Richmond Hotel

By now you know the drill B and me leaving late from office ..Food at home not at all interesting ( channa dal ;) ) B's tummy rumbling so we decided to stop at the first restaurant we see and that happened to be Richmond Hotel .They were having a Chettinad festival till the 16th of this month Buffet for 199 + taxes.Now I'm not an expert on Chettinad food but I do know that its very spicy so for people who cant tolerate spicy food this is not for you.
The Ambiance of the restaurant is really nothing great... nice and clean and all but nothing that stands out.
The buffet was really quite good they had a lot of variety in veg and the vegetables and curries they used were really unique and tasty .This was a cuisine I hadn't had before and it really did tantalise all my senses.In non vegetarian they had fried chicken ,a chicken gravy and mutton biryani which was not bad .I particularly liked the dahi vada it was soft and crispy all at once! :)
The dessert spread was not exceptional they had seviya,fruits,a cake and maybe something else which i forget.
Bottom line: A pleasant value for money meal not sure if Ill specifically go back but if your passing by its worth a shot!

Ridiculous!!!

It was just after lunch and i was just browsing thorugh rediff news and I came across this really ridiculous peice of news.Let me let you read it before u hear my comments on it.

Please dont miss this line "However, the guardians insisted that a 31,000-pound lump sum each got to quit Mumbai's slums was not enough for houses WITH POOLS." I mean COME ONNNNNN u have lived your whole life in a slum and now u want a POOL??? Dont overdo it !!! The man has given your children a trust fund for heavens sake !! Their future is brighter than it has ever been dont ruin it with your unreasonalbe greed and for gods sake send them to school!!

Atria Review

Ok another late night meeting for B(my husband) and another jobless evening for me at work (I know this statement is very contradicting) Lots of work to do but no mood to do it :) so here I am giving you my review about Atria my favourite chinese hotel .As its my favourite my rating might be a little biased but what the heck :) I really like this place its like a 4 star hotel but its very reasonably priced It has both Chinese(Silk Winds) and Indian restaurants (Tijori)and both are really good but as you remember B is a big Chinese freak so Silk Winds is the one i frequent so im going to talk about that.

Ambiance: Ambiance is really nice its like a nice classy restaurant with nice big round tables and flowing tablecloths and big heavy cushioned chairs so I would give it a 8.

Service:Service really used to be much better but as its getting quite popular sometimes service can be a little slow.Oh ya I forgot to mention ! if its your birthday (actually even if it isn't;) ) if you mention it to the waiter they will get u a nice big complimentary cake along with the birthday song and the works! (very few restaurants I know do that any more)So for that I would give it a 8 as well.

Food: Well food I would give it a 9.5.There are some dishes on the menu which are my family's favourites like

Starters I recommend

Lemon Chicken ( this is slightly sweetish crispy chicken) if you like lemon chicken try it out here!My father in law adorrrrres this :)

Crispy Konji Lamb (yummy small crisp pieces of lamb )

Main Course

Everything's good but i would suggest you stick to the Chinese menu

Dessert

They make the Best homemade Kulfi here.Its to die for !

Value for Money : This will have to be a 10 ! I mean for the ambiance and food this place is unbelievably reasonable.

Location:Its on Palace road close to Vidhana Souddha for more details google!I cant do everrrrything for you now can I ?

Aromas of China

Hubby dearest had a late night meeting yesterday so I was left twiddling my thumbs and clocking a few extra hours in office yippie! And when we finally left it was around 9ish and I was hungry and irritable so we decided to eat out and went to Aromas of China as he is a huge fan of chinese food (me, not so much I would prefer tandoori chicken anyday!)Ok while I'm on the topic let me review the restaurant.
Ambience: Quite nice actually although they do this extremely strange thing with the curtains where in they have horizontal curtains going through a number of loops in the ceiling!Have added a picture so that you get a better idea :) I would give it a 8 on 10 despite the strange curtains ;)

Service: 8 again
Food : Food was good no doubt very authentic chinese food so again its an 8.
Value for money:This place is expensive I mean for 2 bowls of soup,a chicken fried rice and a chicken gravy we ended up shelling 1000 bucks.So I would rate it as 6.
Nice place to go to but if you want awesome chinese ,great ambiance and value for money I would recommend Atria Hotel.Will have a separate blog for the Chinese at Atria :)

Do Knot Disturb!

Well we were sitting at home twiddling our thumbs on a friday night (I know I know how boring!!) when we decided to see which movie is on on TATA Sky showcase and it was Do Knot Disturb so we went ahead and watched it :) its a total timepass movie worth a lot of laughs (what do u expect with Govinda and Ritesh Deshmukh :)).The movie was actually go quite well until the director ruined it by making all the actors talk in a womans voice for aorund 15 minutes at a stretch !! This turned the movie from entertaining to annoying !I mean imagine having to sit through Govinda and Ritesh squeaking away !! Nothing to rave about but an enjoyable way to spend an evening.My in laws recently ordered TataSky and i must say for retired people or housewives who watch a lot of television its a well worth buy .I mean you get to record your serials and the movies on showcase are actually really new ones for eg Main Aur Mrs Khanna came on TataSky like 2 weeks after it released! (btw i HATED that movie especially since i had paid 500 bucks to watch it in a theatre on the day of its release :( )

The hunt is on for a nice pair of Curtains !!

When you are staying with your extended family like I am there will always be a struggle to try to add a piece of your individual style into the house or at least your room.This was exactly where I was coming from when I decided to buy myself a new pair of curtains.Something that defines me as a person not to say that the curtains I currently have were not good but they were a little dull for my liking.So off I went to commercial street on a Sunday afternoon searching for the perfect set of curtains but I guess yesterday was just not my day .For one because of rajotsava most shops were close and the only shop open (Noble Furnishings) was such a rip off !! They were charging me 4,500 for a pair of curtains and it wasn't even anything great!! So I came back home depressed and curtainless but at least i realised that I'm not going to be satisfied with just a simple pair of curtains I now wanted the double set the one which comes with a transparent pretty inner curtain and the thick outer ones :) My husband is petrified that with every new shop I explore my choices increase and so will the budget :) But hey u don't go around buying new curtains very often ;) So I'm going to window shop and take my time :)

Food Food oh lovely Food!

As an old Bangalorean there a few distinct restaurants that actually define bangalore for me .Like for example you cannot dare to leave Hyderabad without having the heavenly hyderabadi biryani from paradise!!

Ok the first place that comes to mind is this small distinct sweet shop which has been around for god only knows how many years Bhagatram Sweets on Commercial street !They make the best gulab jamuns in the world .Their gulab jamuns are more oval than round and they just melt in your mouth ( my mouth is watering as I write :) )The next time you're in commercial street do yourself a favour and try it out its amazing !

Next is this small little take out counter in John Market called Fanoos .Fanoos is extremely famous for its beef rolls ( they also have chicken and mutton which are equally good).If your a vegetarian then this is not the place for you.Fanoos really caters to gluttons like me, they have their rolls in various sizes (Jumbo,Rambo ,Sambo ) based on the number of sheekh kababs in it.


I will keep adding to this list in my next few blogs.For now goto go!