Vatan

"There’s a place in Kips Bay where moderation is as extinct as woolly mammoths and Myspace. A place where you can sit in a mural-painted room under a thatched roof, and stare at a plastic frog in a wishing well until you’ve consumed as much gulab jamun and silky masala chai as you can fit in your body. It’s called Vatan, an amazing Gujarati-style prix-fixe restaurant where you pay $39 for three vegetarian courses, and unlimited refills. As is popular in Gujarat and other Northern Indian states, each course comes on a big metal thali with eight to ten different dishes in their own compartments. After you finish your thali, a server will ask if you want more of anything before the next course. It’s essentially an all-you-can-eat buffet in a room that looks like the set of a Tony-nominated play. I always get seconds of sev puri, ragda patis, and chole." - hannah albertine

"Vatan is essentially an all-you-can-eat buffet where you never have to stand up to get seconds, thirds, or fourths of mini samosas and chana masala. At this completely vegetarian Gujarati-style spot in Kips Bay, you’ll pay roughly $45 for three courses, and you can ask for as many helpings as you want. Each course comes on a thali with about 12 different dishes: our favorites are the fried potato dumplings, the bhaji with spinach and corn, and the sweet gulab jamun. Even without the prix fixe situation, eating here feels special—your table will have a thatched roof over it, and you’ll sit next to a wishing well and a massive tree." - neha talreja, carina finn koeppicus, bryan kim

"A single multi-course, all-you-can-eat, vegetarian (and kosher) Gujarati meal is the focus of Vatan, a Murray Hill fixture for decades owned by Prashant Shah. To make the meal more enjoyable, the entire premises is made to look like an Indian Village, where seating can be had inside a small building, on a balcony, or beneath a spreading banyan tree. Pace yourself, so as to have an appetite when you reach the dessert of yogurt flavored with saffron, called shrikhand." - Robert Sietsema

"At Vatan, you and a group of six to eight can grab a big booth with its own thatched roof and have a fun AYCE vegetarian meal for $45 per person. You can ask your server to bring a refill of anything you finish, so you won't have everyone scooting over every 10 minutes to grab more mini samosas, sev puri, and chana masala from a buffet station. There’s also a wishing well, so you can make a birthday wish for a bigger apartment on your way out." - bryan kim, neha talreja, kenny yang

"Walk into Vatan and find yourself in a reproduction of a Gujarati village, with a thatched-roof building, a banyan tree canopy with tables underneath, and period movie posters. Waiters, too, are dressed in appropriate costumes. Sit back and relax: There’s nothing to order, just a succession of vegetarian dishes in a prix-fixe meal that include freshly made pooris that almost float like balloons, curried vegetables, fritters, and other miscellaneous fare." - Eater Staff