Women in draped silks or soft clay-colored cotton tunics, some embroidered with tiny mirrors. Extended families toting baby seats and plastic-lined bags of infant equipment. A line forms along the buffet table, lunchers of myriad sizes, heights, weights and ages, every one of them of Indian descent. Langley Park has become the hub of Indian lunch buffets. The newest, as well as the most elaborate, is at Tiffin.
Lunch time keeps the bread maker in perpetual motion over the deep tandoor oven.
He stretches a ball of dough much as a pizza chef does and slaps it onto the inside wall of the tandoor, where in moments it blisters and browns. The hot, flat bread is cut into four wedges and delivered in a basket. These thin, crackly batons must be eaten hot, before their rice-dough wrappers soften. Tiffin is an upscale spinoff of Udupi Palace , the bargain-priced vegetarian restaurant down the street. So far, it's the most glamorous of the neighborhood's steadily increasing supply of Indian restaurants.