Infinite thoughts

Over past few years, eating out has become very common. With the rising number of restaurants all around, Meghana and I keep on trying different places from time to time. And we are seeing some common problem across the restaurants. Lack of good service is the most recurring problem. Recently we visited Melange by Four Seasons  and had a not so good experience. The person looking after our table, was completely lax and lacking basic hospitality skills. When there's a buffet, customer asks for soup and starters, it is a common sense to serve soup first followed by starters. But no. We were served the starters first and then soup. The starters had higher quantities of salt and other spices as compared to the soup, which made the soup taste absolutely bland. As usual Meghana called up the manager. The manager and the waiter were perplexed - both of them had no clue why we were upset. After much deliberation amongst themselves, finally manager approached. We explained the proble...

After a long time, Meghana and I decided to go to Barbeque Nation @ Deccan on Saturday afternoon. And unfortunately it turned out to be a not-so-great experience.  We felt really lucky when we were given a table in just 5 minutes as against the usual unavailability at Barbeque Nation , both at DG and at Sayaji. The seating was on the outside covered area, but at least they had those overhead sprinklers for cooling the air. The kebabs included 1 Mushroom, 1 Soya, 1 Pineapple, 1 Paneer along with a Tikki and some preparation of half-baked potatos. The peel of the potato wasn't cooked enough and was spoiling the entire taste. Salt was overriding the taste of pineapple kebab. Paneer had gone hard. After having eaten the Paneer dishes at multiple places, it was obvious that the Paneer that was being served wasn't good and we had to tell it to the staff there. The staff asked their chef to talk to us. We told the experience to the chef and he said he'll get us better prepa...

It was time to celebrate Meghana 's Birthday and after much deliberation we headed to Southindies - a high-end south indian restaurant in Pune. I had visited it a while back but decided to visit it again to cater to Birthday girl's with :) We started with Thakkali chaaru i.e. tomato soup flavored with ginger and curry leaves and Kaya kooralu chaaru which is mixed veg soup flavored with coriander and garlic. Kaya Kooralu Chaaru was very tasty and brought good taste for the dinner. Along with soup we also ordered "podi tossed idlis" which were essentially small idlies tossed in gunpowder; "Mokka Junna miriyalu fry" made from babycorn coated with bason flour. Gunpowder being very strong in taste, the idlis were tasting only gunpowder and unfortunately it also made the babycorn taste bland. We decided to try standard veg stew ( Kai Kari Stew) and appam as a safe option along with "mirapakaya pattani curry" along with Vishalakshi Roti. Veg Stew an...

Some recent experiences. Except for one, rest are pretty good. Domino's Pizza : Few days back, I came to know that Domino's has started with online ordering system. With my recent adventures of online shopping, there was nothing to stop me and I ended up in ordering online. The experience was pretty smooth and hassle free. Given that it was first time, Meghana confirmed the order by calling up the concerned outlet. Incidentally, we checked the watch exactly at 30th minute and realized that the pizza hadn't reached us yet. And then it was hard to stop Meghana to call up the outlet to check what's happening with our pizza. To our surprise, when she mentioned that it is already past 30 mins, the outlet manager was kind/professional enough to agree to keep the "Domino's promise" and promptly asked us to call him back when the delivery boy reaches. The Delivery boy also gracefully returned some 300 bucks, no questions asked. The wonderful thing happened af...

A pure veg Italian restaurant, that's how I got introduced to Little Italy . Not that I go only to pure veg restaurant, but pure veg restaurant guaranteed a lot of choice in veg only and it wa definitely enticing. I called them up for reservations and happily they accepted the booking, only to realize later that the reservation was not really required. But the reservation assured us a sofa seating which we prefer considering that Mrunmay is more comfortable on sofa than a chair. The restaurant is located next to pune central on Ganesh khind road. The building seems to be not so occupied nd in fact you may get misled as one can not see the entrance so easily due to the scaffolding in place. We were warmly greeted by the receptionist and were taken to the table with sofa sitting. The menu offered a large variety of items from soups to desserts in Italian as well as Mexican food. We resorted to Italian food. Veg Soup Passato di Verdure was a perfect start for the course. Followed by ...

I happened to visit the "The Place" next to West End, Arora Towers for my lunch on Saturday afternoon. While reading the menu card, I read that this was the inventor of the food type "sizzlers" and it was mainly invented to keep the food hot until you are done! The menu card had written the history of this food type, starting from 1963 till date and how it traversed various places before "The Place" was started. I like the sizzlers served here and have come here often. Yesterday we ordered "Tandoori Paneer Shashlik" and some "Pram Gramaldi"(?). When the hot plates arrived, I felt that the quantity has been reduced and we were wondering whether to order something more. Fortunately we waited until the plate was finished and we realized that we're actually Full!! There have been multiple outlets in Pune now which serve the Sizzlers - the famous ones those I know of include "Yana", "Kobe's". Out of this Yana on F...

An expensive place - this is the only impression I am carrying after visiting this place . Cinnamon Spice is a Punjabi outlet of the famous " Season's Apartment " in Aundh. Even though the live band was mediocre, the food was great. Ambience was not exceptional, in fact I got a feeling that this restarant was an afterthought in the whole scheme and the parking space has been used to setup a few tables. My Rating: 2; I may visit the place only for food, but only if I am in a mood to splurge :)

While commuting from my office back to home, one day I noticed this new restaurant opened on the road to Karnatak Highschool, just before CDSS. From outside it looked pretty big and attractive enough to at least try it once. And so I was there on last Sunday, with a strong wish to have some good Punjabi food. And this restaurant dismayed me heavily. Here's the story: We ordered the sweet corn Veg soup and their supposedly "special" starters - "Tiranga Kabab". The soup was thin like water and the vegetables were not cooked properly. Then came on a huge plate, the kababs. The plate had more quantity of salad than the kababs and half of which the waiter just took away. The kababs, all of them were on sweeter side of the taste, also were completely dry. With every other bite, I was having a sip of water. In the hope to have some some nice Paneer dish, order was placed for Kadai Paneer, along with Dal Tadaka and Bundi Raita. The Paneer was pretty nice and soft, but a...

Very good taste; good service; adequate menu and nice ambiance - this how Xia could be described. Located off Karve Road, Near Sharada Center, this is definitely a new addition in the list of destinations for Oriental food lovers. Priced at an affordable rate (Approx Rs. 250-300 per head for 3 course veg meal) Xia offers a different taste for it's food items. To name a food - Thai Curry (Red/Yellow), Burmese Noodles, Indonasian Rice in the main course, Veg Tempura, Crispy Corn Chilly Pepper for starters. The restaurent has two storied seating arrangement, one is outdoors and the other closed one. Outdoor place is very close to the road and hence one may find it pretty noisy. If you want somewhat peaceful meal, choose the other one. The seating arrangement on first floor is much better than the ground floor and if you are a group of 7-8 persons, upstairs would be the right place for you. Overall, it's a good place to visit, definitely more than once :)