Sometime back, I won FREE lunch coupons for two people in a Facebook contest by The Moon and Sixpence. For those who do not know this place, this is an Irish Pub in a hotel called Hablis. It is located on the GST road, between ITC Grand Chola and Le Royal Meridian in Guindy. Planned to take two of my very close friends out for lunch, and I decided to use these two coupons so I would only pay for one extra person. A good deal indeed 😉
It was a Set Lunch menu and each person could choose a soup/salad, a main course, a dessert and a cup of coffee/a glass of beer. I already had a look at their menu on their facebook page, so I was sure of what to order 😉 I’ve been to this place a few times, so there’s nothing new to write about the place in general. You may want to read about my previous experience here. We preferred to take the table by the window because of better lighting for the photos. The place was empty, so we could sit wherever we wanted, not a problem. We got small bottles of water served on the table. They gave an iPad with their menu and placing the order was interesting, more like an online survey. :p
For the starters, I decided to have Chicken and Mushroom soup, one of my friends wanted a Chicken Sicilian minestrone soup and another friend who preferred seafood ordered Tuna Nicoise salad. Both the soups were very good, and I loved the taste of the one I had. It was served with a variety of breads and was very tasty. My friend thought the salad was decent, but could have gone with the soup too. 🙂 A typical feeling on a lunch table, you always feel you could have ordered what your friend did 😉
For the main course, I preferred to have Grilled chicken breast with green pea mash and sauté vegetable, another friend went for a lean meat burger with cheese and steak fries and the ‘seafood’ guy 🙂 went for grilled fish with creamy mash potato and sauté vegetable. All the three dishes were made to perfection both in taste and the presentation and we did not have the slightest complaint with the food. I loved what I ate, the sautéd veggies had a wonderful flavor and the grilled chicken was soft and tasty together with the pea mash and brown sauce. My friends enjoyed their food too.
For dessert, I ordered a Blueberry cheese cake, my friends ordered Apple pie with ice cream and Bread pudding. We had a little of each and I felt mine was the best, the apple pie was warm and tasty together with the ice cream. Bread pudding was okay, nothing very special.
Being a weekday, since we all had to go back to work, we opted for a cup of coffee to a glass of beer. My friends had the normal coffee with milk, while I had it black and I liked the coffee very much.
I wouldn’t blame the service as slow because we were probably the only table in the whole pub having lunch. I could see a few of them having drinks on another table. Otherwise the place was empty for the whole two hours we were there. It took them about 35-40 minutes to serve the starters, so I presume the delay was from the kitchen. The main course and the desserts came a bit faster than the starters, but on the whole, we entered by 1:15PM and finished by about 3:00PM, and since we were close buddies with never-ending stories to talk about, We were chatting on and on and did not mind the delay. Personally, I would have liked it a bit faster, the only reason being having to get back to work.
The Executive Chef for Speciality Cuisine Mr. Nagaraj Varadarajan came to say a hello and enquire about our experience and we gave a very honest feedback about the wonderful food. Mr. Srinivasan waited on our table and was very pleasant and polite.
We paid for one ‘extra’ person and it was Rs 499 plus taxes which came to a total of Rs 610.
So my verdict about this meal – The food was excellent, no doubt about it. Since it is available only for lunch on weekdays, I presume they must be targeting the office-goers, presenting something like a ‘corporate lunch’. For that segment, I felt it is expensive. The comparison might be a bit off, but there are nice places like New Town, Dario’s and others which have their Corporate Lunch priced around Rs 299, Rs 389 and so on and is truly VFM. Probably that is the reason that I did not find many takers for this while we were there. I would definitely opt for this meal for a relaxing lunch or dinner on a weekend, not on a weekday.
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