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Everyone knows about this place. Anyone
who is anything on the food scene in Ahmedabad has known about this place. Why
so? Because of the extensive publicity and marketing that was undertaken by the
owners and promoters. From inviting foodbloggers, instagramers and reviewers in
the tens to radio announcements to distribution of free goodies to having the
popular chef (who owns the restaurant) come down to Ahmedabad, these people
left no stone unturned. But to no avail! Why? Because in the end, all that
matters is food. Good food, which sadly they overlooked.
The décor is very loud and
flashy. Something your kids or teenagers might like but is certainly not
suitable for adult gatherings. And you’ll even see that kids and teenagers are
their target customers from the way they present their dishes, in toy trucks
i.e.! The seating however is
comfortable. The crockery, again flashy colors in plastic. Everything about
this place is loud. The staff is still to be trained about the menu because
they don’t seem to have a clue about half of the things that they have in
there. But they are polite so at least that’s good. It is a semi open kitchen
so you can peek inside to see what’s going on in there, but you won’t really
get a clear idea.
Coming to the menu, I haven’t
seen any place in town that has taken fusion foods to such levels and I don’t
mean that in a good way. It is okay to fuse two different cuisines or dishes together
to come up with an exciting new formula but things don’t work out well when you
try to over do that and it was quite evident just by reading the menu. But let
me explain this with a demonstration. They have a burger that is called “NRI
Pav Bhaji Burger” and the description says that this burger tops their must try
list! So we went for that and from what I assumed was that it would be a burger
that would have a patty made out of the bhaji of pav bhaji or just the
ingredients would be the same or they would have simply added pav bhaji masala
to a regular patty along with the veggies to make it taste like the bhaji. But
all that was thrown to the wind when we saw what arrived at our table! First of
all it wasn’t a burger at all! IT WAS A HOTDOG. And a very weird looking
hotdog. As to why it was weird-looking, read on, the monstrosity does not end
here. The bun of the hotdog wasn’t toasted. All we could see was cheese. Weird
looking orange and yellow cheese! So we had to dig in to see what it had
inside. And we tried to lift the bun but that seemed to be rather impossible as
the bun wasn’t toasted, so it had gone all soggy and limp from the hot bhaji
that was poured onto it. As if that wasn’t enough, they that poured on hot
cheese sauce which I can’t stress enough, was very yellow! So with our spoons
we tried having a hotdog and all we could taste was salt and cheese. As to its
weird appearance, they had stuck a chain of long banana wafers onto one side
making it look like a scale-backed stegosaurus, not to mention, the part of the
chips that was stuck inside had gone limp and they did not help with the cheese
overkill at all.
If you’re still not convinced, we
even ordered “Flaming hot curried noodles”. Appearance wise the hotdog and this
dish felt like conjoined twins except one of them had bread in it. So again
there was excess cheese and something that looked like Punjabi gravy on top of
that. We took one bite and all we could think of was paneer makhani gravy.
Because that is how it tasted. The noodles were cooked perfectly but how does
it matter. The cheese sauce did not go with the rest of the contents. And when
we were nearing the end of the dish, we found a large lump of mashed potatoes
sitting right in the center. So this dish had French, Chinese and Indian
elements along with bread sticks and crispy fried Spinach on top. None of it made
any sense together. And if you like anything and everything that is dipped or
drenched in cheese sauce then this is THE place for you! Good luck with the
sodium intake.
If I still haven’t made my point,
they are selling their brand in the name of fries and poutine. So obviously we
ordered one and a tiny cone was given to us filled to the brim with fries and
what looked like fritters of some sort latched onto a wooden ice cream stick.
We really liked those fritter balls until we found a wooden shard inside of it.
Why? Because they had broken 1/3 rd of the wooden stick to get rid of its
smooth round edge so that the fritter would stick to it better. Well I don’t
know what to say. Also, all the sauces were added just on the top so by the
time we reached the mid-section of the cone, all we were left with were fries.
When we suggested that they should either toss the fries before packing them up
in the cone or add more layers of sauce in between the fries, they said they
cannot do that as the paper cone might get soggy. Because that’s what the
customers are really worried about! Keeping their paper cones intact! I don’t
even want to say anything about the “doreamon pasta” or the “Italian rajma” or
the “fanta santa soda”or the “teenage mutant ninja pasta”. We did have two
drinks namely coke and paan shake. The shake was decent. The Korean “I” cream
which was conceptually very wrong and nothing like the actual Korean dessert
but I guess they were trying to fuse some other cuisine into that.
We also have pictures of human
hair that we found in the food which I have put up here and on zomato. Not to
mention how disgusting that is. When informed, the lady there did apologize in
a manner that they did not really care and kept saying that this cannot be, all
the chefs are wearing hair nets suggesting as if we had added the hair to the
food ourselves. I wanted to say so many things to that lady manager then and
there but her demeanor made me realize that it wont have any effect on her. So
I let it go.
The PR team of the popular chef
got it all wrong! Had they promoted the place as a new restaurant for the
kiddos, it would have been great, but they did not. They want to see mediocre
food with excess of cheese to the crowds. Well, I don’t think that is
acceptable. If you are in fact taking your kids there, do make sure food does
not have any wooden shards or hair or any other such thing in their food. And the
initial rating and reviews by all these invitees might be good but as the weeks
go by and I read the latest reviews about the service and food by the new
customers, my notions about the place stand firm. Such a waste!
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I don't think anyone would go there after reading this! 😂
ReplyDeleteThat would be the sensible thing to do
ReplyDelete