I think that’s pretty much the idea around the lunch buffet in general. That’s why lunch seems to be the most popular popular time for buffets.
I on the other hand feelmweirdnwhen some keeps ameboid dish to himself. It’s also weird when someone takesmthe step of offering his dish for sharing. Sharing is assumed with Indian food.
You must be typing on a tiny little keyboard or something.
Yeah, I remember being in India and my brother and I sitting and eating out of the same bowl. I never had that experience in the States and there was just so much love. A stack of phoulkas and a big pile of subzi and both of us just eating.
I really miss them, sometimes. 
Next on the menu: Döper kebabs.
For our UK dopers, is this a common practice in Britain? For that matter, are buffets of any type common in the UK?
I love the lunch buffets because it’s a inexpensive way to check out the restaurant before committing major time and money to something that might suck. Where I live the standard price for an Indian buffet is about eight bucks and I figure that if the buffet is pretty darned good the menu items will be stellar, whereas a shitty buffet is a good indicator of all-around shittiness. So far I’ve never been steered wrong.
It’s not that hard to find a Chinese, Indian or Pizza Hut all-you-can-eat buffet over here. By no means all restaurants do them, but it would be a rare large town or city where there wasn’t even one. I’ve been to at least one of each.
IANAI and one will be along to correct me shortly I am sure, but my vague impression is you are going to have a hard time finding a one-to-one analogy in (traditional) Indian cuisine (I am sure in the big cities it is possible to find places of all variety).
When I ask Indian friends for restaurant recommendations in the U.K. or India, it will frequently happen that they don’t have much to offer because . . . they will spend two weeks eating at people’s houses. When I hear them talk about eating outside the house, it’s either in the context of really casual street food/chaat, or more formal/banquet/wedding food. Someone with more personal knowledge than me can check in to confirm/refute my suspicion that neither steam table buffets, nor a la carte sit down restaurants, were historically big dining paradigms in India.
Yes, that’s correct. Indian culture doesn’t have the same kind of restaurant tradition that we have. The vast majority of food is eaten at (someone’s) home or from casual street vendors. Up until 20 or 30 years ago, in many places, the only restaurants were in hotels. Even today, the word “hotel” is used synonymously with “restaurant.” I have a snapshot somewhere of a tiny snack kiosk in southern West Bengal labeled “HOTEL” in huge letters.
Restaurant culture is growing, but it is heavily based on western restaurant culture. I had a fantastic Chinese buffet at a place called Mainland China, which I think is a chain.