), and in the very middle a vegetable pakora (which is an awesome little fried snack that I need more of NOW). Not pictured is the chicken korma, which took a backseat to the delicious tandoori chicken, some sort of lamb dish (which was good but I can hardly remember it now), and the perfect grilled naan, which made a nice addition to the meal.

AND that’s a lot of stuff. All with a nice, savory spice to it. All available on the buffet. Every day. There was also a delicious rice pudding that we had, and I highly recommend. The restaurant also does delivery (local and Feed-a-Bull) and takeout, and they have ordinary menu items which you can order outside of the buffet that I’m sure are every bit as good as the buffet items.

The long and short of it: pay them a visit. If you like middle eastern food, you’ll like this place. If you’ve never had it, this is a perfect place to go, and sample all the different types.

And remember: they serve only zabiha halal meat! GO TEAM!