Having worked too late to make dinner at any restaurant other than a 24 hrs place and having been to all the other 24 hrs places within a radius of 10 km, I suggested to my friend that we try Limelight. We drove to the Royal Orchid Hotel, parked our car on a back street and strolled into the hotel. We asked for directions to Limelight and a few minutes later entered. Noone came forward to greet us so we ambled in and found ourselves a quiet table at one side of the restaurant. The hostess came to our table a minute later and presented us with the menus. After carefully looking through the fairly diverse range on offer and deciding against the buffet as the hostess told us that it closes at 11:00 (it was 10:30 pm already) we chose a glass of canned Orange Juice (my favorite drink), a bowl of French Onion soup, a Handi Ghost Biriyani and a plate of Fish and Chips. Wondering if it would be better to order dessert at the same time, in case the kitchen closed, I checked with the hostess who informed me that the kitchen was 24 hrs and we could order dessert at our leisure after the main course. Thanking her, we placed our order and settled back to an interminable wait. Finally the soup and Orange Juice arrived. Then came another interminable wait which wasnt even broken by the presence of a bread basket. I did however enjoy my juice and sipped it slowly. I looked askance at my friend's French Onion soup but he seemed to like it. Much much later, soup and juice long finished and watching with open mouths the arrival of the midnight buffet (if only the hostess had mentioned that there was one, we would have waited for it) our food arrived. The waiter helped me with serving the Biriyani and Raitha and we slowly began our respective dishes. The food was ok - quite mediocre actually when you consider that this is a star establishment. Meal over, we requested the dessert menu. The waiter (as the hostess had long since disappeared) who handed it to us, also informed us that orders from the a la carte menu for dessert wouldnt be taken since it was past 11. However, when I mentioned that I had checked with the hostess since I had feared this would happen and she had said we could order later on, the waiter obligingly smiled, apologized and requested us to look through the dessert menu and place our orders. We did so, ordering a Tiramisu and a Cheese Cake. These took a good twenty minutes to arrive and the Tiramisu was not a Tiramisu - sadly. The cheese cake was ok. We resignedly and indignantly (it was now two hours since we arrived) called for our bill and I requested that the night manager come by our table. I had been watching the service meted out to the other patrons and had noted that at three tables, the men at the table had gotten up to have a word with the waiters (one in fact had a very long, quite loud and clearly displeased word, lasting around 5 minutes). The table behind us had its occupants waiting patiently for five minutes to be given the menu and then around 10 minutes to place an order. One table however, got faultless service with the waiter almost falling over the patron (a fat man) in his desire to please him. I was very interested to note that every table, ours included which complained of poor service, were occupied by what I'd like to term as classy, educated and well-bred people while the one table which had the excellent service was occupied by a person who clearly didnt have very good table manners and the common courtesy to smile and say please and thank you to the waiters. This made me wonder if the way to get service at this particular restaurant was to be ill mannered and ignore the waiters when they serve you. Clearly a pleasant approach and waiting quietly for your order to be taken and your food to arrive doesn't seem to do the trick. The night manager, when he came to my table, was most charming, very courteous and very apologetic and I would be gratified if there is an improvement in service as a result. The ambience is quite nice. The lighting is fine. The food is mediocre but maybe the buffet would be better. The service is where the fault lay and again, it wasnt with all the waiters. Some, clearly hotel management trainees were very very nice and obliging. However, some seemed to forget the courtesy, attention and charm due to every patron in a top-class establishment. Would I go back? Yeah maybe and give their buffet a try.
ragpicker1
