Meat at Vegetarian Restaurant (Arya Bhavan)

I wanted to relay a rather unsettling dining experience I had this weekend. On Saturday night, I went to Arya Bhavan, a vegetarian Indian restaurant on Devon Ave. They have a fantastic buffett on weekends and I've had great food there in the past.

At the end of our meal, my partner asked if I had tried one of the dishes. I hadn't, so I reached a fork over and stabbed at a piece of food on his plate. I couldn't pierce it with my fork and tried my knife. Again, I couldn't cut it. Looking closely at it, we realized it was a bone!!
My partner picked it up and pulled muscle fiber away from the bone - it was chicken.

Initially, we weren't going to say anything, figuring the manager/proprieter would deny it. In hindsight, I really wish we'd kept the bone. Our table was cleared and when we paid the bill, the woman asked how everything was. My partner said, "Well, to be honest, we found a chicken bone in one of the dishes."
The woman laughed, said that it couldn't have been chicken and that "we didn't know what we were eating." But her denial seemed rather forced. She didn't act shocked or surprised. She just laughed it off, which made me think she knew chicken was used in the kitchen.

I'm wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience there, or at other vegetarian places. It made me wonder how many restaurants may serve only vegetables, but use meat, or meat-based broths when making the food.

Not being strictly vegetarian, I wasn't too upset by all this, but felt that others should know about my experience.

thanks
md

Arya Bhavan
2508 W. Devon Ave.
Chicago, IL 60659
773-274-5800

Maybe some of the staff eats meat, or maybe they were catering something and it got in there by mistake? That is upsetting, but I'm willing to write it off as a one-time mistake.

I love Arya Bhavan but have been wondering lately if it might be going downhill... My partner and I were there on Friday night. No chicken bones but the food was not as memorable as it used to be. I think they've toned down the spices in everything, and they weren't making utthapams or the amazing pav bhaji (when do they serve that, anyway? I guess you could special-order it, but it always seems like a shame to not get the buffet).

I would have to go back again before saying anything definitive, though.

I went to Arya Bhavan tonight with my wife (Christmas dinner...we couldn't be with family since we're flying to Shanghai tomorrow). We had been there one time before (roughly 6 months ago) and rather enjoyed it even though business was slow.

Tonight, business was even slower, while other spots on the main drag were filled. The food was okay until we got to the samosas, which we had to wait on after the overeager hostess built them up quite a bit. Immediately after she brought them out and told us she had almost forgotten about them, a first bite was pretty good, followed by a second bite that hit a frozen center of the reasonably tasty center. Same case for my wife's serving, and probably the other two servings she brought out...

If they really are serving frozen food, that's one thing...but I know for sure that they seem desperate for customers, and they only have fancy napkins on the first table nearest the window.

Anyhow, after tonight, I got a pretty bad vibe (aka, the foodie in me felt violated) and I probably won't go back there unless something really changes. I can't believe this place still has 2 R's from the Reader.[/i]

We ate there for Christmas dinner as well, and a few bites into our plates from the buffet had us contemplating paying up and going somewhere else. Instead, we went back for a second, more punishing round, in the hopes of an improvement, but it was all for naught.

However, in our case, the samosas were a definite highlight. The only one, in fact.

I wish I had read this yesterday before going out.
I was on a coupon high, so we went down Devon to use an Entertainment Book coupon for our dinner. Everyone in Chicago was on Devon that night, and Mr. Pie doesn't like crowds, so when we came upon Arya Bhavan we went right in. The place was empty. And I mean EMPTY. Unfortunately, I was in the mood for red meat—goat, lamb, beef, I didn't care as long as it was previously alive. They were taking apart the buffet, but if we really wanted it, they'd keep it up. We said nah, we'll look at the menu. It was then that I realized that this place was strictly vegetarian, but since it was so dead in there I felt guilty leaving, so I said we'd order some appetizers and go somewhere else for the ruminant-filled meal.

After 15 minutes of seeing at least three different people go in and out of the kitchen empty-handed, a few random Indian folks say they'd return in 15 minutes for an order, and the host continue to take it easy in a seat nearer the back, we were getting impatient. Mr. Pie asked how much longer it would be. Keep in mind, we ordered samosas (3 pieces) and idli (2 pieces). I don't know how, at 8:30 at night, these are not ready to throw in the fryer/steamer and serve. My impatience was not helped by the coffee I had on empty stomach an hour earlier, which was just making me jittery and anxious.
Around 9:15, about 30 minutes after we arrived, the host came by with B&B plates and silverware, which he counted out for us while handling them to a disturbing degree. 5 more minutes and a woman, who I assumed was the owner, came out to apologize for the wait (they had a large order to prepare). She gave us 10 inch plates and more silverware, right on top of the others.
5 minutes later we got our samosas, one of which is barely warm, and idli. The samosas were very good. Not worth-the-40-minute-wait good, but whatever, I was about to stick my face in the remaining steam table offerings and snarf away in the style of pie-eating contests. (You don't have goat? I will become goat!) The idli were not as great as the ones I had at Mysore Woodlands, but they were all right.
Paying was another ordeal. Mr. Pie went to go wash his hands and I stood up, put on my jacket, slung my purse over my shoulder...and the host saw all this, and sits back down! I was pretty pissed at this point, so I went up to the register to pay. He couldn't find our check, so he had to get the owner. Then he had to write it up himself. Despite there being a register and three calculators on the counter, he decided to do all the math, including the tax, by hand, which took another 5 minutes. Then there's nothing in the cash drawer but a tray of 20s and a tray of singles. I give him a 20, all I have on me, and he can't figure out which slot to put it in. I mistakenly ask for $7 back, which regrettably came out to an undeserved 25-30% tip, but of course there are no fives or more than two singles in the drawer!! So he had to drag out the owner again, who had to get keys from a closet, then open another drawer...
We left at 9:50. No one came to pick up that "large order" the entire time, and no more than two other couples came to eat. If they were that busy, why didn't they either close or offer buffet only??