Suddenly it felt like quite a long time since we, as a family, went out for dinner. Immediately made up a plan for Saturday evening – a movie at Jazz cinemas, followed by dinner in one of the restaurants in the shopping mall. That was it, we were all set for the evening!
After the movie, we had a quick discussion among ourselves and decided to have dinner at Jonah’s goes to Japan, probably now just called ‘Jonah’s Bistro, Velachery’. I have been here before and have had a good experience, so I was quite sure everything was going to be okay.
It is a small place, so it can get full quite quickly. We were lucky to get the last four-seater table, rest of them who came after us had to wait. What we didn’t realize was we didn’t do anything different, we also waited 🙂 The only difference was we were seated and they were not. I was quite surprised that for the first ten minutes, noone came to the table, let alone serving water. After kids got a bit restless, I had to go to the counter and ask someone to take orders and then one guy showed up.
Decided to order one main course each and skip starters, we ordered 1 Chicken Burger with grilled Chicken Breast (and not crispy Pancko Chicken), 1 Chicken Big Boy Burger, 1 Pesto Pasta (vegetarian) and 1 Thai Green Curry Rice Bowl (Vegetarian) along with 2 Lemon Ice Tea. Finally water was served after we placed the order!
Food was served in reasonable time, and after quickly taking a few pictures, started to eat. Lemon Ice Tea was good. Coming to the Chicken Big Boy Burger, I always like to eat my burger deconstructed, with a knife and fork, and not just bite into it. Realized there was no cutlery on the table for two of us. Tried to get the attention of the waiter, but wasn’t successful. Had to send my daughter to get them from one of the waiters. When I started to eat, I realized that out of the two grilled chicken breasts, one was very chewy and hard. The sauces absolutely didn’t get into it and it was just okayish. The other one on the top was soft and easy to eat. Rest of the stuff in the burger was good. The fries that came with it were a tad too salty, not worth complaining though. The salad on the side wasn’t crunchy as I have seen it earlier, didn’t touch it. Overall, just satisfactory, not wow! My son had the Chicken Burger and felt it was okay, nothing worth complaining. Pesto Pasta was yummy, and we all liked it. Thai Green Curry with Rice was absolutely delicious, licked it to the last drop. Throughout the meal, even water wasn’t refilled and I couldn’t get hold of the waiter in spite of repeatedly trying to do so.
We were done with the main course, decided to share just one dessert and I liked to have a Black Coffee. We ordered Belgian Waffles with Chocolate Sauce, instead of Maple Syrup. Coffee was wonderful, just how I liked it. Waffles were decent, I felt it was a bit brittle than how it should be, but family was okay with it.
With that we finished the meal and the bill didn’t take too long to come. This was the easiest to order in the whole evening!
I was quite disappointed with the service, or apparently the lack of it. In a fine-dining place, or call it an ‘upscale’ place, it is a basic expectation to be attended to. If I cannot get hold of the waiter for the whole evening, its not acceptable. Paid a little over 2K for decent food and pathetic service.
If the food wasn’t as good, I would have rated the overall experience as 2 on a scale of 5. If not all, most of what we ordered was tasty, hence the rating of 3. Not sure if they were understaffed or just didn’t bother, but it certainly didn’t look like the Jonah’s I knew. Sad to see that a place I so loved, didn’t live up to my expectations! I’m not too sure if I’d be keen to go back at the next possible opportunity or recommend it to friends, perhaps I’ll give it some time and then decide.
No Comments