In a nutshell:
A visually beautiful restaurant in JW Marriott hotel that has outstanding warm yet professional service, nice ambience and some good Asian food
Address & other details: vintage Asia
Meal for 2: ₹3000 onwards
Cuisine type : vegetarian & Nonvegetarian
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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
When I wanted to go out for a special dinner in kolkata I resorted to my newly found culinaripedia friend Indrajit. He suggested a bunch of places and I chose this restaurant….
The restaurant is located inside JW Marriott hotel. The interiors are beautifully done. The restaurant had 2 open kitchens – a Chinese kitchen and another ‘rest of Asia’ kitchen.
The lighting was quite dim in general but the spotlights were spot on – enough to make the food look good.
The menu card was pretty detailed and elaborate.
The service was unbelievably warm – the 2 boys serving us treated us like cousins / family and were genuinely warm to a different level. They tried to understand our needs and suggest dishes accordingly. They also timed our meal spacing perfectly. The warmth was perfectly balanced with professionalism. Hats off to the training manager who could achieve this. My best wishes to the two boys.
Food was good to taste but they were all tweaked and Indianised. Cream poured on top of Asian dishes was quite shocking. Read the following chapter to understand what I mean.
Detailed description- in case u hv the time to njoy reading:
Loved the Raw Mango dip with in-house made chips. Tangy and slightly sweet, the raw mango pieces were too good to munch on. The combo was ‘very difficult to have just once’.
Stir fried crispy Betki with Thai saam ros sauce was a smart fusion dish that was designed to give fried fish with an interesting twist of a sauce. The dish was excellent quality, flaky and juicy. It was crispy on the outer side. The sauce was excellent – flavourful and tasty. It complimented the dish. There were bell pepper, crunchy onions and other ingredients in the dish as well. I have huge doubts that people of Thailand have ever eaten it this way. Rate the dish 3.5/5
Hargow was prawn and other seafood dimsum – super thin, translucent outer layer. The filling was extremely juicy, bursting with flavours and had a brilliant taste. Great craftsmanship. Not too many people in India can pull it off do well. Rate it 4.75/5
Pumpkin prawn dimsums had a curious look. The flavours of pumpkin expressed themselves very well and so did the flavours of prawn. Loved the unusual dimsums – it takes courage to offer this in the menu. Rate it 4.5/5
Somtam salad made from shredded raw papaya, carrots and peanuts was very good but we hv surely had better. Lemon acted as the souring agent. The veggies were crunchy and nice. What lacked was the optimum dressing if the salad. Rate it 3.75/5
Thai green curry with Fish was an internationalized version – not how the Thai have it. The original Thai version has a very strong flavoured thin watery liquid in the base. Here the base had been thickened like in most places, to reduce the strong flavours and neutralise.
It’s like 95% people in India selling laal maas do not make it 10% as fiery and dry as its original version. Neither do 99% people selling ‘roganjosh’ end up having anything to do with the real flavourful Kashmiri roganjosh.
Keeping the debate aside, it was a jolly good curry that everyone in the table enjoyed a lot. It did not have the string flavours of galangal or the tiny brinjals. It was a thick gravy with broccoli, small aubergines etc. rate it 4.25/5 due to its sheer taste.
Lamb massamman curry was good but we hv surely had better. The lamb pieces were sub optimally soft and hence a bit chewy. The meaty flavours were a bit overpowered by the spices in the curry. Someone put cream on it!!!! It was better than ‘good’ but not close to the best. Rate it 3.75
Tim krob was a nice dessert with water chestnuts adding a new dimension to the texture. Sweetened coconut cream was nice. Loved it. Rate it 4.25/5
Lemon blueberry drink was a hit that evening. we ordered 1 first and then 3 more as my co-diners wanted repeats. 2 large glasses each. The beauty of the drink was the balance of the super tangy fruit and sweetness, the texture of occasional fruit pulp. It was just too good. Rate it 4.75/5
Overall rating of food averages out to 4.2/5
Will revisit on occasions to enjoy the ambience, the mind blowing service and to entertain guests. But will surely not go here when in mood for eating some real Asian stuff.