In a nutshell:

Pretty good Chindian / other Asian food & a very exciting & cool live Teppanyaki station – must experience it.

Address & other details: Dine Esty

Meal for 2: Rs. 1000 onwards

Cuisine Type: Vegetarian & Nonvegetarian

Short Description – In case u r in a hurry:

The Chindian (Indianized Chinese food) is tasty & nice but lacks on the authenticity front. For ‘close to authentic Chinese food’ in Gurgaon, YUMMRAJ recommends The Monk, Galaxy Mall. However, if u do not give a damn to authenticity & r willing to dig into anything tasty, Dine Esty is a good choice. Infact its a very good choice for a nice evening out with some good food.

We have been to Dine esty several times & always had been eating at the Live Japanese Teppanyaki  (Japanese Grill) Counter. This time around we decided to sit in the main dining hall & ordered some Chinese (turned out to be tasty Chinjabi) alacarte section.

The menu card was almost 10 pages long & really requires a great deal of study by foodies to decide on food. Too many interesting names pop up before the eyes & ity becomes a challenge (in a good way) to narrow down & finalize the order. In the menu card there are sections like soups, dimsums, starters, main course etc like everyone else but all these section in turn have detailed sub sections  – chicken, pork, lamb, vegetarian, duck, fish, crab, seafood. I saw some interesting items like seafood dimsum, crystal dimsum, pork gouza, prawn harkaw (a dimsum that has potato starch as wrapper) – I fondly remembered harkaw that we had at Royal china. To summarize, every Chinese place has sections but this one was in great details.

 The interior has three sections – a lounge & bar setting on the left (as u enter) & this is covered by a see-through wooden partition. Then there is the Main dining Hall with Restaurant setting & at the end is the Live Teppanyaki counter where u can sit on the counter & njoy seeing the food being prepared in front of u. A chat with the chef is also an interesting option. Getting the food made with ur choice of sauces is surely another option.

The Japanese concept of teppanyaki is very cool though – it is essentially a flat Metal plate (say 1meter by 2 meters) that is heated at all times. The customers have the option to sit around this hot plate & the Chef stir fries veggies / fish / meats in front of u & serves fresh out of the Teppan.

Inspite of the fact that the sauces here r tweaked to cater to Indian tastes – the overall taste is very enjoyable. ………….. Infact not too many people might b able to appreciate the 100% original taste the way it is served in Japan or China. I Do love the original though & do not mind the tweaked versions at times.

Detailed Description – In case u have the time to enjoy reading:

IN this section, I will mention my latest visit first & then a review of the second last visit.

The latest visit:

We ordered appetizer double cooked lamb – Chinese lou (the word ‘lou’ means roast) in chilli hoisin sauce Double fried lamb – It was very very good to taste. It turned out to be Slices of lamb sautéed with sauces , carrot, onions & chillies. Taste was excellent. Every piece of lamb, was not soft but crispy outside. The moment we wud bite a piece, the juices wud burst out in the mouth.  Very interesting texture & interesting combo of not soft but juicy. The only catch is – Since it is not soft & has fibers, people with bad teeth like me might have meat fibers stuck in between the teeth – that’s something that Dine Esty cannot do anything about, anyway.  Really liked the dish.

For main course we ordered Steamed fish with garlic & spring onion. We had 4 options of fish to choose from – pomfret, sole, grouper or sea bass – we went with sole. The text in the menu card read ‘Sliced fish marinated with seasoning , steamed, garnished with chopped spring onion, carrots & roasted minced garlic.’ So we remembered the similar dish that we had in Royal China. Waiting staff also recommended.

Sadly it turned out to be one of the worst fish pieces I have had in a while – To Punjabify the pure Chinese dish that usually has a thin gravy, it seems the guys in the Kitchen added corn flour. That was the worst thing that cud have happened. The corn flour formed a coat over the fish piece & made the taste & texture horrible – We cud not finish & left some pieces to be thrown out. The thickened gravy was not so bad though.

We also ordered pork with Han Heung sauce – Chef Chen Han Heung’s  Hakka community special from Guangdong province, China. This was very enjoyable, good, soft & tasty. A little short of ‘superb’ though.

We had Singapore mixed rice noodle with all the above – super thin noodles made with rice (instead of flour). It had eggs & miscellaneous meats in it. It was not bad.

We washed down all  this with Virgin Mojito that was good & Italian Smooch that was just about OK – bland.

The second last visit: Eating at the Teppanyaki bar

 We started the dinner with a soup – Pepper lemon broth with shrimp balls. It was a superb clear soup – fresh lemon peel, pepper had the punch, lemon gave the light tangy taste & the prawn balls very interesting too – they burst out with flavors once u bit them – outstanding.

For the Teppan, we went for Norwegian salmon lemon butter soya – heavenly. The fish pieces were juicy but flaky within & charred from outside, the lemon butter soya sauce was too good.- marvelous taste.

Pork with bamboo shoot & zucchini in demi glazed sauce was also very good. Soft but not melt in the mouth , slightly crisp outer layer pork pieces were too good – very enjoyable.

We also had Chahan – a mixed fried rice made with sticky rice – slightly low on salt but good to eat after we added salt. This was also made on the teppan in front of us.

We were too full for dessert & hence just managed to roll out of the eatery. Just managed to wash down the good food with some nice virgin Mojito.

Overall – Recommended for tasty Asian food but not necessarily authentic.