This review is based on a complimentary dinner hosted as part of Zomato foodies meetup organized by Team Zomato on June 25th 2015.
The Ambience – 4/5
This place offers a decent yet a unique dimly lit atmosphere with decorated lamps accentuating the setup complemented by interesting images on the walls.
Overall the seating is pretty comfortable and the environment conducive for an interesting randaevouz with fellow foodies.
They had music playing in the background and it wasn’t loud at all which always helps in striking a conversation over food and what better time to have long conversations than in the company of fellow Zomatians 🙂
The Food – 4/5
I can live with bad service, poor or non existent ambience but my food needs to be top notch as I belong to the live to eat categories and I certainly wasn’t disappointed with the quality of the food fare.
First striking thing that came off was the immaculate plating of dishes. The plating was done delightfully and it definitely enhanced the preparation. Usually more often than not I forget to click and eat first but in this instance I clicked and clicked from different angles to capture and do justice to the presentation with my rather mundane smartphone camera. The pictures still don’t do justice completely but I hope they give a fair idea of what I am talking about!
On offer was a set menu comprising of drinks, appetizers, main course and desserts. Everyone was ofcourse free to order outside of set menu but the idea was to have a taste of atleast each item from the menu.
Drinks – Mocktail – Pina Colada – 3.5/5, was pretty ok and proved a nice accompaniment with the appetizers. There was ofcourse wine and beer available in the menu but I have been a non drinker all my life so went for the mocktails.
Appetizers – 4.5/5
Chicken yakitori with unagi – 4/5, this is ofcourse a Japanese skewered chicken preparation with soy sauce and that’s what it was. For people who like this variant usually shouldn’t have much to complain about, the pieces were not chewy but probably could have just been just a bit more tender to score a perfect 5/5 but it was good.
Smoked Salmon Mousse – 3.5/5, now this was my first experience of a mousse which wasn’t a dessert and I would say I kind of found it alright but I liked the other appetizers better.
Lamb Peshawari kebabs – 5/5, there was literally nothing wrong with this preparation and IMHO this was the star of the appetizers. This is coming from someone who has grown up in Northern parts of India like Lucknow, Agra and Delhi and I can vouch the quality and taste does complete justice to the authentic mughlai and North west frontier cuisines.
The most important thing about a shami kebab like preparation is to maintain tenderness of the meat when it’s being chargrilled. I have seen many a place make an absolute mockery of Kebabs with the end product being hard but thankfully this one was top class.
There was an starter each comprising of pork and beef but I had to let go of those as I don’t quite eat those variants.
Main course – 3.5/5
Cajun blackened Rawas with turmeric and Saffron butter – 4/5, for me this was the best dish of the main course. It was a good fish preparation with a tinge of Saffron and had a smoked buttery flavor.
Fresh herb infused roast lamb – 3.5/5, this was pretty good and went really well with the tomato mash. I infact was guilty of combining the tomato mash with the fish and it struck a camaraderie of sorts 🙂
Swiss cheese stuffed chicken breast red wine jus – 2.5/5, on the positive side the stuffing if Swiss cheese in chicken was innovative and it went well as a combination.
Now coming to the negative side, the chicken was a bit hard to cut and was somewhat bland in portions.
Desserts – 4/5
Ferraro Rocher pie – 5/5, this chocolatey pastry like piece was the star of desserts for me and I absolutely loved it. This was one of the best desserts I have had in a while.
Mango Mascarpone Cheese cake – 5/5, now who doesn’t love cheesecakes? Especially when it comes in a mango flavor as well, this was absolutely delectable as well and was as soft and fresh as you could ever hope to get. Needless to say I absolutely loved it!
Lemon Cointreau Sorbet – This was way too sour for me and after the first couple of bites I just couldn’t finish the rest of it and anyway I was pretty happy with the rest of the desserts so I didn’t quite come back to it.
The overall experience.
I can say it was a double whammy of sorts to have some good quality food in the company of other experienced foodies, warm hospitality of the restaurant along with the courteous Team Zomato.
It was an evening filled with taste, never ending conversations on food, finding out each other’s recommended places of food and just talking about anything and everything remotely related to food food and food 🙂
biryanimaster 