It was a sudden plan to go out for dinner. We had a guest at home and decided to eat out and I was struggling to choose between two wonderful places that I haven’t visited – Bombay Brasserie in Nungambakkam and Jonah’s meets Chef Willi in Alwarpet. I didn’t know it would be so easy for my kids to decide, they immediately said Jonah’s! They wanted Pizza and Pasta and not North-Indian. That’s it, Jonah’s it was !
We drove down from Velachery and reached around 20:00 hours. Since I am reasonably familiar with Alwarpet and I have seen this place earlier, I did not have problems locating the restaurant. There was valet parking and it was convenient. We entered into a nicely lit place with a neat classy ambience. It was elegant and not too jazzy. The blue sofas were a bit striking, but still I liked it. 🙂 Since not too many tables were taken at that time, we got a nice six-seater table immediately. Just settled down and started to browse through the menu.
We weren’t particular about having soup, but just for the sake of tasting, ordered two soups. We were told soups were small portions just good for one person. We ordered a Tomato Soup with Quinoa and a Chicken Lentil Soup. Both were decent, I liked the Chicken Lentil soup a.k.a ‘Dal Shorba with Chicken’ better. For starters we ordered a Phyllo Pastry Spinach Wrap, French Fries with melted cheese (my daughter wanted it, so I had to) :), Trio of Bruschetta, and Chicken Tenders. Phyllo pastry Spinach Wrap tasted good with the yoghurt-based dip that was served along with it, a bit bland to my liking, but a nice flavor of spinach. Trio of Bruschetta was basically three variants of topping – sweet bell pepper, mushroom and tomato basil. I managed to get my hand on the mushroom and it was good. The rest disappeared in a jiffy. Chicken Tenders was surprisingly not very visually appealing and I didn’t quite like the way it was plated. However, it tasted very good and kids loved this with the sweet chilli sauce. I didn’t quite understand why it was placed on a bed of crispy noodles. At least personally for me, it didn’t add any value. French Fries with melted cheese was good. Again, kids liked it. The mayonnaise that came with the fries was awesome ! Loved the flavour in it.
Then came the not-so-pleasant part of the evening which was a dampener, and a let down in service! I know they did not mean to be rude, I would definitely think it was just bad calculation of time or pure miscommunication. We were still having the starters and it definitely wasn’t too long, neither there were customers waiting for the table that we had to hurry, the kids were eating at their pace, albeit reasonably quickly, and the Main Course arrived !!! I wasn’t very pleased. Another two starters were yet to be finished and literally there was no place on the table, the two pizzas and a pasta arrived. I had to ask them to take it back. At the same time didn’t want it to be lying around and served later, hence asked them to serve it on the table while I made some quick adjustment with plates and forced ourselves to finish the starters. The pizzas came to the table and it took us at least 5-10 minutes before we could eat the first slice and that wasn’t how it should have been!
Coming to the order, we ordered a Spanish Pizza Family size, an American Chicken Pizza Regular size and a Mushroom Cream Penne. After the initial fiasco, started to eat it and it was quite good. I did not have any complaints with the food! Mushroom Cream penne was wonderful! Both the pizzas were good, but that subtle difference between eating the pizza hot and eating it warm was where we lost the plot. Anyways, finished it and were ready for the desserts. Since we were quite full, we decided to share the desserts and not order one each.
Ordered Tiramisu and Roasted Strawberry and Vanilla Panna Cotta. I was expecting both these on a plate and not a jar, but other than the expectation mismatch, the taste was mind-blowing ! We loved it so much, that I ordered a Nutella Panna Cotta. That was awesome too. After the small confusion, the dinner ended wonderfully well with the desserts !
While we were having our dinner, Roshina, who is associated with Jonah’s in some way, came over to inquire what went wrong and assured us that it will be taken care of. It was nice to see a prompt feedback being taken.
The dinner set us back by almost 4K and I would say it was worth it, as it wouldn’t be fair to judge based on that single incident. It was not the best of evenings, but on the whole a pretty decent one. Just that some places have set their standards so high that our expectations are equally high too !
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