Bombay Sweets offers a popular vegetarian lunch buffet and menu of chaats and snacks, plus a candy counter stocked with delicious Indian sweets.

5827 Hillcroft Ave, Houston, TX 77036
(713) 780-4453
Facebook page

10am–9:30pm, 7 days a week

Visited on September 3, 2018

Open since 1997 on Hillcroft Avenue in the heart of Houston’s Little India, Bombay Sweets predates the naming of the Mahatma Gandhi District by 13 years. One of several businesses in the area specializing in Indian sweets (including the older Raja Sweets just down the street), Bombay Sweets distinguishes itself with an all-vegetarian menu, including chaats, dosas, and a popular all-you-can eat buffet for $7.99. Venturing out on a rainy Labor Day, we joined the sizable lunch crowd, grabbed a pair of pink, plastic lunch trays, and linked up with the line at the buffet.

The salad bar at Bombay Sweets provides you with the usual means for boosting flavors or cooling things down on your buffet excursion. Stocked with pickles, chutneys, and cold, yogurt-based concoctions, this section is followed by a steam table with a variety of curries, dals, rice, and other items. Among the offerings we sampled were aloo gobi (potatoes and cauliflower), palak paneer (spinach and cheese), kadhi pakora (chickpea and vegetable fritters in gravy), vegetarian pulav (rice pilaf), malai kofta (dumplings in a tomato cream gravy), and chana masala (chickpea curry). The buffet emphasizes filling, hearty comfort foods, and the spice levels, set to medium heat, do not ignite a tongue blaze. Halfway through your first tray, you feel a cozy warmth radiating from your core to the rest of your body—a nice feeling on a wet, grey day. The buffet has no item we did not like, but both of our seconds featured more of the smooth, creamy, and well-seasoned palak paneer. Each buffet order also includes a basket of hot, fresh naan for your sauce-mopping pleasure.

Lunch business at the buffet was brisk, and restaurant staff frequently emerged to refill the trays with fresh food from the kitchen. Evidencing the restaurant’s desire to accommodate Jain vegetarians, several items on the buffet were advertised as lacking onions and garlic, and the menu advertises other items in onion- and garlic-free forms.

Bombay Sweets’ buffet is an incredible value at $7.99, but without a powerful application of self-discipline, you most likely will not make it out the door without spending at least that much at the sweets counter.

The buffet contains a few nominal dessert items, including glistening, shockingly-sweet jalebi, ideal for dipping in an after-meal cup of chai tea. We were powerless, however, against the allure of the glass-fronted cases stocked top-to-bottom with exquisitely-crafted, gem-like mithai. As rank outsiders, we do not pretend to have any expertise in differentiating the various types of halwa, barfi, and other sweet delicacies on display and apologize in advance for any errors. We pointed at a few and asked the nice woman staffing the counter to help us choose a few more. There was a chandrakala mithai (a tiny pie filled with ground nuts and soaked in sugar syrup), a colorful, apple-shaped kaju katlu made of cashew paste with an almond on top, a split gulab jamun filled with a milk confection, a slice of anjeer barfi wrapped in fig paste, and a staff-recommended chunk of a rustic, dark, sticky confection (possibly doda barfi). We took them home and all were delicious (especially the dark, sticky barfi). We hope to return at a less busy time so that we can ask questions and learn more.