A friend had come over from the US and myself and another friend were planning to meet him ! Its more like a yearly thing when he comes down for vacation, this time, it was no different !
We headed to the Besant Nagar beach first, took a leisurely stroll munching on Masala Peanuts, Mango slices and finally we touched upon the topic of where to head for dinner. There were quite a few places around the beach, but we couldn’t make up our mind. I suggested that we head to some place where we get good salads and it wasn’t very appealing for both of them. So I had to give it up and settle for a normal dinner with no diet restrictions 🙂
Finally decided on having Chinese and immediately, I could think of two names in the vicinity – Olive and Basil and Liu’s Waldorf. Since I normally choose a place that I haven’t visited, it had to be Liu’s Waldorf this time ! I’ve heard a lot about this place and I was all the more curious to check it out!
Since it was already past 21:00 hours, the roads were relatively free and it didn’t take us long to get there. I’ve seen this place earlier, so didn’t have any problems locating it. It is located just a couple of blocks away from Ramco Systems, bang on the Sardar Patel Road. There was a small place for car parking, just good for a couple of cars and a few bikes. As we entered, the first thing – it was empty, except for the 2 Waiters were who were around. All the ACs were turned off, as if they weren’t expecting anyone after this time. Immediately it gave an impression that it was probably a very nice place once upon a time and had lost its charm over the years! We settled down and started to order, and the person who waited on our table wasn’t very helpful in terms of suggesting dishes or answering the questions we had. Immediately the other waiter took over and he was well-informed and more helpful!
One of my friends was a vegetarian, so we had to order accordingly. I liked the option of a ‘single portion’ of a soup, priced around half of the normal size. So you didn’t have to ask for ‘one by two’ and convince your friend to have the soup you liked 😉 We ordered a Chicken Manchow Soup, a Seafood soup, and a Veg Hot and Sour soup along with Baby corn Mushroom Fry, Veg Spring Roll and Waldorf Special Chicken for starters. I really liked the Chicken Manchow soup and friends liked their soup too. Spring rolls were a tad oily, but still good. Baby Corn Mushroom fry was with a lot of pepper and good. Waldorf Special Chicken was decent, but didn’t carry the weight of its name ! It was a dry, boneless chicken fry with lot of red chillies, scallions or spring onions. The good thing was the chicken was thawed well and didn’t smell one bit. I expected a little more when it sounded like their signature dish. Soups and starters were pretty good and when I asked the waiter to recommend something special for main course with chicken in it, he suggested Chicken Quaitho, and then a couple of other dishes so my vegetarian friend wasn’t left out – a Veg Schezwan Fried rice and Veg Hot Balls in Garlic Sauce. The food came in reasonable time and the portions were pretty satisfying, and visually appealing too. The Chicken Quaitho was flat noodles and had generous amount of chicken in it. Veg Balls in Hot Garlic sauce was a bit too sweet to my liking, but was good. I was surprised why it would be so difficult to cut the veg balls with a knife. It wasn’t very hard, probably the knife was blunt. 😛 The veg schezwan fried rice was decent too, had to a pack a little of it which we couldn’t finish. Didn’t see any desserts on the menu, so asked the waiter and he politely said desserts weren’t available. I did get one piece of smelly chicken in the whole evening, probably in the Chicken Quaitho, which can be ignored. Overall, food was pretty good!
The dinner set us back by 1760 bucks which is very reasonable for what we had. Had the place been bustling with activity when we entered, someone asking us to wait for few minutes for the table, our impression of the whole place would have been completely different. I would say this place is fairly decent, but I’m not too sure if I would long to go back again !
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