We were three families for dinner at this restaurant. I have heard about this place in the food groups and this was on my to-do list for quite sometime. My wife’s two sisters came over to our place with their family, and we decided to go to an evening show movie at Woodlands followed by dinner. A few of them were particular about South-Indian and this place immediately came to my mind. I called up the restaurant to reserve a table. I told them we would be coming around 21:45 hrs after watching a movie and I was told that reservation wasn’t required.
We proceeded straight to the restaurant and reached roughly around that time. The restaurant is located in Haddows road, a little past Shasthri Bhavan, on the left side of the road. It is prominent and difficult to miss unless you are on the extreme right side of the road. There is valet parking, and it is convenient. As we climbed the stairs, there was a smell of sacred ash (vibhuti) as in temples 🙂 Luckily, It disappeared after we entered the restaurant. The ambience was neatly done and classy. I liked the interiors overall. They have an exhaustive list of items in the menu, starting from south-indian, north-indian, and oriental/chinese too. Each section had a nice combination of starters and main-course. The prices looked reasonable at the first instance 🙂
Now coming to the food, we decided to mix and match and wanted to taste a lot of items. We started with a Murungakai soup for a few, and Sweet corn soup for a few others. Both the soups were good, murungakkai soup was just warm. I would have liked it a bit hotter. Taste was very good. We ordered vazhaipoo vadai, and baby corn fry which had a fancy tamil name. Vazhaipoo vadai was ok, but the baby corn was not very impressive both looks-wise and taste-wise, a tad salty and an unnecessary black color. The paneer tikka was good with three sauces to go with it. The main course was again a combination of items. We tasted the neer dosai with Ullithael (a vaththa kozhambu with small onions, and slightly sweet), and it was very good. ‘Vaasanai dosai’ was a mere chappathi, couldnt make out anything more from that. Krishnavillasam masala dosai was not as big as the name is, but was tasty. It was more like the kind that you get in and around Bangalore, with podi smeared all over and with masala in it. Idiyappam with vegetable stew was very good, idly was ok, Samba-puttu with kadala kari was very good. My son wanted Shanghai Fried Rice and that was awesome. Red Thai curry was a disappointment, did not match what I had in mind. Overall, the food was tasty and as I said, the prices looked reasonable at first look, but the quantity is little, especially neer dosais, where you could eat three or four easily. So at the end of the day, for good eaters, it turns out to be a reasonably expensive place, but I would say worth it totally.
The desserts were equally good. We ordered Aththipazham payasam (Dates) and it was very unique, nice flavor and tasty. The Fried ice-cream was the best of all, but three pieces in a plate 🙁 and you had to order more than one. Banana trophy with ice cream and rasmalai were good. Their chintamani halwa was awesome. Loved it! Overall yummy desserts! The service was very good and the waiters were polite and patient all through. We were there for about an hour and a half, almost until 11:00PM.
An incident worth a mention. Had a severe headache, requested for a tablet, though they didn’t have one, the manager arranged someone to go to a nearby pharmacy and get one. It was indeed a nice gesture. However it would be nice for restaurants to have a basic first-aid kit. Not sure how many of them do!
I would definitely recommend this place for nice food and good service if South-Indian vegetarian is what you are looking at !
Visited December 2013
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