In a nutshell:
A multi-cuisine restaurant serving some good but not great Asian, the best Kashmiri food in town, very good North Indian & pretty average American food – a selection from different specialty restaurants of the Old World Hospitality group that runs All American Diner, Chor Bizarre, Oriental Octopus etc.
Address & other details: Drift
Meal for 2: Rs. 800 onwards
Cuisine type : Vegetarian & Nonvegetarian
Disclaimer: All restaurants / eateries reviewed by YUMMRAJ were visited by YUMMRAJ himself & he has paid for the full Bill & tips also. http://www.yummraj.com does not have even one featured / sponsored reviews. YUMMRAJ believes in going to a restaurant in anonymity, as a normal guest, experience everything & give a honest account of the same to you.
I rate all the food items & then give a final overall rating which is a simple average of the individual item ratings. What the ratings stand for: 5 = Excellent, 4 = Very Good, 3 = Good, 2 = Fair, 1 = Disaster.
Short Description – in case u r in a hurry:
Drift is an interesting restaurant. It is a kind of a multicuisine restaurant / coffee shop kind & it offers best sellers from the group’s independent specialty restaurant as mentioned above.
The décor is the average nice restaurant with a full glass wall on one side. The differentiating factor is a huge log of wood kept on a side on which they light candles – Love that look.
The staff members r good & helpful. Infact some of them actually have very good product knowledge & help in the selection.
The menu card is well descriptive & easy to read thru.
Food is good in general & sometimes outstanding. As mentioned, there r American, Kashmiri, North Indian & Asian options on the menu. For the review day we stuck to the Asian menu.
Detailed Description – In case u have the Time to NJOY reading:
We started our evening with Spicy lemon grass & kaffir lime flavored tom yam soup with prawns. Loved it. The soup was thin, refreshing, full of original pungent Thai flavors, & just too good to taste. I wud give it a 4.25/5.
For starter, we ordered a vegetarian dish – Braised water chestnut with pakchoy , bamboo shoots & roasted cashew nuts. As u know that water chestnut itself does not taste much, but it is all a texture game – it was enjoyable to eat. Everything else in the dish including the veggies were crunchy. A slight sweetness in overall taste was not bad. The nuts gave different texture & feel and gave the dish a character of its own. Overall the dish was not overwhelming but slightly better than good I wud give this a 3.5/5.
For main course we ordered Penang curry with prawns – a Malaysian dish. The Curry was made very thick, coconutty, full of spices but almost no veggies. The flavors of prawn were very well felt & they were in good texture – not rubbery. Usually in Malaysia I have had this curry with lot of veggies. So every bite of penang curry feels different due to diff in texture of the veggies & also because of mixed assorted seafood. Anyway, leaving that apart, this curry was very good on its own & I rate it as 4.25/5. We finished it off till the last drop.
We also ordered Thai green curry with vegetables. While deciding on the green curry, we, hardcore non vegetarians, decided on veg coz it is a good test of a green curry. The flavors & taste of a green curry come not from the add ons but the basic paste that is made with Thai ingredients.
The veggies were crunchy, the gravy was creamy & thick. It tasted good but it was not as authentic – See the post on Blue Elephant Bankok where the Master Chef of this Traditional Thai restaurant taught us Thai green curry. The gravy had more coconut milk that made the stronger spices & herbs mellow down. I wud give it a 3.75/5 from authenticity perspective & just as it is 4.25/5.
For dessert we had date pie – the one at oriental blossom was much much better than this. There was too much of oil used in making the pie at Drift & that negatively affected the feel of the dish. I am not a oil maniac but this surely had more. I wud give this a 3/5.
Rating of Asian food at Drift averages out to 3.8/5.
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