Chennai Restaurant Reviews

Habanero

An outing with family followed by dinner, after quite some time! We decided to watch a movie at Luxe and wanted to try Habanero today. It is one of the relatively new restaurants that opened in Phoenix Market City, Velachery and serves Tex-Mex cuisine. We weren’t very hungry after the popcorn and coke in the cinema theatre, but still decided to give it a shot!


The place looked inviting, smiling waiters, pleasant welcome, and we were given a table immediately. Wonder why some restaurants are so empty during peak hours. There were hardly anyone when we entered around 20:45hrs. In general, the place was was slightly dim to my liking, but a few tables were okay and we opted for one such table which was better, and that was for clicking pics of food. 🙂
We wanted to order a few starters and just one or two main course for all of us. I was a bit upset as quite a few items on the menu were not available. Holy Guacamole wasn’t available, it was a creamy avocado dip made fresh at the table served with nachos. Breaded Chicken Tenders were not available, hence I couldn’t order the Chicken Platter which also had this in addition to other Chicken items. When I enquired why so many were not available, the waiter profoundly apologised and said it was because of non-availability of quality products. So decided to go with Macho Nachos mini size vegetarian, Quesadilla with Grilled Vegetables, Mexican Veg Pizza. We decided to keep the starters vegetarian as wife preferred to have vegetarian today. The order was served in reasonable time, one after another. The Quesadilla was just okayish, it wasn’t anything great. The grilled veggies and cheese in the tortilla was too bland. The sour cream was good though. The Veg Nachos was good, and I liked the flavor in it. It had lots of melted cheese, tomatoes, olives, jalapeno, and was visually appealing too. The Mexican veg pizza was very different. The base was very thin, probably just two layers of thin tortilla. It tasted good with lots of cheese, black beans and veggies.
At least to get a taste of chicken for the evening, ordered just one main course – Herbed Chicken and Potatoes. This looked good. The chicken was soft and succulent placed in mushroom sauce with a wonderful flavor of herbs, a little salty though. It was not worth complaining, but I would have liked it a little less. There was also a corn cob, potato mash, and grilled veggies. This was good and we shared it among ourselves.
Finally wanted to order just two desserts. Have heard of Tres Leches Cake earlier, that it is basically a sponge cake soaked in milk. Something like Rasmalai, for example, if you have to relate to something Indian. Just that you replace the paneer balls with a sponge cake. I was too curious to try it. Snickers Chimichanga with Ice cream was a bit different too. Chimichanga is basically a deep fried burrito. Here the content of the burrito was supposed to be a Snickers Bar. 🙂 Decided to try that ! When the manager enquired about our experience, I told him exactly what I felt about a few dishes not being available and the chicken being a tad salty. He offered to put one dessert on the house 🙂 Well, it was a nice gesture. The Tres Leches Cake was very yummy. The Snickers chimichanga was okay, a bit too sweet to my liking, but kids liked it.
So overall, the food was good. Non-availability of certain items was a dampener. Mineral water was priced at 80 bucks which was a bit expensive. C’mmon now don’t start an argument that I could have always checked the price before ordering. Well, who does that – To check the menu or call the waiter to ask how much does a water bottle cost? When you see it on the table, you open it assuming it is gonna cost you a little more than usual, but who expects 190 bucks for 2 bottles of water! Anyway, I am definitely not complaining, but it is just wishful thinking. I am not against them pricing their dishes high, that’s acceptable, but water bottle, for which the only effort required from their side was to open the bottle cap could have been priced lower 😛 ! The dinner set us back by close to 2.3K and included a service charge of 10%.

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