There is no more authentic Asian dining experience in Central Oregon than the one offered by the Taj Palace in downtown Bend.

A painting of Krishna, the blue-skinned flutist central to the beliefs of many Hindus, hangs above the door inside the restaurant. Shiny decorations dangle from the ceiling celebrating Diwali, India’s Festival of Lights. Contemporary sitar-and-tabla music provides a background mood.

What’s more, everyone who works here is a member of the Lakireddy family from south India. Pullareddy (Reddy) Lakireddy is the host. His high school-aged son and daughter wait tables. His wife, mother and sister-in-law do the cooking. There are other Asian restaurants in Deschutes County, of course — Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Vietnamese among them — but none displays the intimacy of the Taj Palace.

Sampling the buffet

The Taj Palace (named for India’s renowned 17th-century mausoleum, the Taj Mahal) serves the cuisine of both south and north India. This is significant because there’s a world of regional difference between the two, much as there is, say, between the Mandarin and Cantonese cuisine of north and south China.

North India, which extends into the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains, has a heartier cuisine that employs more dairy products, lentils and wheat breads, as well as chicken and lamb. The cuisine of tropical south India, pointing like an arrow toward the equator, is lighter and more vegetarian-friendly, with rice as a staple grain and coconut products extensively used.

Central Oregonians can try both styles at the Taj’s daily lunch buffet. Set up at the rear of the restaurant near the kitchen, it features a variety of meats (mostly chicken dishes), vegetarian curries, rice and bread, along with soup and dessert.

(The restaurant advertises that the buffet is 30 items, but I counted only 25, including various condiments.)

I took small samples of everything. I did not like everything I tried, but I liked enough to enjoy a fine lunch. But here’s a warning to diners who have trouble with spicy foods: Some of the buffet items are spicy, some are not, but none are flagged, so you’ll have to be very cautious with what you try.

I started with spinach pakora, crispy, deep-fried fritters of chickpea flour. They were very greasy and more starch than vegetable.

I really enjoyed the Taj’s chicken, especially the tandoori chicken. Rubbed with a reddish powder and baked at a high temperature in a brick-and-clay tandoor oven, it was tender and tasty. I was also partial to the chicken korma, with boneless nuggets prepared in a yogurt-and-coconut sauce. The chicken makhani, in a tomato sauce, didn’t excite me nearly so much.

A beef curry with peas was very disappointing. Not only was it quite salty; I felt as if the grease had not been drained after the ground beef was pan-fried.

Vegetarian delights

Among the vegetable dishes, my favorite was spinach-dal curry. Dal, or pureed lentils, is a staple of north Indian cuisine; here it was made with yellow lentils. The preferred way to eat it is with naan (a lightly leavened, tandoor-baked bread) or fragrant basmati rice, both of which were readily available on the Taj’s buffet line.

Also good was gobi Manchurian, a cauliflower curry with soybean sauce and onions. But I found the spicy aloo saag (potatoes and spinach) to be pasty. And the vegetables in the mixed vegetable curry — peas, carrots, corn, green beans, lima beans, onions and cauliflower — appeared to have been poured from a bag of frozen vegetables.

The word “curry,” by the way, comes from the Hindi word kari, meaning “sauce” or “gravy.” It is taken to mean any mix of blended spices, not strictly the multi-ingredient powder marketed in American stores. Cardamom, coriander and cumin are among the most common ingredients, along with chiles, cinnamon, cloves, fennel seed, fenugreek, nutmeg, sesame seeds, turmeric and peppers.

It’s also an ingredient in soups such as rasan and sambar. Rasan is a pungent curry soup with tamarind, and was probably the spiciest dish in the buffet. Sambar is a thick and peppery lentil soup with carrots, onions and tomatoes. I enjoyed both, but preferred the sambar.

The buffet also featured three salads with dressing, six condiment sauces (including a thick mint sauce) and raita, a delicious yogurt-and-cucumber counterbalance to spicy heat.

For dessert, the Taj offered gulab jamun. Made of chickpea flour and milk powder in a rose-water concoction, it is exceedingly sweet. I prefer another dessert, a rice pudding known as keer.

Something in the meal didn’t sit right with my stomach, which began turning and growling a half-hour after I left the restaurant. It may have been the beef curry. Fortunately, I only had a couple of bites.

The full meal deal

At lunch, if you go through the buffet line, there’s no need for much table service. At dinner, however, service becomes more of a priority. At the Taj, handled by teenagers, it is casual and almost timid. Don’t expect much assistance in choosing items whose names you don’t know; the servers may not know how to answer your questions.

A good option is to order a full dinner, as I did. Every item is available either a la carte or, for $3 more, as a complete meal. I recommend the latter course, as it includes not only the entree but also a vegetable curry, sambar (soup), rice, naan, raita and dessert.

As an entree, I chose Madras chicken. The boneless nuggets were stewed with onions and tomatoes and were tender, tasty and only mildly spicy.

My curry, navaratan korma, consisted of nuts, paneer (curdled and pressed cheese) and vegetables in a creamy sauce. It’s one of my favorites in Indian cuisine.

I washed it down with a Kingfisher beer, imported from India. And then I headed home. This time, there was no growling stomach.

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TAJ PALACE

Location: 917 N.W. Wall St., Bend.

Hours: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 to 9:30 p.m. daily.

Price range: Lunch buffet $7.95, full dinners $12.95 to $15.95.

Credit cards: American Express, Discover, MasterCard, Visa.

Children’s menu: No, but the buffet price is reduced according to age.

Alcoholic beverages: Full bar.

Reservations: Recommended for dinner.

Contact: 330-0774.

SCORECARD

OVERALL: B-

Food (B-): Tandoori chicken is excellent, but some other foods are greasy, too spicy or not fresh.

Service (B-): Relies too much on inexperienced teenagers.

Atmosphere (B-): Authentic to India, but a little dark and unimaginative.

Value (B): Buffet lunch is a bargain if you can deal with undeclared spice level.