Annapurna

This was my 1^st visit to Annapurna after hearing about it from my friends who frequently go there for lunch. We were in for a surprise, we got buttermilk as soon as we sat down. There is no menu or options, the only option is a thaali (which means plate in hindi) — they give a huge plate with prefilled portions of food. The food was very good and very filling. It’s not greasy but is good to eat regularly.
This is completely vegetarian and I would go again :) They give unlimited amount of buttermilk

This used to be great when it first opened. the food was nearly as good as a home-​made meal; nothing like the ‘Indian’ food that is served in restaurants here.
Over time, things seem to have changed. The guy serving the helpings was extremely stingy. My husband wanted a third helping of the cabbage bhaji and the man obliges, with a small spoonful of the bhaji! After a while, we got ashamed to ask for more.

I know for the fact that I went there for the first time, I am already a fan! the food is authentic, simple and tasty. They serve you like you are served at home. Ambience is poor, service is alright but the food covers up for the lack of former.
They serve you a platter which includes two main dishes, one dal, 4 chapatis, rice, papad and sweetdish. all of them pretty well pepared. They are low on spice but I guess that is what maintains their taste.
Hope this review is helpful. must try!

This place is for home-​style cooked Indian food. The food is more like western Indian food (gujrati/​Maharashtrian). They have a fixed menu for day and it keeps changing everyday.
This place is good option for people who want to eat healthy food. I have been a regular visitor for past 4 months. It’s like going to home and eating in very informal place.

Please know that my review will be helpful to vegetarian Indians only.
This place is basically a mess (not like mess as in messy but as in a place where you get lunch and dinner with fixed menu, a concept common in India especially in for people who have lived in a hostel). The food is very healthy and very tasty. I miss eating in a mess and I am so fortunate to have found one here.
People who serve are very nice and they will give you as much refills as you need for the currys. They also serve cold buttermilk when you walk in which is really nice. I greatly suggest this place for people like me (vegetarian Indians).

I debated giving this place 5 stars in an attempt to counteract the bad reviews but if I’m being honest 4 is accurate. Hopefully this place will get higher reviews in the future but I don’t mind if only a few other people discover it.
I guess I’m all about unique experiences and Annapurna certainly had that for me. I didn’t really know what to expect when i went in here because I hadn’t yet read the reviews on Unilocal.As I sat down I began to look for a menu but instead I was promptly brought a yogurt and water drink. It was unusual, yes, but it went perfectly with the meal which was quickly brought after the yogurt drink. The food was extremely light and healthy. There was very little oil on anything and the bread was just a few simple chapatis. I won’t go in to too much detail because if you go here, you don’t have a choice on what you’re gonna eat anyway. You eat what they are serving and I think more places should serve food that way. The food is very home-​style, very tasty, and very filling. Eat here and you’ll get a good healthy meal, an intense yogurt drink, tea, free refills on anything, and you’re not gonna pay much for the whole shebang.

9.75 for this meals is a ripoff. Dont be fooled by the thali in the picture. That is not what you get. I have to tell poori is good and thats all. Thali is not even worth 5.99. For 9.75 you get nice all you can eat buffett.

This place is a very clean, hygiene and good quality food with a very good service. i would highly recommend this, however they dont serve any meat or chicken as this is a pure hindu restaurant but i think thats what differentiates them in the bay area (where everyone will be happy to kill a goat or an animal to make an extra buck on the menu) and keeps it very green.
highly recommended.

There is no option to give zero stars. So I am giving one star.
I am an indian and a vegetarian. I thought it would have been so difficult for any indian vegetarian restaurant to get a fail grade from me.
The food is fixed set of items for lunch. The food was not good at all. (I have had much better gujarati food).
In spite of the fact that the food is a fixed menu, it took 20 minutes for them to bring it to me (during lunch time). People who come late get their food first. I do not know why such a policy exists. The owner does not care about the customers.
Finally, the owner comes up to me and asks how as the food:
Owner: How was the food?
Me: The food was ok… But it took a very long time to reach me.
Owner: That is ok.
If the owner thinks it is ok to piss off their customers by serving them really late so that they will not ask for a refill (for not being want to be late to office after lunch)… I think it is NOT ok.
No way. No how.
On top of that, I was charged $ 9.75 (instead of $ 8.95)… No way I am going back to this place. I do not recommend this place to anyone.
Also, if you plan to drive, forget it… This place has a parking spot for just 4 cars. I guess, the owner did not expect any more than a handful of people to show up anyways…

Update! After a couple years, I decided to try Annapurna again. Their format has changed — service is faster, and rather than giving you a few very small servings which they refill as you eat, they just bring you out one big Thali-​ish plate. The food was simple but delicious, and the liberal portion of legumes ensured that I, a ravenous young man during lunch, left satisfied.
$ 10 after tax is still a bit steep for a set menu, but the variety is welcome, since I eat in this area nearly every day.

This place is a RIP-​OFF. For lunch you get a fixed thali (traditional Indian arrangement with an assortment of dishes) for $ 8.95. That’s it. No menu, no buffet. Customers do not even get to see what’s on that day, before it lands in front off you in a crappy white excuse for a thali (even the bento boxes at cheaper joints have much more aesthetic appeal).
On a recent visit with a friend we got cabbage, dal and some potato curry concoction (with no potatoes). This is crazy. Go to any decent Indian buffet and you can get substantial helpings of vegetables (not too mention decent dessert and non-​veg). Dessert was cold milk with hints of cardamom and vermicelli. I guess that’s their deplorable version of payasam (Indian dessert that can be very yummy).
Indian food can be a showcase for good vegetarian cooking, but fare and attitudes like this will turn off eaters with a more refined palate. The meager food we got was OK in taste; healthy, low in grease and non-​spicy. Something we’d cook at home when no one wants to cook. How about charging $ 5.00 for this?
Did I mention that this place is a non-​starter if you are looking for service, atmospherics or ambiance?

My brother and I took away some food fom this place for dinner. Good taste and decent service.

Alright, this review is coming from someone Indian who misses homecooked Indian food…
I loved it. The owner of the place was quite welcoming and it was a little slow (came early to beat the lunch crown), so he took the time to chat a bit and tell me about the place.
The staff was helpful and pretty quick with getting me re-​fills on anything i desired.
The place is not as small as the reviews implied… i guess my expectations were low, so i was pleasantly surprised that there were plenty of open tables… again, I was early.
The food — the day i went, they had pretty authentic Gujrati food. Very tasty, two sabzi’s, poori, khadhi, papad, gulab jaman, rice and chaas (butter milk drink). If you like the creamy, heavy, oily stuff at Shivas… that’s not what you’ll find here. This stuff is really home food.
I do agree with one of the other reviewers, that $ 8.95 is a little steep. Esp when you can get a pretty good thali or meal at other indian restaurants for a couple bucks cheaper.
Other things to help set your expectations: you don’t get to order what you want. If you want to know what’s on the menu, you can call in advance, but half the fun is going to see what they’ll serve up. There’s no ambiance… but that perfectly fine with me. I was there simply for the food.
By the way, the review Nita wrote is for a different restaurant. The one on Elko is the one and only. The folks who own this restaurant apparently cater heavily and so don’t have time to open another restaurant. So if you’ve been to the El Camino one… that’s a totally different restaurant.
Others mentioned the parking already, but it’s challenging enough to mention again. Park across the street (or some place else) and walk.
Hope you enjoy…

Sometimes There Are Reasons to Avoid Secret Restaurants in Office Parks
I’m all about the hard to find ethnic hole-​in-​the-​walls where you can get great food on the cheap. Well, Annapurna definitely has the hard to find ethnic hole-​in-​wall part down as it’s hidden in an office park jungle and only has six tables, but after my experience eating there yesterday I can see it needs to work a lot on the great food and the cheap part.
$ 8.95 gets you a vegetarian thali lunch. Unfortunately there’s no description ahead of time to let you know what that day’s offerings are. The thali includes two vegetarian dishes, rice, rice crisp and pappadam shards, several pooris, sambar, something that looks like Corn Pops, and a drink. Other reviews have mentioned that their meal included chutney pickle and a dessert. Mine included neither. Also, although the server did tell me to let him know if I needed anything else, I didn’t take this at the time to mean second helpings, as I read now in other reviews are available for free.
Mung bean dal — I only was able to eat two small bites. It had a strong sour taste.
Pea, potato, eggplant curry — This was the best thing in my thali, but that’s not saying a whole lot. It was too oily and had started to congeal.
Rice — The rice was fine.
Poori — There were four small pieces of poori which was pretty generous. However, they were all cold — probably because I arrived at 1:45. If they’re going to serve lunch until 2:30, I think all the food they serve should be the correct temperature. Given the calories of eating bread that’s been fried, I only think it’s worth it if it’s warm, so I only ate one poori.
Sambar — Since the mung bean dal was a strike-​out, this was the second half of my meal. I thought it was slightly too ketchup-​y tasting (not that it looked like ketchup; just that it was sweet in the same way), and wasn’t one of the better sambars I’ve had. I will say that the spiciness level of the sambar and the curry was perfect.
Pappadam shards and rice crisps — These were fine.
Puffed corn with puffed red/​pink balls — I’m not sure what this was (maybe this was the missing dessert) but it looked like Corn Pops mixed with my Smurfberry Crunch cereal from the 80s, and didn’t taste all that far off. It was a little sweet and much too artificial tasting.
Drink — It seemed to be a thin, salty yogurt-​y drink, and I avoided it after a single sip.
Basically my whole meal was the pea, potato, and eggplant curry and the sambar, neither of which were all that good. If I came across them in a buffet I would have avoided them after a few bites. However, since that and some pappadam shards were all I had, that was my lunch.
I’m really surprised that this thali lunch costs $ 8.95, and from past reviews it appears the price was only $ 6 a year ago. Assuming the food was good (which it wasn’t), $ 6 is more in line with what should be charged, even with multiple servings. For $ 8.95 I would have much rather had lunch at Mayuri where my $ 8.95 could have been spent towards a great, constantly restocked lunch buffet or at Kabab and Currys where for less I could have had exceptional chicken boti kabob or chicken tikka masala.
I got back to my car after eating at Annapurna and thought, «I just spent 10 dollars on a lunch I half-​heartedly picked at, and I’ll probably be hungry in two hours.»
UPDATE:
I just wanted to specify that I was wrong when I said the puffed corn with reddish pink puffed balls resembled Corn Pops mixed with Smurfberry Crunch cereal. I mean to say they resembled Corn Pops mixed with the Crunchberries from Captain Crunch. That is all.

I always have an amusing time when I go to a set menu South Indian place. The first time I went (Komala Villas) the counter guy just pointed at a table and said nothing. No menus, no hello, food is just plopped down in front of you. Pretty whacky since I like the interaction of ordering but this time I was better prepared.
So my co-​workers and I start looking for the address and we’re somewhere in a 70’s office complex. We see the sign and pull in. My driveway has more parking than this place has. Don’t even try and park here. There’s 4 spaces and one’s handicap. I’d say just park on the street and walk. When you fist step in you realize that you are indeed in someone’s old office building. There’s a reception area and a warehouse in the back where they’ve ripped out the desks/​cubes and put in tables for you to dine on. When I was last here I sat in the reception area next to a taped off door (which I think leads into the office space nex door) with a huge hole in it that looked like someone was trying to kick it down. Now this would scare most people off but if I hear the food is good I’ll usually stick around and give it a go.
After an initial 15 minute wait (the place is small and I imagine there’s only one cook) we sat down. We waited a few more minutes and the food came out. Curried green beans/​cauliflower, daal, a slightly dense (more than Im used to) naan, and sambar. With this they give you an infinite supply of rice and papadum shards. There supposedly was a second vegetable dish but they had run out already. We also got buttermilk to drink along with some lukewarm water. Everything was pretty good but I had wished we came earlier because it was probably a bit fresher and I would have gotten another item. But for $ 6? Definitely a solid meal on the cheap.
In looking at their catering and online menu (
) they seem to make a quite a few items that you can’t get at lunch. That unfortunately was one less star because there’s nothing worse than the idea of being able to order something but not actually being able to get it. I definitely recommend giving this place a try if you want a new arrow in your South Indian quiver but it might be better to cater it (light bulb turns on) to get more of a selection and not have to deal with the parking and wait. Interesting experience nonetheless.

I just tried Annapurna and liked it. You get a decent amount of food for $ 6 and it is tasty. It is a no frills operation (they mainly do catering) and its strictly vegetarian. You sit down and they bring out whatever the meal of the day is. I’m not sure if they always do this, but the guy brought us second helpings.
If you’re in the area and want good cheap eats, this would fit the bill.
==update==
They increased the price to somewhere around $ 8 bucks. That puts it on the high end of «cheap eats» and it shows since the place is no longer packed during lunch.

My indian friends and I go there for lunch 4 days out of the week. Down to earth food that is good, not oily, not overly spiced and simple. Lunch is $ 6 with unlimited helping of rice, chapati, 2 vegetable choices, dal, pickles, dessert and buttermilk. I even like the dal, which is more soupy than other dal and I am usually not a fan of lentils.
Located in a office park, so parking can be difficult. We prefer sitting in the small «lobby area» as it is more pleasent. The larger dinning area in the back make one feels like one is eating in a warehouse… which it probably is at one time:)