Dine Esty (Sushant Lok 1, near Park Plaza Complex, Gurgaon)

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.

The main dining hall – another view

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.

starter at Dine Esty

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 lounge & bar setting behind the wood partition

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.

Stir frying on the teppan right in front of the customer seats – u see the cooking right infront of u

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.

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Tonino (Opp 1 MG Road, Between Chhatarpur & Sultanpur Metro stations New Delhi)

In a nutshell:

Romantic restaurant with excellent ambience & service, serves very good food but not the best in the category.

Address & other details : Tonino

Cuisine Type : Vegetarian & Nonvegetarian

Meal for 2: Rs. 3000 onwards (similar spread as described below) Beverages extra

Short DescriptionIn case u r in a hurry:

Before the food is served, came the breads & a tiny bowl of dark green ‘Olive pesto’……. Simply awesome. For starters we had fairly good calamari aglio. Then came the super thin crust signature Pizza – Provencale (vegetarian) baked on woodfire in a stone oven that u can see in one corner of the Dining Room of the Restaurant. Very good Pizza I must say, especially after we topped it up with some lamb salami, homemade red chilli flakes & oregano. The Grilled sole in Olive oil was good but have had better elsewhere. The Chocolate Lasagna dessert was again excellent with layers of not too sweet chocolate (with a slight hint of salt) amidst a non-fluffy chocolate cake, topped with Vanilla flavored ice cream. Loved the experience overall – Tastes r great but cud have been even better – prices r on the higher side.

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