Rang Indian Bistro, Stoneham, MA

www.rangindianbistro.com
6 Central St, Stoneham, MA 02180
(781) 438-8200

Matar (peas) paneer - 3/10. Watery and no flavor. Structurally, it was like miso soup, except with paneer, chopped onions and peas floating around.

Chakra, Tyngsboro MA 8/10 good

18 Pondview Place #24, Tyngsboro, MA 01879
Tel: (978) 649-6400
http://www.chakraus.com/

Good food. More of self service (and takeout-ish) than a full restaurant setting ... neat clean new place.

Chicken pepper fry - very well made 8.5/10. Dry-ish and spicy. Asking for extra hot would make it half way to tabasco pepper sauce.
Goat curry - another well made dish 8/10. Thick onion tomato gravy, no cream :)
Chicken seekh kabab - 7/10. One of the better kababs in the area. (note that because of the white meat in CSKs, it is inherently less flavorful than Lamb ones)
Naan 8/10 fresh from the oven, and fluffy.
Chicken vindaloo - 5/10. Could be better.

Updated 5/11/14
Goat dum biryani - very good 9/10
Veg and non veg thali - mixed reviews.. ok. 6/10

Goat pepper fry (aka Mutton Sukka on the menu) 9/10 very good

Paneer pepper fry 8/10 good

Chicken 65 - ok. 5/10

Update Nov 19, 2014.
The pepper fry series here (mutton, chicken & paneer) continue to be very good.

Singh's Cafe, Wellesley MA

http://www.singhscafe.com/
312 Washington St, Wellesley Hills, MA 02481

(781) 235-1666

Good spread in the lunch buffet, and an overall 7/10. The buffet features a 'tawa' with different types of food on it.
 

Masala Art‎, Needham MA

http://masala-art.com/
990 Great Plain Ave, Needham, MA 
(781) 449-4050‎

Will go out on a limb and say that this seems to be the best overall Indian restaurant in the greater Boston area, yet. Infact, will give it that crown until I eat at a better place around here :)

Great appetizers. Good entrees. Good ambience and decor.

Lamb seekh kabab - 8/10
Hariyali chicken tikka - 8/10
Malai shrimp - 8/10
Lamb barra kabab (lamb chops) - 9/10 - well spiced and marinated in general for most of the finger foods above

Lamb biryani - 7/10
Chicken anarkali - 7/10
Rogan josh - 7/10
Goat curry - 7/10 - had higher expectations on this one
Saag paneer - 7/10

Naan was nice - 7/10

Paradise Biryani Pointe (aka Mysore Veggie)

Lowell, MA
(978) 677-7181

The old Mysore Veggie restaurant now serves Hyderabadi cuisine too.
Service is very slow, so I recommend ordering an hour ahead for take out.

Goat Pepper Fry - 9/10 - awesome! Goat pieces in a onion, black pepper & other spices. Very well made, well marinated, semi-dry appetizer, spicy and tasty. Hopefully the quality will be maintained.

Paradise Chicken - 6/10. Nice. Nothing to write home about. Dry appetizer. Sprinkled with sesame seeds. Looks like a relative of General Gao's Chicken :)

Goat Biryani - 6/10. This was supposed to be the high point of the 'Biryani' place, but was a let down. Not bad, but no great shakes either.

More to come...

Hotbreads, Woburn MA

Hotbreads.

One of the best places around for Indian food and pastries. They have a good lunch buffet too.

Lamb biryani - 8/10. Very good. It is not served in the typical layered style (saffron rice, meat, rice...), but is mixed up. Nevertheless, its tasty and spicy.

Chicken biryani - 8/10. Ditto.

Lamb curry - 8/10. Good consistency gravy (not watery), spicy.

Egg curry - 8/10. Ditto.

Pastries - if you want the 'Indian style' pastries, this is the place!

Filter coffee - average. It used to be brewed the proper South Indian way, but its machine made now.

Ras malai and gulab jamun - both nice.

438, Main Street
Woburn, MA - 01801
Phone: (978) 361-6943

Priya, Chelmsford, MA

Priya

1270 Westford St (Drumhill Rd)
Lowell, MA 01851
(978) 454-7777

Update 11/24/11: As with most Indian restaurants, the quality has gone downhill, and it has become yet another 'average' Indian restaurant.
11/11/11
Goat curry (buffet) 6/10 - the curry was tasty and the goat was cooked well. 
The rest of the buffet was average.


2010:

This replaced the earlier Kebab (which had gone downhill over the past year or so)

The food is much better, and I would definitely recommend trying it out.

Chicken 65 or 95 or something like that - 8/10. Very well done. The dry kind.

Biryani - 7/10

Lamb curry - 7/10

Bombay Club, Faneuil Hall Market Pl, Boston MA

Indian fast food in the Faneuil Hall Marketplace.
Chicken tikka (boti) kabab (chunky kabab as opposed to the seekh kind) - 5/10. Not much flavor, dry and fibrous (versus juicy and smooth). Not spicy.
Naan - fresh and better than average. 6/10

Guru Catering, Somerville, MA

Lamb Biryani - 4/10. Wasnt biryani to begin with, more like pulav, and with no differentiating taste of anything. The lamb pieces had no taste either. It was wet rice with pieces of meat in it.

Chicken Biryani - N/R - this was almost equally bad, but what made it worse was that it had the 'aroma' of food beginning to spoil.

They were courteous enough to offer a complimentary replacement of the food. I have heard that their lunch "dabba" is nice.

India Palace, Chelmsford, MA

India Palace Restaurant
313 Littleton Rd
Chelmsford, MA 01824
(978) 244-1235

(second post on this one)
Goat curry - good. 7.5/10. Not overly rich (a positive), it was tasty and had a good gravy. The pieces were a bit chewy though.

Naan - nice, but a bit stretchy.
Another good dish here - chilli paneer (dry).

8/19/08
Murch Vagan (A hot and spicy combination of ground lamb and boneless lamb pieces cooked in an onion sauce seared with red chillies) - 5/10. Its not as good as it sounds, and had a base sweetness to it which made it taste like something lost in fusion. 

Lamb seekh kabab - 5/10. Could have been eating tasteless rubber with coriander. When asked for spicy, they simply dumped red chilli powder on top of the kebabs.

Kebab Indian Cuisine

Kebab Indian Cuisine, (978) 454-7777
1270 Westford St. (Drum Hill RD.), Lowell MA 01851

Nice place, new. Daily buffet, including weekends. Buffet generally has 4 non veg entrees and a similar veg variety. Nice dessert (kheer or gulab jamun).

Update Sep 2008
Goat curry - 7/10. Tasty, with rich gravy. However, the pieces were a bit dry, and the aroma of "goat" :) was missing from the overall entree.

Update 3/26/08
Butter chicken - 6/10
Chicken Aachari - 6/10
Chicken curry - 5.5/10
Chicken seekh kabab - 6.5/10

They also had a nice 'vaghare baigan' (eggplant in rich curry sauce). They seem to be always out of lamb seekh kabab, so call ahead.

3/2/08
Buffet - 6.5/10

Tandoori combo platter was some nice and some average. It has
Tandoori chicken - 6/10
chicken tikka - 6/10
boti kebab - 5/10

They also had a shoe-lace-fluorescent-green dry paneer dish - I forget the name - Paneer hariyali/kofta (paneer with spinach covering) maybe - which was useless and tasteless (despite asking for spicy) - 4/10.

Bollywood Grill

Bollywood Grill
350 Winthrop Ave, North Andover, MA - (978) 689-7800

Average buffet (weekends only). Had 3 non-veg dishes.
Chicken kofta - 5/10
Tandoori chicken - usual fare 5/10
Prawn curry - was over salty and stank a bit 4/10.
The vegetarian stuff was nothing to write home about either.

I have heard that the kali mirch ke tikke is nice here.

Minerva

Minerva Indian Cuisine
500 Boston Providence Tpk (Rte 1 North), Norwood, MA 02062
Tel: (781) 551-9797

Good food overall. New restaurant. They have a buffet on all 7 days. Better variety than the average Indian buffet. Courteous folks. The place has a nice Andhra flavor to the food.

Shrimp fry - 7.5/10. Good stuff. Dry, kind of like shrimp manchurian with chillies and onion. I wish the shrimp pieces were a bit bigger though (it was chopped up). Nicely spiced, well done masala.
Lamb curry - 6.5/10. Nicer than the average fare. Tasty.
Goat biryani - 7/10. Welcome sight to see biryani in a buffet. The goat pieces could have been a bit more moist. But thats nitpicking now. :)
Chicken curry - 6/10. Better than average.
Naan - 7/10. Thin crispy naan, almost bite sized, fresh. Not the half raw, half cold stuff you get on average.
Tandoori chicken - 6/10. Better than usual.
Mushroom curry - 6/10. Tasty, different, but the curry was a bit dilute.
Palak paneer - 5/10. Ok.
Gulab jamun - 7/10. Very nice. Soft, no lumpy core, not overly sweet.

Mantra

Mantra
52 Temple Pl, Boston, MA
(617) 542-8111

Update 1/1/10

Custom ordered a few items from the menu (vs the lunch buffet)

Goat curry - 7/10, made well if you tell them exactly what you want and how you want it

Lamb boti kabab - be very specific on how you want it, they made it well, twice 7/10, and messed it up bad, once 4/10

Lamb seekh kabab - 7/10

Naan - specifically asked for the freshest ones from the tandoor and they obliged. 6/10. They could have been a bit fluffier.

The ambience of this place is worth mentioning. Mentioned. Decorated differently than the usual rows of chairs and tables.
They are a Indian buffet place by day and a fusion food place by night (which I heard is better than the day food).
The weekday buffet had:
Tandoori chicken (with a mint - aka "pudina" - marinate) - 6.5/10. This one was marinated well, with the flavor well below the surface of the chicken, unlike most other restaurants. But the food was not even moderately hot (otherwise this would have been a 7/10)
Chicken tikka masala - 6/10. This was nice too. Tasty, but not hot.
Chicken biryani - 4/10. The biryani was not worth it. No taste, utterly bland. Not even spicy.
Naan - 6/10. They made fresh naans, thinner than the usual Indian naans (kind of like the thin crust pizza at Dominos).
Paneer tikka masala - 5/10. Average.
Rice kheer - 6/10. Nice.
Heard that their vegetable "pakodas" (deep fried dumplings) were slightly on the raw side. They did make fresh "aaloo tikkis" onsite. They were ok.
Definitely better than the nearby Tantric Bar & Grill restaurant.

Mysore Veggie
1689 Middlesex St, Lowell, MA
(978) 452-8700

South Indian vegetarian restaurant, along with the usual North Indian cuisine too. They have some fusion dishes too (I still havnt come across a properly "fused" fusion restaurant - they all seem to be lost in translation). I prefer the Udipi next door (almost).
The food was ok - idli/sambar, and some multi-vegetable uttapam. 5/10
They have a Sunday lunch buffet.

Rangoli Restaurant
129 Brighton Ave, Allston, MA
(617) 562-0200

Chicken biryani - which was tasty, but wasnt the layered style (you know, rice-meat-rice-meat-rice). It looked and felt like pulao, which is ok as long as it tastes good. - 6/10
Some other vegetarian stuff was ok.

Bombay Club
57 Jfk St, Cambridge, MA
(617) 661-8100

They have a variety in the buffet - freshly made dosas (nice), chat and the usual buffet spread - tandoori chicken (5/10, 1/2 mm problem), some vegetarian food thats on the richer side (ok).
Unfortunately, the food is barely above average.

Gandhi Restaurant
704 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA
(617) 491-1104

Pathetic. 3/10

Rasoi
Trolly Square, 855 Worcester Rd, Framingham, MA
(508) 872-4060

Its been a while since I ate there. I remember it was not anything to remember about. Else I would have remembered. :)
The food was ok overall. 5/10

Bombay Mahal Restaurant
45 Middle St, Lowell, MA
(978) 441-2222

They have nice "samosa chat" (although the chana in it should have more taste). Make sure to pick it up fresh (it gets soggy if it sits too long) - 6/10
The buffet is average. 5/10