After driving around in circles looking for a place to eat, with parking space in the streets of Bangalore, which by the way is harder to spot than an alien, in this city, the husband drove inside The Gateway for two reasons.
A. Valet Parking
B. Past experience with the Karavalli restaurant that served some great food.
I did not regret going in for the first reason. The valet did a good job of parking our car and getting it out when we were done.
It is the food that was a big dampener.
I'm not going to comment on the entire menu, because we are vegetarians and also, we were two adults and one two year old, so there were only a small number of dishes we could order, unless of course we wanted to be stuffed to our gills like a Kerala fish. Therefore, my review is only on the dishes we ordered and sampled.
At 1 pm on a Saturday afternoon, the restaurant was pretty much empty and we could have our pick of seating, which was comfortable, and they do have a baby chair, so I shall put this in the somewhat 'Baby Friendly' category.
Service was prompt. You may say there was no one else in the restaurant, but hey, I have seen places where we've been the only ones in the diner and yet there are half a dozen waiters counting imaginary stars affixed to the false ceiling of the restaurant. So yes, points for the prompt service.
The fried vadams, carrot sticks and Rasam that's served complimentary were all good. Rasam could have been better but I cant crib about something that's offered for free.
For starters, husband ordered the fried Bhindi, vendakkai varuthathu, It had a mildly 'menjurian' feel to it, but yes some of them were crispy and all were seasoned well, so I wouldn't complain much there.
The problem started with the Neer Dosa, where the layers were all stuck to each other, the insides felt uncooked and doughy, which is what happens when the chef is in a hurry to fold it all up before it is dried out. I couldn't see the lacey holes which is the hallmark of a neer dosa. And if you are serving a neer dosa that costs 150 bucks, i expect it to be better than what is served at Udupi hotels for an eighth of that cost.
The Pachaicurry Stew, which i presumed would be a mixed vegetable stew, had a bit of a problem. The sliced onions had taken over the entire dish with a territorial ambitions of Genghis Khan. The carrots, beans and potatoes were reduced to hardly 10% of the stew and this disappointed me, because I like to believe I am a fair-minded, equal opportunity person. The taste of the stew was umm..to put it politely, mediocre.
The other dish that we ordered was something called the Potato Cauliflower Ambotik. Let the word Tik not scare you, in case it reminds you of something related to pest control. Perish the thought. This was a spicy and sour dish (yes, the menu had described it, to be fair to the restaurant) and also very sweet (which the menu did not mention) - so the end effect was that of fried potatoes, cauliflower florets smothered in tomato ketchup. My son, whose current love is tomato ketchup, would have polished it off. Sadly, it was too spicy for him. So I tried to imagine the times I loved ketchup and my granny would never let me have too much of it, and tried to polish off bits of it with the stuck layers Neer Dosai. But couldn't go beyond a couple of bites.
Given that I can't keep a compliment, good or bad, to myself (wait, are there bad compliments?!) I told the manager my problems with the meal and he promptly called the Chef. He tried to convince me that there was no tomato ketchup in the dish and was sweet enough (like the Ambotik) to take my constructive feedback. They also did not charge us for the Ambotik and served us complimentary dessert in the form of adapradamann which was pretty good.
So, some damage control was exercised but not before my impatient fingers prodded by my dissatisfied tastebuds, had already tweeted about the experience.
To summarise, my problem with the dining experience here were - you can't be a five star specialty restaurant and serve mediocre or below mediocre food, especially when you charge 300-450 for a side dish and 150-200 for a bread. At that price, the food had darn well be lip smackingly good.
The upside was that they were courteous, the chef was understanding about our problem with the food.
Will I try them again? No, not even for the valet parking.
saffrontrail
