Chennai Restaurant Reviews

Batlivala & Khanabhoy

Sometimes we end up in a place where we literally have no clue of the cuisine, our visit today to Batlivala & Khanabhoy was one such experience. In the end, did we enjoy the food or not? Of course, we did! My co-brother’s family came over for the weekend and it was already decided that they would be taking us out for lunch and it was on him. I was asked to do the honours of choosing the place. Immediately scanned my to-do list and this place came up. I was a bit confused if we should opt for Meena Tai or this place and we decided to go with the latter.


Again, this area is not new to me, so quite familiar with the location and reached without problems. This place had a valet parking and that was comfortable. As we entered, we spotted the ground floor was empty, but had a nice ambience. It looked lovely, so managed to click a picture. The next adjacent room had colorful windows, so clicked that too. We entered into a nice place and the table was comfortable in one corner with good lighting.
As I mentioned earlier, since we were new to the cuisine, we asked the waiter to help us choose the dishes and he gladly obliged. We had a mix of vegetarians, some with preference of chicken and some who liked seafood, so ordered accordingly.
We ordered the following for starters –
Suran na Cutlets – This was a yam cutlet and tasted pretty good.
Chicken Russian Pattice – Wonderful, loved this. crispy outer, but soft inside. I loved the slightly-sweet dip that came along with this.
Patra ni Machchi – Going by the looks, it was a bit similar to the Paaturi from Petuk. Fish wrapped in banana leaf and steam cooked. I dont eat seafood, but the rest of them felt it probably would have been better with a little more spice. With the mayonnaise, it was okay it seems.
Mamaji’s Prawn Kebabs – The name was catchy 🙂 so ordered it. This was also good, kids enjoyed this.
Basically all the dishes were very mildly spiced, and probably that’s a characteristic of Parsi cuisine.
For the main course, we ordered the following –
Roti/Chappathi – This was normal chappathi, was soft and pretty good. A basket has 4 pieces, and we finally ended up ordering 2 more pieces of it.
Guava ni Curry – I have had similar gravy in Amdavadi, and this is probably common in Gujarati cuisine. So it wasn’t completely new to me when I heard that the gravy was made with Guava pieces in it.
Chicken Dhansak, Brown Rice and Kachuber combo – This was wonderful. The brown rice had a slight tinge of sweetness, and I’m having Dhansak for the first time, it tasted like Dal/Shorba with chicken in it. It was flavorsome, and the chicken pieces were soft and We all shared a bit of it.
Vegetable Pulao – This was visually more appealing that how it actually tasted. It was on a bed of gravy and it had to be served with the correct mix. When I tasted a bit of it, it felt high on sweetness quotient, but otherwise nothing wrong with it.
Finally, decided to have desserts and quickly ordered these –
Santra ni Kheer – This came in a chaai glass, it was actually rich kheer topped with nuts and orange beads and it was tasty.
Lagan nu Custard – This was more like the vattilappam types, a baked custard made with milk, egg sugar and cardamom. This was also wonderful.
3 Malai Kulfi – Kulfi was very rich, kids loved it and I tasted a bit of it!
Overall, food was different but tasty. We liked what we ate, and it would be wonderful to try more stuff from their menu. Service was good throughout, but in the end, they brought the desserts without clearing the plates after the main course. The waiter tried to place it on the table, and then clear, but I had to firmly ask them to clear it before serving the desserts. The waiters were too busy to even say a goodbye when we left. Not that it mattered much, but that would have made a slight positive influence in deciding on a revisit to this place. The lunch set us back by little less than 3.5K and was worth the entire experience.
Anyway, good place and good food, I would visit again, if not immediately!

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