In a nutshell:

A large spread out restaurant with veg section, non veg section, family section, general section etc , has  fast & efficient service, serves good food in general & outstanding desi chicken curry in particular.

Address & other details:  Aishwarya Fort

Meal for 2: Rs. 300 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:

Aishwarya fort is a Hotel in the Historic Town on ChitraDurga in Karnataka. The hotel is situated off the Highway that connects Chitradurga to Bangalore. The restaurants of the Hotel are frequented by not just the guests of the hotel but the locals as well.

We ended up here in the search of local food & realized that it was a great choice.

As mentioned above, there is a general non A/C section, a vegetarian section & a non vegetarians section. Certain parts of the restaurant are for family only. The restaurants are not on the same floor, side by side. They r spread out in basement, ground & first floor.

We chose the family section that served non vegetarian food.

The Dining Hall was dark, had tables laid back to back & was brimming to the full.

Service was fast & efficient. One Guy who seemed to b the floor Manager took special care after we said we were new to the place & wanted suggestion on ‘local food’.

The menu card was quite exhaustive but we did not really read that since we got recommendations from the Manager based on our brief of ‘local food’.

Whatever we ate was good to excellent.

Detailed Description – In case u have the Time to NJOY reading:

The final food we chose was chicken Kabab to start with & to have Nati Koli sambar with Ragi ball. In case that sounded Greek, Sorry. Explanation follows.

The Chicken kabab in this part of the country was verydifferent from the North Indian Tandoori chicken kabab. The kabab here had a coating to it and that made the meat juicy. The chicken was soft. The kabab had very good flavour of masalas and we loved munching on these. Taste was very good but not excellent. Rate it 4/5.

For main course we had Nati Koli sambar (desi chicken curry with a medium thin gravy). This was one rare occasion when we found an Indian dish made with the chicken skin intact. I asked about it and was told that when they use poultry chicken they use skinless but desi chicken always with skin coz that tastes better.

It was a simple, medium thin gravy, full of flavours of spices as well as the chicken. A bit on the hotter side, this gravy was so good that we finished every drop of it. Loved it beyond my wildest expectations.

The chicken was super soft, was somewhat juicy due to the skin, was intense and robust to taste and was just too good.

Rate it 4.75/5

Floored, I must say

We enjoyed the chicken with Ragi ball. Ragi is something that has suddenly showed up on supermarket shelves these days in the Organic food sections. Its being now touted as health food & people r writing articles on the benefits of Ragi.

Ragi was /is a popular food in rural areas of Karnataka I was told. People eat a big Ragi ball (a steamed ball of Ragi, the size of a large apple) in the morning with sambar or curry and go to work – it stays in the body for long and hence people do not feel hungry soon.

Ragi Ball was a first time for us. The ball had rice mixed to it as well. It did not really have much of a taste itself (like rice / Roti do not really have a taste as it is). The texture was grainy and nice. Not rating it as I am not an expert. Liked the combo though.

For those of u who r less experimentative, pls try this chicken curry with tandoori roti / plain rice.

Average rating of food at Aishwarya Fort is 4.37/5

I wud not miss the opportunity to eat this chicken again if I am in Chitradurga. What’s going on in ur mind?