Latest Recipe (Le meridian Gurgaon, Sector 26, Gurgaon Delhi Border, MG Road, Gurgaon)

In a nutshell:

A large restaurant having a nice ambience, has ordinary service & serves normal food – missed the exuberance of Sen5es.

Address & other details: Latest recipe

Meal for 2: Rs. 1500 onwards

Cuisine type : vegetarian & non vegetarian

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bill - proof of receipt — bill – proof of receipt

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 ur in a hurry:

Ever since we started writing about food and restaurants, we have developed a strange habit – of not repeating restaurants. Coz every repeat is a lost opportunity to write about. However, like everything else in life, there r exceptions to the rule. Sen5es , erstwhile Pullman hotel used to b our favorite haunt for large buffets for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Have been there many times.

The hotel has now been taken over by le meridian and the restaurant name has changed as well. However the look and feel of the restaurant is almost the same.

At sen5es , 3 things used to stand out – very good ( maybe not great) , warm, super energetic staff who wud take care, talk, chat with the guests and value for money ( does not mean cheap).

Food at this restaurant was good , some were very good. Value for money was not as good even though the prices were similar – means the joy of eating out earlier was more. Staff were very very cold but efficient for almost half the time that we were there. They surely did not even attempt to strike a conversation like their earlier counterparts ( not important to do that – just an observation). Later they warmed up and by the time we were leaving, they seemed pretty much warm though still not as enthused as the earlier boys.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the live honeycomb kept here as well ( sen5es was where we first saw that in Gurgaon).

Detailed description – in case u have the time to Njoy reading:

We started with a fruit plate. A fruit is a fruit. A restaurant cannot cook fruit and make it taste in a particular way. However a restaurant can surely choose the best fruit and serve it. These guys did exactly that.

Lovely juicy pineapples 4.25/5.

Sweet watery watermelon, not the best kind but very good. 4/5.

Crunchy , juicy , sweet melon. 4/5.

Very good plum , full of flavor, a good balance of sweet and sour. 4/5.

Nice pear – juicy and sweet. 4/5.

Excellent papaya. Soft, sweet, perfectly ripe, not over, not under. Rate it 4.5/5.

Smoked salmon did not look fresh. Looked like it was refrigerated for long. The corners had started dis coloring. See picture. Rate it 2.5/5

Ham was in thick slices. Once again, it was in refrigerator for long. Different pieces had different color depending on different levels of refrigeration. Rate it 2/5.

Olives and carrots were nice.

Chorizo was ordinary. No texture. Not bad also. Tasted good. Rate it 3/5.

Hash brown tasted almost like aloo tikki. Felt like I was in Chandani chowk!!! Rate it 3/5.

Semi fried Bacon was kept in a corner, near an oven, as we reached the bacon section, one of the staff members offered to fry bacon for us. The bacon was the worst I have had in years. Not juicy, brittle, tasteless and a disaster. I don’t know why they thought of re frying but I guess that was the culprit. Never had it so bad. Rate it 1/5.

Egg Bhurjee was non juicy / not moist. Pretty dry. It had excess salt. The taste was average. Rate it 2/5.

Scrambled egg was outstanding. It was thick, runny, low on salt ( the way it is served in US) and just too good. Super loved this. Rate it 4.5/5

Basket of muesli , yoghurt , dry fruits and dried berries was a mixed bag experience. The muesli was not crisp – it was actually damp and Inedible. The reduced berries were nice. the yoghurt texture was like hung curd. Dry fruits were crunchy and nice. Rate it 2/5.

Omelet counter was another surprise. I usually go to 5 star restaurant breakfast egg counter and say ‘please make me the best non Indian omelet that u can make’. I usually leave it to the chef’s imagination. The results are mostly good as chefs out in their best.

Here the reactions surprised me. I was told ‘ we do not make European / American omelets. U can choose which type of masala omelet u want’!!!

The omelet was low on salt, moist inside , had quite a few ingredients but none of them stood out. It was a good filler but was nothing great to taste. Rate it 2.5/5.

We then moved on to the Indian section. Tried idli with 4 kinds of chutneys.

The idly was soft, had large pores, did not have a fermented feel and was just good. Rate the idly 3/5.

The chutneys were nice though. White chutney had good amount of coconut in it and the saffron colored chutney had good amount of peanut in it, thus making it intense.

The green chutney was very good. Rate each of the above chutneys 4/5

The dark orange tomato based chutney was good. Rate this chutney 3/5.

We requested for a masala dosa at the live counter. The aloo masala was very good. Rate it 4/5. The batter however was quite plain – did not gave the fermented feel. They used butter for frying. So the flavor of butter felt good. Rate the dosa 3.5/5. Overall rating of this dish averages out to 3.75/5.

We tried a daal pakora. Crunchy and great texture but nothing much to taste. Rate it 3/5.

Khalsa kachori had too much oil in the surface. No comparison to the kachori at Bajpai or chotelaal or delhi’s own JB kachori wale. The kachori was good to taste but the crispness was a bit mire than optimum due to re-frying. Re-frying also had led to a bit over optimum frying. Rate it 3/5.

We tried aloo ki subzi with kesari poori. The poori had been fried and kept – a very bad idea to begin with. The color was bright yellow. Sans the color we cud not trace any saffron in the dish. Rate the poori 2/5.