Chola

Closed on Tuesday, January 13, 2015 at 7 PM…
After reading the reviews for restaurants in the area, I chose Chola because I like Indian food. The doors were locked and there was a legal notice on the window that the locks had been changed…
This note is for anyone who plans to go there. Remember to Call First. When I called the phone number listed, I was told the number was ‘temporarily’ out of service.

Lessee, one star is «Eek! Methinks not», two is «Meh, I’ve experienced better». It’s been a few months since I visited, so I’ll be generous because my memory might be incorrect on some points, but, well, I’ll not be returning.
Pro: a damn good price if you want good curry! Really good. It’d been a while, so I was happy to find the place.
Con: everything else.
Let’s start with when I walked in. It’s a casual place, you pick your own table. I think. Well, the guy indicated that I should sit at the booth that was piled with dirty dishes, but I suspected he meant I should sit in the adjacent, clean booth, so sat there. Just a little momentary confusion, nothing bad.
The boy who came to get my drinks order (just water, thanks) fills my water and spills some on the table, and my foot. No apology, didn’t wipe it up. But eh, he’s a boy, doesn’t look more than 14. I don’t complain or draw attention to it.
I get up, brushing away a fly that’s trying to drink the water on the table, but another just takes its place. I investigate the buffet. Nice! Trays of curry that I can have as much as I want of! This is probably the smallest buffet selection I’ve seen yet in America, only maybe a half dozen trays, on a single cart. But it’s a half dozen trays of *different curries*, as much as you can eat, with unlimited rice (boiled or fried) and unlimited pittabread! Nice.
I take a little of each curry, some pittas, some rice.
The goat is the worst. Almost all bone and fat, with just scraps of actual meat. All the curries seem to have bony, untrimmed meat. Fair enough, though, if that’s what keeps the price down. they need some flypaper, though.
The boy comes again, asks if I want a refill. I thank him, smiling, and he refills the glass. He spills it again, on table and my leg, and again doesn’t clean it up. Kids, eh?
I go back for seconds. The sauces are really not that bad, once you pick out the bones and fat and gristle and skin and… these flies are really starting to bug me now.
I look around for a dessert buffet, see none, and leave, deeply disappointed in the whole experience, rather than have a third helping.
Other than the guy who tried to sit me at the uncleared table, the boy who poured water on me, and the man at the cash till who took my money, I didn’t see any service, but it’s a buffet, what do you expect?
The food itself, apart from the really really cheap meat, wasn’t *absolutely terrible*. I wasn’t ill afterwards, even though the number of flies concerned me. It just wasn’t even nearly good enough to be worth ever visiting again, when there are better buffets with a wider selection of foods in Round rock, and better curry restaurants, too.
The only niche this very disappointing place fits is «very cheap curry buffet» — so if that’s what you’re after, another kind of buffet just won’t satisfy, and you don’t have even ten bucks for a decent curry, then you might just get something out of this.
Interestingly, if you Google «Chola Round Rock» it warns «this site may be hacked».

The food is ok and the service is ok. The only big problem they have is they never open on time. Don’t show up at 12pm on a Sunday, you will have to wait outside until 12:15pm and then wait until 12:30pm for the food to be put out on the buffet.

Bummer. Closed on 11.17.2014. For a time they had a magical chef who cooked with lots of coconut and the food was top notch and also a great price. Then they changed owners, things went downhill, service suffered, food quality depleted, and now they’re closed altogether. This location needs an all day Indian food buffet!

Working at Dell, I used to look forward to going to this place. But since coming back early this year, their service has gotten worse. We went there in April and it was still fine. Maybe because we left the office at 11:30. But when we have lunch and leave work at 11, they are totally unprepared. We sat there for about 10 minutes and they were sill not ready. We decided to leave and just eat the Greek place next door.

Hit and miss place. Terrible service but decent food. You will need to be patient here or go eat somewhere else which we do have here in N. AUSTIN.

This place used to be one of my go to places when my curry cravings kicked in. However, my most recent visit was a disastrous experience.
First off, they open at 11 AM for their lunch buffet. We got there at 11:45. They were missing at least half of their dishes when we got there and gave the excuse that they had just opened and all off the dishes took time to prepare. I understand that if you want to provide quality food for your customers, you’ll take more time, but it’s almost the afternoon. Get to work earlier and have those dishes ready for your customers on time, by 11 AM.
We were there for 45 minutes, no drink refills at all. I got up and grabbed the water pitcher next to the cash register myself for my table. We didn’t see our server until we were finished with our lunch.
Fortunately, the food was good, although half of the dishes were not available for no apparent reason. Hopefully, they get their act together, because the food is better than average. But when the service is as bad as it was, it’s almost not worth giving them a shot.

Avoid this for all reasons.
— terrible menu
— food stinks and awful
— biryani with last night rice

We have been here before and enjoyed it – tonight, my family (7 people) walked out en masse. We were seated immediately, mostly because the restaurant was mostly empty. i asked for papadum, and was told they were out. Was also told they didn’t have beer or wine. Weird.
We then ordered, and when I asked if a particular item was gluten free, the waiter said there was a charge for everything. I thought he was being humorous. He wasn’t After we placed our order, a few minutes later, someone else came out and told us items we’d ordered weren’t available. Only curries. No naan. Basically, most of the menu was not available.
This was disappointing to all of us, but we Unilocaled nearby restaurants and went to Teji’s and had a fantastic meal — evening saved!

I have not been to this place in a couple of months and when I finally came back around, I noticed that the whole staff was new and the food was very different. Usually when that happens, it’s probably because of a change in ownership/​management.
Even though the food has changed for the better I cannot say the same for their service. Not once did they refill our drinks and my friend actually had to bring her soda to the counter to ask for a refill since the wait staff never got close enough to our table for us to flag down.
The new style of their Curry Goat was scrumptious but unfortunately I was only able to get one serving of this stuff from their buffet table. They had ran out of the Goat and when I informed them of the situation, they just shook their head and acknowledged. I go back 15 minutes later and they still did not refill that entrée. When I asked again, they told me that they were out of the goat. This was at 1:00 pm. They told me that their lunch buffet hours were from 11:00 to 1:30 pm. Most of the stuff was empty by 12:45 and it did not seem like they had any intentions of refilling their food table. However, customers were still showing up at 1:00pm and they were willing to seat them when there was hardly any food left.
There is nothing worst than showing up to a buffet table only to see what resembles dried up leftover stuff. I do hope this was an off day for them. I will give them another chance since the small taste of what I had was actually tasty. I just hope they get their act together by then.

Horrible food. Horrible service and lackluster taste. Everything was over salty and the food felt like it was sitting around ages. This place is should not be in business.
STAY AWAY!

Tried Chola tonight for the first time. While I usually dine at another Indian place, I wanted to give this one a shot since I live closer. I ordered Lamb Korma.
Preface: I’m not terribly picky. I’ll generally eat anything as long as it’s edible.
I actually threw this dish in the trash when I got it home. I can’t say I’ve EVER done that before, but I literally wasted the entire thing. The sauce was terrible, the lamb was 100% gristle/​fat, and the naan was burnt.
Never again. You folks should step up your purchasing and get better ingredients or you will fail.

This place is getting worse by the year. I used to come here when there lunch buffet was awesome and dinner was even better. I moved away for 3 year and came back and they were completely different.
When I rate Indian food I only judge by 2 plates chicken tika masala and curry. I went there 3 time over few month period and tired lunch and dinner and their food was mediocre at best. I would have gave them 3 star if service was good but they were always understaffed and had to wait for everything. Out of 3 visit they were so under staffed I sat by self and waited 5 mins just for someone to come by give us water and they never came by again… for $ 10 I expect more.

I’m torn with this review because this has been our go-​to restaurant for Indian for a while now. Usually we get take-​out because our kids don’t handle the smell of the spices that permeate the restaurant very well, but we have eaten in the restaurant and enjoyed it. I have been fortunate enough to have been exposed to homemade Pakistani cuisine and learned all the authentic places to dine on such fare when I was living just outside of Dallas. Chola was the closest I had come to finding more authentic fare before my last visit. All of that said, I don’t know what happened the last time we were there. If I were basing my review on this experience alone, I would not give 3 stars, but because of our past experiences, I am trying to be fair.
It had been several months since our last stop at Chola and I’m not sure if the cooking staff or owner changed, but this was our experience. I turned to Unilocal wondering if anyone else experienced the same. My husband called in the order and I checked with him to make sure before I left my office to pick it up. When I arrived the waitress looked completely incredulous about us placing an order and said none had been placed with the food I was telling her we ordered. I called my husband again to make sure he hadn’t called somewhere else and he said no, that he had talked to a man who had taken the order. I was then told that the man in question was the owner and that he had left abruptly after speaking with my husband, apparently without relaying the order to anyone in the kitchen or on the staff. I decided to stay and wait for the food, made the order my husband had already placed again and sat down. The young woman who took care of the issue was very nice and apologetic, which I appreciated.
This alone is not a huge deal. It’s not great service, but things happen. I love the food so much that I was willing to wait a bit, though I would have preferred to just head home, food in hand. I received my food and thought for a second to ask about naan, but it has always been given to me with my order, which is almost always the same, so I wasn’t worried about it. Bad decision. When I got home I realized we had no naan which is usually standard with the meals we order. The texture on the outside of my lamb was a little slimy and my husband’s saag paneer was lumpy, super thick and inedible. He usually loves the stuff. I’ve never seen him throw food like that away, but he did without eating more than one bite. He also said the rice tasted like boil in a bag, and we usually really love the rice.
I was disappointed not once (no food when I showed up), not twice (barely edible food), but three times when I realized there was no saving this with naan either. I had to go to the store the next day to get naan and cucumber sauce so I didn’t have to throw my lamb away, I then had to cook it again to make sure the weird texture on the outside was gone. I am really upset by the whole experience as we go on a search for a new place, hopefully not too far. Tarka isn’t bad, but it just isn’t what we’re looking for when it comes to good, authentic food.

We haven’t been here in a while so we gave it another try. The buffet has labels explaining what all the items were, slight problem, most were in the wrong place. I mentioned it to the lady checking us out, she promptly rearranged the signs. $ 25 bucks for a mediocre buffet and 2 teas isn’t a good deal in my book, the chicken tikka masala was good but according to the signage it was goat curry… this place isn’t as good as it used to be… sad.

This is a good buffet to go to with a coworker or two to vent. It’s a quick buffet and a myriad of choices. Is it fancy? Nope, but the food is definitely good enough for a quick in-​and-​out when the cafeteria’s got you down and you don’t have enough time to drive further or you have lunch errands to run in that giant shopping complex.
There’s a discount for your favorite big-​computer-​company employees if you show your badge and pay cash.

Really, I’d give it a 3.5 star rating, but I should be generous since I’ll probably be back. The lunch buffet is reportedly awesome, but I was here for dinner with two other friends on a Sunday night. It was pretty quiet, but I’ve learned that such a sign is not always indicative of restaurant quality. The service was surprisingly slow for so few customers, but onward.
They were out of lamb, so we settled on the tandoori chicken, a couple orders of naan, gobi manchurian, rice, dal, a mixed vegetable stir-​fry, okra, and some pickled fruit. I learned (the hard way) that pickled food in Indian cuisine is not actually a dish but a condiment. My taste buds will be thankful to not repeat that mistake, and I think the corresponding faux pas in America is to eat mustard as one would eat soup. Yeahhhh…
The okra disappointed the most – not much okra (even in a small-​ish bowl) drowned in marinara-​consistency curry sauce. The gobi manchurian and tandoori chicken were excellent. The naan and rice were great as well – the quality of your staples can balance out disappointments like the okra.
The restaurant seems to emphasize Kerala cuisine, so that’s probably on deck the next time I’m here.

Went here for dinner and the place was dead. That should have been a hint. Our waitress was super sweet and seated us right away. She gets an A for service as she was very attentive throughout. But I guess with one other table, that should be expected.
The downer came with the food. We ordered the four course meal to get a taste of everything. I’ve only had one other mango lassi before, so maybe they are supposed to be room temperature, but I wanted it cold. No problem, added ice from my water.
The samosas were average. I could taste some of the spices and they were nice and crispy. The red dipping sauce that it came with was a bit bland. The chicken tikka masala is what really bummed me out. My husband ordered his spicy, which he said it was not. Both of ours were super runny. It was as if they used water instead of cream… BLAH! My husband was also bummed because I had twice as much chicken as he did. All together though, the portion size of the entrée was pretty small.
On a positive note, the naan was fluffy and plentiful. Sadly, we didn’t have enough sauce or chicken to put it all to use. The mango ice cream is also worth trying.

We went here because of the Groupon, only to realize we didn’t read the fine print and couldn’t use it for the lunch buffet.
The food was pretty good, and their Jasmine rice was some of the best I’ve had. What was disappointing is that their lunch buffet selection seemed pretty limited and prices were a little higher than I expected from comparable places.
For Indian Buffet, I definitely prefer Royal India in South Austin as well as Bombay Bistro. I’ll update the review once we use our Groupon for dinner.

We visited Chola this past Saturday. It was our first time and a Groupon took us their way. The food was good enough to go eat again but not fantastic. We only ordered 2 dishes though, so next time I will try something else. We had the goat biryani and a chicken dish that the waiter recommended (Sorry, I can’t remember the name!) We also had the Kerala Paratha. It was tasty and not oily like traditional paratha. The meat was plentiful in each dish and the chicken was white meat and tender. A big downside was that the portion sizes were very small, not just for an Indian restaurant but for a restaurant. The food was fresh hot when it arrived even though it was 9 pm.
I would like to try their lunch buffet to sample some of their other items before going back for dinner. They have a bigger/​more item lunch buffet on the weekend, we were told; so we will try that next. When we left, our server handed us a «Chola Card» which gives you $ 10 off $ 30 during dinner time. That is a good way to bring people back!