Akbar Restaurant

It’s a trap!
— Admiral Ackbar
Great food and service; would definitely recommend for anyone wanting to try a new cusine. will be visiting again soon!

The lunch buffet is a good deal! I can try many different dishes with reasonable price.

Food was good and price was reasonable. Will go again.

Akbar is consistently good. The staff is friendly, and the atmosphere is typically quiet and not overly crowded. We ordered takeout for 4 people last night, and the meal was very good, perfectly warm, had plenty of rice, and the portions were enough to have leftovers for lunch. Akbar is my go-​to for a quality Indian meal at a reasonable price, and prepared rather quickly.

This is a good indian restaurant with decent price. The underground atmosphere is good and the choice of the buffet is decent.

Eggplant n Okura dish are sooooo good!!!
Really hot n not so spicy. My 4 years old son loved this! We are a lot except another curries.

Another great meal! The food is always consistently good and the service always on point. I love the food so much, it is always a nice treat when we get to come here.
Always good Indian food when I come here!

A good lunch buffet option. They have a good number of dishes and desserts. Taste is good. Food is fresh and warm. Curries are fine but I find the grilled kebab a little dry. That didn’t keep me from going back many times though. The gulab jamun are sweet, hot and juicy. Service is efficient and friendly. Definitely worth a try.

My go to spot every time I come up to Bmore! As an Indian food lover the food here is de-​LISh and never disappoints me or my tummy.

If your looking for a good Indian restaurant serving authentic tasting food… this is your place. My favorite restaurant while I lived in Baltimore. Great buffet selection and cordial staff. Good ambience and instrumental music.

Only the second time that we found Unilocal-​wisdom a little bit misleading. It was really a bagful of events that resulted in a rather subpar experience at this establishment that was rated quite high by Unilocalers.
THE FOOD: Weekend lunch buffet which really falls short on choices for vegetarians. Three three main entrees — black lentils, peas+potatoes, and spinach — were all generic, kind of cold, and not much of anything else. Sorry, let me add one more — tofu disguised as a masala paneer dish (see pic). Aargh!!!
The app selection was also very poor as compared to a typical Indian weekend buffet at other places. Lentil donuts (Medhu Vada) did not have the right accompanying soups (sambar) or chutneys.
THE SERVICE: We arrived here around 2:30 pm on Saturday (they close for lunch at 3:00pm). Apparently it was too late for us to order a la carte and we were steered towards the buffet. Alas, on top of that, they hurried us through the meals.
I bet you their dinner service is better. Perhaps, if we had arrived earlier, we would have enjoyed warmer meals. Nevertheless, not keeping the buffet spread warm is not forgivable for Indian food. If you are a vegetarian, be prepared to get underwhelmed with their buffet choices.

Was really sadden by my order. I ordered delivery through foodler which the service and delivery was fantastic. However, the food was subpar. The chicken tikka massala had a very tomatoie taste like tomato soup. No flavor and no spices. The rice was good and the naan bread was good as well. But thats about it. Its also pretty pricey. $ 16.99 for Chicken Tikka M. and $ 2.35 for a can soda. A CAN!

My first visit here and I’m underwhelmed. I got the chicken tikka massala which was tasty but nothing super special. Rice comes with the entrée but naan is extra (boo). The entrees are already pretty pricey (~$ 16) as it is so that was a disappointment.
I didn’t get a good vibe from the waiter/​manager though the waitress we had was very nice and great at checking up on us. She even gave us extra rice in our to go boxes, which was really nice! The waiter/​manager seemed to almost be mad at my group because ²⁄₅ of us just opted for appetizers (sorry we just weren’t that hungry!)
Eh, I won’t be back anytime soon or maybe ever if I can help it. Nothing impressed me very much, I’d sooner try the other Indian restaurants on Charles Street.

This is my first time coming to this place. I am originally from India. I want to say the taste here is close to home. We have orders paneer makhani, begum Palau, kheema naan which are very much standard basic indian dishes. But I must say they were delicious. Spice level was just enough and the taste was good. I also like the ambience. I might come back to eat here.

Well this was a blessing in disguise!
It was around 10:15 when I alongwith some of my friends were in Baltimore (I am originally from Philly) and were looking for some good place to eat and then we checked Akbar on Unilocal,We called them to check if the restaurant was open, it was open but the kitchen was going to close soon, so we rushed as we were very hungry, we ordered a lot of stuff, biryani, dal makhani, butter nan, kulfi, gulab jamun etc. We were 4 people and we ate like anything and to our surprise, per person bill was just $ 27, the staff was very good. The manager is really amazing, they even waited after the business hours so that we could finish our meal. The taste was so good «Like the best Indian food I had in East coast — including some portions of NY, NJ and Philly.
I would recommend this place to anyone who is looking for awesome Indian Food
:)
–Diwakar S

Formal Indian restaurant tucked in the basement level of historic Mount Vernon. Went early on a Saturday night and had the attention of many wait staff. Food was DELICIOUS. Authentic Indian food, unlike many of the Nepali/​Indian restaurants nearby. Our party was all vegetarian and we enjoyed all the entrees (palak paneer, bhindi masala and malai kofta). The naan was fresh and buttery (so sinful). They were also accomodating of our baby (luckily he behaved and no disturbance to other diners!). The waiter was very sweet and even brought a bowl of rice for our baby while we waited for our food. Will definitely return when I am craving real authentic North Indian/​Punjabi food!

Would give this place zero stars if i could .
Literally asked us to leave since we were 10 minutes close to the sunday buffet closing.
T

I was first introduced to Indian food here by my friend. It was a wonderful experience that opened my world of different ethnic cuisines. We came here on their buffet day for lunch.
Their buffet is huge, but the quality is still there. The was tandoori chicken, various curries, chutneys, yogurt sauces, cucumber salad and even desserts.
A pretty good deal for all you can eat Indian food. Also a great way to introduce yourself to it if you’ve never had it because you can try everything on the buffet line at a reasonable price.

So Akbar’s been in the neighborhood for more years than I can remember, but somehow I’ve just never had the opportunity to take advantage of it — especially their lunch buffet, which I kept hearing about. I was able to come home from work early yesterday to begin a much-​needed vacation, and my husband suggested that we have Indian. Normally, we go to Café Spice in Hunt Valley to partake of such offerings, but we didn’t really feel like driving all the way out there. We had a bad experience at Kumari long ago and far away, so we decided that we’d try here. I’m glad that we did.
Akbar is a lot smaller than I’d expected — it’s more or less squeezed into a basement in Mt. Vernon. The décor was actually pretty nice, though — I liked the exposed brick walls and hardwood floors, which is a bit uncommon for this area of town. The staff was attentive and polite (though not overwhelmingly friendly — some don’t mind that, but I found the reception a tad on the ‘cool’ side) and the layout was quite attractive. We decided, of course, on the buffet lunch.
Hits!
— The tofu jalfrezi. Holy Toledo. This stuff was spicy as I don’t know what, and it was utterly delicious. Big chunks of veggies with lots and lots of tofu pieces. I’ve never had jalfrezi better than this. A must-​try.
— The saag palak. Again, quite spicy. Very heavy on the cumin, and while that may turn off some folk, I enjoyed it thoroughly.
— The tandoori chicken. The best I have EVER had, it even beats out Café Spice’s offering. Melted in my mouth. The only downside to this is that everyone else apparently agreed with me — I only got a couple of small pieces because they kept running out.
— The kheer. Delicious, with the right consistency. It’s hard for a lot of Indian places to make kheer without it either turning into rice flavored water or wallpaper paste, but Akbar gets it right here.
Just Okay.
— The chicken tikka masala. Good, but doesn’t hold a candle to Café Spice’s version.
— The vegetable pakora. Okay flavor but it was kind of tough. I probably wouldn’t choose this again.
— The lentils. Not bad, good flavor, but they’re not my favorite dish.
In short, we’d definitely come here again for the buffet. It’s a great option when we don’t feel like driving to Hunt Valley. Price was decent at 9.95 (during the week).
Get that tandoori chicken while it lasts.

You can always order out or decide to eat in but whatever I decide to do, I’ve never been let down. As you descend down into Akbar, you’ll find intimate tables close to each other and I’ve always had attentive service. If you are staving, I recommend ordering a shurat appetizer because everything is prepared fresh and may take a few minutes.
I try to venture out from my favorite dishes and it all seems to be pretty good. Last time I tried a chicken dish and the lamb meatballs that came with a really good yogurt sauce. It was steamy as they brought it out to the table and I almost didn’t get a good snapshot of the dishes :-)