Salt

This was one of those Boy’s Day Out ! Wifey and my 4-year old daughter were away shopping, so the plan was that myself and my 9-year old son will have dinner and then if possible, they’ll catch up with us for desserts 🙂 Area was decided, place was decided – Forum Mall, Vadapalani. The choice of the restaurant was very obvious – Salt !!

After nice reviews in CFG about the place, been waiting for an opportunity to go to Vadapalani, and finally it happened !
The restaurant is on the Second Floor of the Mall, and the Yellow exteriors makes it almost impossible to miss ! There’s a menu outside, next to the reservation counter. It is something that is very common in Europe, but a lot of restaurants here do not do that. It makes it very easy to look at the dishes, prices and then decide if you want to enter or not. That was cool ! As we entered, I loved the ambience of the place. It was very spacious and had a lot of seating combinations – Two-seaters, four-seaters, six-seaters and ten-seaters too. The wall facing the entrance was neatly done with books and a lot of photo frames, the other side had two cute windows on the top, the Lamp shades were awesome. Overall, lovely ambience. The light was fine for dinner, but a little dim for photography 😉  Should also mention that they have quite a few magazines for solo diners and some crayons and coloring papers for tiny tots.  That sure is a nice way to keep them busy.
Had a detailed look at the menu and ordered the soup and starters first. One by two of Tomato and Pudhina Soup, Chat Pata – Chilli Paneer and Zaffroni Murgh Malai Tikka. The starters came in about ten to fifteen minutes. The Zaffroni Murgh Malai Tikka was awesome, nice flavor of saffron, soft and succulent pieces of chicken, it was mind-blowing. Chat Pata – Chilli Paneer was good, tangy and was true to the description on the menu, but was visually not so appealing. It was more like bhaji in the Pav Bhaji until I actually picked up the Paneer pieces and put it on my plate. If I remember right, there was a picture of Paneer right under this dish in the menu. I actually ordered thinking that is how it would look, but it was totally different and misleading. Both the starters came with a salad. This probably had a little bit of mustard oil or powder, loved the flavour. The typical smell of ‘aava podi’ in aavakaai pickle. The only glitch in the whole meal was that the soup did not come 🙂 The waiter had apparently missed this. I wasn’t really particular about the soup as we were quite hungry, so proceeded to the main course. He profoundly apologised and served us a mocktail, on the house. That was a really nice gesture.
The main course was not very elaborate, just ordered a Roomali Roti each and a Palak Aap Ki Pasand. It is ‘Aap Ki Pasand’ because you can either choose cottage cheese or baby corn or potatoes. We chose cottage cheese to make it Palak Paneer. Roomali Roti can be a nightmare if not done properly, it can be difficult to eat when it is not hot too. What came was hot, soft, and true to its name, like a Handkerchief. 🙂 Absolutely well-done. Palak Paneer was very good, no dominating masala, subtle flavour of palak, soft paneer cubes and tasty too. I felt the roomali roti was probably not enough for me, ordered a Butter Naan, and it was good too.
By this time wifey and my daughter arrived and joined us for the desserts. Some of the dishes in the menu were catchy, and straight away, ordered Elaneer Payasam. Rasmalai With Fresh Strawberries sounded nice too, so ordered that. Finally one more dish, not sure of what to order, went with Khubani Ka Meetha. Elaneer Payasam was wonderful, not sure if this gets the name ‘Elaneer Payasam’ because the whole payasam is made from elaneer or just the floating pieces of tender coconut. Rasmalai with fresh strawberries and a scoop of ice cream was good too, kids finished it in no time. I was slightly skeptical about Khubani Ka Meetha after reading the description on the menu, after I had ordered. It turned out to be way too sweet to my liking. Had to leave about half of this and my family also wasn’t too keen to finish it. The Vanilla ice cream and the biscuit-like base were just not enough to neutralize the sweet aftertaste. But I should say the plating of the desserts was awesome.
Overall, a wonderful dinner. It set us back by about 1.7K. The bill included a service charge of 10%, so did not tip in addition to that. Mr. Saminathan who waited on our table, was polite and pleasant.
I would certainly visit again and recommend it to my friends.