'Don't judge a restaurant by it's buffet' is something I learnt long back. I have been to places with pathetic buffets, but otherwise good food and I usually don't do buffets in places with exotic cuisines! Of course, things have changed in a lot of restaurants recently! But there was this offer on snapdeal - a lunch buffet worth Rs 550 for Rs 350 and I thought why not! Apparently many people did the same thing and so a big bunch of us were at Kryptos to check out their lunch buffet!!

Disappointing is the only word I can think of!

Now, I love Greek cuisine. Even a year or so back, I have had some wonderful dishes at this very restaurant - some superb souvlaki and gyros and baklava. Not that I expected any of those on the buffet, but the buffet was disappointing beyond taste! The salad bar was the only saving grace - if you like salads that is! If you don't, then, well, you might come out cursing the restaurant! The hummus was excellent and a couple of starters served on the table were decent. The soup was bad! The main courses were bad - the lamb was cold, the chicken was the only thing edible on the buffet, the beef was like chewing leather (no, I have not chewed leather before, but I am pretty sure this is how it would be), the bake was alright and the so on.

Oh, there was another saving grace, in fact more than a saving grace - the desserts. Though there was no baklava, the five or so desserts that were there were all very very nice.

I won't pay Rs 550 for this buffet and now I won't pay Rs 350 either for the buffet. Luckily for me, my friend paid for the lunch! Do yourself a favour, cross the road and eat at Tuscana. The money goes to the same owner as he owns both, but you will feel so much better with the food. Or, even better, go to Kryptos and order a-la-carte, if you want to try good cypriot cuisine! Get some gyros, souvlaki, spanakopita and baklava and have proper lunch or dinner there - you might not regret that!

Kryptos is a good restaurant with a bad buffet!

So as an extension of my mystery shopping experience at Aloft, I had the choice of having either the buffet dinner or a-la-carte at Estia. Estia is their mediterranean restaurant and it is tucked away inside the main restaurant. There is no way of knowing that the restaurant exists as there were no boards or no signs of this, and even after you enter the main restaurant, you only notice that there is a separate section and if you don't ask for it, you might just think that it is an extension of the main restaurant!!! Now that was one long sentence, but it kind of tells you about the location of Estia. Just enter Aloft on OMR and ask for it!

I asked what is their specialty and we were suggested a few dishes of the menu. The menu was colourful, but not one that has a pleasing look as it was sticky all the way and sort of cramped. We decided to have a chicken soup and it was called AVGOLEMONO and since I was doing mystery shopping, I could not ask them to email me the dishes, so I had to write them all down! The soup was refreshing! We had a cheese borek, which is cheese with greens stuffed in puff pastry and it was ok! We asked for two main courses, first we asked for GAMBAS PIL PIL which is tiger prawns on a bed of polenta, then asked for MELANGANE PARMAGIANNA, which was supposed to be like a greek lasagna, but when I saw SOUVLAKI KEBAB on the menu, I changed my mind. The tiger prawns were cooked to perfection and tasted great, while the souvlaki kebabs were super juicy and super tasty. They were served with flavoured rice and stuffed pita bread and I had them with the pita bread! The pita bread could have been better, but the kebabs more than made up for it. But the waiter messed up the order and forgot to cancel the parmagianna and so we were left with three main dishes. Knowing fully well that I can write off the check to the hotel, we decided to taste and it turned out to be great!!!!! Glad we did not return it.

Being full with a nice meal, we were craving for dessert as we wanted something sweet, we asked for baklava and I spotted a white chocolate creme brûlée on the menu which I asked for. The baklava tasted good, but it was not the typical baklava with layers of puff pastry and stuff, but some kind of a rolled baklava. I am not sure if this is baklava and it certainly was not a great baklava, but it was not bad. The white chocolate creme brûlée,  which might look very nice on the picture tasted pathetic! I had to leave the whole thing behind as it was very watery and wrongly flavoured. The total cost of the meal was Rs 1600 something, but if you remove the extra main course that we had, you can easily have a meal here for Rs 1200 for two.

But in general the meal was very good and I am surprised that Aloft is not promoting this restaurant! There are not too many Mediterranean options on OMR as far as I know and obviously I cannot compare this to Kryptos or Azulia,this is not a bad place for a meal!!!

I would rate this experience a 3.5/5


Estia is the mediterranean restaurant at Aloft on OMR. It is right next to the Sholinganallur four road junction.

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An IAKR FILMS and CHENNAI FOODIE venture.

Ha, I have been wanting to say that for quite some time now. When a production house got in touch with me with an idea, the idea sounded great. But I was skeptical as to how feasible it was and with God's grace, IAKR films has made it a reality. I am excited to see this happen but very curious to know what you guys think about it.

So, here we are, introducing the Chennai Foodie Showcase, a new series of videos, featuring some of my favorite places to eat at. Meet the owners, the chefs, see their specialties and get intimate with some of the best places to eat out.

No, the blog is not going anywhere and I will continue to keep writing about every place I eat out. This is just an addition so, you can always come back to www.ChennaiFoodie.com to look for a place to eat out.

IAKR is on facebook (yeah who isn't) https://www.facebook.com/iakrfilms

And so is Tuscana Kryptos - a great place to eat. https://www.facebook.com/TuscanaKryptos. The one we went to is on Chamiers Road, diagonally opposite the entry to Park Sheraton, but there is one on KNK road in Nungambakkam as well.

As always, your feedback is more than welcome, fresh tomatoes or rotten ones! Either on the comments or to my inbox. You can courier the stuff to me as well.

Start music!

Undoubtedly my favorite Italian outlet in town, Tuscana has opened its newest at Chamiers Road, opp The Park Sheraton. So when Vipin, the owner, called me to take a look at it and sample some their food, I jumped at the chance. I am pretty regular to Tuscana at Wallace Garden and when he said that this setting was different, I was really curious. In complete contrast to its outlet in Wallace Garden, with its informal setting (and rather tables too close for comfort), which the owner calls a Pizzeria, its Chamiers road outlet is entirely a restaurant. With outstanding exterior, chic interior, with quite a few private dining rooms ranging from two seater to ten seater, the place is outstanding.

The food is the same. Same outstanding quality, same quantity, but 13% higher in price. I have always felt that when you walk into an outlet of your favorite place, you should expect everything to be the same, but let's see how Tuscana fares with its brand with completely different setting and prices, albeit great food.

We started off with American pizza and Chicken Focaccia for starters - yes, in Italy, pizza and pasta are really starters, and that's how we were served here! I have always loved their pizza and today was no different, but I somehow prefer their garlic bread to the focaccia. Their garlic bread is OUTSTANDING - period.  The vegetarians had a broccoli pizza which was pretty decent. We had some minestrone soup which was alright. For the main course, since we were quite a group, we got to taste quite a few dishes - Lamb shanks, char grilled sword fish, grilled chicken breast, veal scaloppine and cream cheese pie and baked polenta for the vegetarians. The veal (baby cow) was superb in flavor and superbly done. Very few places cook beef to perfection and today was one example. The chicken breast was alright, the lamb shanks were brilliant, I did not eat the sword fish while the vegetarian dishes were pretty decent (the vegetarians loved it, so .....). After quite some amount of food, we ended it with Tiramisu (easily the best tiramisu in town, maybe next only to Mikeal Besse of Ecstasy) and a blueberry pannacotta - another favorite of mine.

All in all a great meal, and the best part of having a heavy lunch in Tuscana is that you can get back to work without feeling bloated or sleepy - that to me is a sign of good quality food! Vipin was with us, so I cannot comment on the service, price like I mentioned is about 13% higher and the ambiance is excellent! I will continue to eat at the Wallace garden outlet as it is closer to me, but for those who think driving to Nungambakkam from Adyar or that part of town is more difficult than opening a restaurant, you now have a Tuscana near you! I was told that this place will have two pages of the menu from Kryptos, I hope they choose the right stuff from the Kryptos menu. Kryptos is a place where you will have to order right to enjoy the food or you might never go back!!!!

Disclosure: I was invited by the owner to see the place. I am also very regular to Tuscana at Wallace Garden as I love the food there. 

After its grand opening, which I thoroughly enjoyed, my second visit to Kryptos was a rather forgetful one, and so I did not even bother writing about it! I had made my thought clear to the manager and he was more than happy to listen to complaints without ever once being defensive - so Kudos to their managerial and service team .So  when friends suggested that we meet there again for a community lunch on a fine Saturday afternoon, I had no qualms and went ahead and found change in almost every aspect!

The previous time I went, the starters had too much puff pastry and too little meat and when its priced at about Rs 500, you feel let down. So when this time, the Arnipitakia - puff pastry with stuffed lamb was brought, I was skeptical, but what a change - you could just not complain. The lamb inside was perfectly cooked and the puff pastry was just right! Kotopoulopitakia-Stuffed chicken and phyllo pastry rolls with apricot and feta cheese was equally brilliant. The cold mezze platter was not up to the mark, though a couple of them were decent, but the two starters more than made up for it!

Since we were about eight of us, I got to try various dishes for the main course and some of them were quite outstanding - the Kotopittai which is diced chicken wrapped in béchamel and baked in layered phyllo pastry served with salad and baked potato - simply superb. The chicken souvlaki is their trademark dish, I guess and it was pretty decent, while the Lahano Dolmathes which is Tenderloin filled braised cabbage leaves in lemon and butter egg sauce with bean Casserole was quite brilliant.

However, the Gyros were still not upto the mark and in my opinion I feel that though this team has a history of brilliant bread making, they have just not mastered the art of the Pita bread - they are just not able to do justice to the Pita bread, so the gyros and the falafels fall out in taste as they are not packaged right! So I would stay out of these, though these are pretty Greeky!

The desserts here are brilliant - just brililant! They have the best Baklava in town and nothing is more Greek than Baklava, so........ Their mango cheese cake was again awesome, just perfect!

Service is outstanding, attentive and if you make suggestions, they are even willing to borrow a couple of ears and listen to you if they must! And if your suggestions make sense, believe me, you will see a change quite soon as I saw, so full marks for their service. The one drawback to me here was the price of starters- Rs 500 is very high for a few starters by any stretch of imagination so while the prices are high for main course and can be justified, the price of some starters are quite high!

I know now precisely what to order here and so I am sure I will enjoy my meal everytime! Their baked dishes are very good, but I hope the gyros, the pita bread and hummus gets fixed, because I know for a fact that if this gets fixed, this will just juice you up everytime! And do not miss the desserts!

Food 7/10
Service 9.5/10
Ambiance 9/10
Price 6/10

Kryptos by Willi is located on KNK road, opp the old Mocha building, in the basement of the building that hosts Sports Locker

The Willi-Vipin duo is back with a new restaurant this time on the ever bustling KNK Road in Nungambakkam. With Tuscana's Italian fare being extremely successful, the duo are out to confront the Greek now!!! I was honored to have been there for their trials to get a taste of what to expect from them! I have never been to Greece so my Greek food expertise is limited to Las Vegas, stand alone Greek fare in some parts of the US, one Greek restaurant in Europe and some Mediterranean fare in US, Europe and India so my take on authenticity is limited to these factors! I love good food and am willing to give authenticity a miss as long as they don't call Masala Dosa, Greek!!!! Trial is not a good place to judge the quantity, price and service and so I will stay away from these things and stick only to the food in this review  unlike all my takes on other restaurants!

As we entered the place, we could not help but notice the 'class' factor. The restaurant has extremely good interiors, well designed and beautifully thought out. It is a 64 seater with a large 20 seating community table in the center. While I am not sure how that would work in our city, hats off for trying out that concept here! Vipin welcomed us and after a short talk, we were lead to the cold mezze part of the buffet near the kitchen and we took off our Greek food adventure from there.

You can trust these people to make the best bread in town, Tuscana and Subway showed that long back and Kryptos is no different. The puffed bread, bread sticks and the likes were excellent. Humus was brilliant and they had about 3 varieties all of which were enjoyable.  I had some prawns which were good, but had no idea they were Greek, they tasted just like the ones we make at home!!!! They even had, as Vipin put it, Paul the Octopus, but I stayed away from him!!!! There was some leaf stuffed with artichokes and rice, which I fancied and thought was a good starter.

Now on to the hot buffet! We were offered a large selection of veg and non veg dishes and I must say that the chicken breast stuffed with spinach was out of the world! It was simply stunning and I was tempted to stuff myself with only that, it was that good. Finally we get to have gyros in Chennai, and I tasted the beef and the chicken gyros and I must say that I was disappointed. I have to give it to the restaurant that the gyros was cold by the time I ate it, but somehow I did not get the dashing flavors that I expected in gyros. Make no mistake, it was by no means bad, it tasted good in fact, but somehow that flavor burst that you expect in  gyros was missing! The next great stuff was the lamb moussaka  which to me was the best dish on the buffet along with the spinach chicken. The tenderloin steak was alright, the other lamb stuff were alright to me and the puff pastry stuffed dishes did not excite me. In the veg section, I saw some falafel and was again disappointed. It was the exact same size and taste of our city's 'Ulandha vada'!!!!!  The puff pastry stuffed dishes in the veg side were good however unlike their non veg companions and were enjoyable. The moussakka and the paneer stuff were ok, but I must say that the vegetarians enjoyed it, so I cannot make a comment on the veg side of things.

The fruit punch, the litchi-grape juice and the cranberry-grape juices were all brilliant! The Baklava was excellent, while the chocolate mousse was equally good.

I would love to go back when they open up for the public and get a feel of their prices and quantity. You can be sure of the quality, some of the dishes are stunning and the desserts and drinks brilliant. If the flavor of the gyros improves, I will be heading there very often, but this is a very personal opinion of the gyros. They are good as they are, just not gyrotic enough for me!

Look out for more on ambiance, pricing and service when I hit the place soon!

I have been wanting to try out this restaurant for quite sometime now, but have never had the opportunity! So when it came, I jumped at it and it was well worth it!!

'Marhaba sir' is how you are greeted as you enter this place! You might expect exotic settings for an exotic restaurant, but the interiors are quite simple with a 2 member band dishing out soft Spanish music. The woman was full of life while the guitarist was toned down and this seemed a nice combination for the evening. 

I thought of Azulia as a Greek/Mediterranean affair, but they try to do full justice to the term Mediterranean- They serve the cuisines from Egypt, France, Italy, Morocco, Greek among others, a total of 10 different country cuisines! The menu will confuse most of our diners and the chef is usually around to help you decide and this can be a boon. The most troubling event was that the chef blinked when I asked for Gyros- a Greek Kebab. He made it sound like he has never heard of it and here I was, thinking of this all day!!!! But that said, the food was exceptional for most part!

We started off with a starter platter which gives you samples of 3 starters (there is an option to take 6 as well). We had to have Humus (which is a chick peas paste with a tinge or garlic, but here you are offered different options for it) and Falafels (cutlet vada fusion) and the chef offered sausages for the third and we went with it. The falafels and the sausages were brilliant, the Humus was decent and the platter was served with 4 pieces of Kooboos (spelt differently in different places, it is nothing but pita bread). If I happen to go there again (which I hope I will), I would order the full platter with 6 starters and get done with it! 

For the main course, we had one garlic butter fish and one portion of lamb (which I was told has been cooking for over 6 hrs). The fish was AWESOME. It was the sea bass variety which is probably imported, but the lamb had so much tomato that it was overwhelming and completely masking other flavors, and was served with potato wedges. I commented to the chef that it was very average and he promptly removed it and served me some Mediterranean chicken, which was fantastic.

For desserts we just shared one portion of Baklava, which is a fantastic Greek sweet and I loved it! Service was great, ambiance was very good and the food almost excellent. I would love to go back here, but for the price - this meal for two cost us Rs 2950! But yeah, this is not a garam masala adulterated greek food, but close to authentic stuff! I have never been to Greece, but have had good falafels, humus and Baklava in good restaurants in the US and this place is pretty close!!!

Food 8/10

Price 7/10

Ambiance 8/10

Service 8/10

Azulia is the Mediterranean restaurant at the GRT Hotels, T. Nagar.

If you want to propose to somebody, or add some kick into your marriage, here is a place to head to! A beautiful pool, a pool side bar, very very well done lighting and cool breeze! The small inside setting is well lit and has this European decor to it, but the pool side is the better half of this resto.

I must say that this was one of the best eating experiences of my life (US included)! The food, the ambiance and the services were simply out standing. I know this is a new hotel, but i hope the service stays this way!

The menu was a set 6 course Greek Moroccan Lebonese meal with unlimited mocktails and pita bread. As usual we stuffed ourselves with the wonderful pita bread, though the waiter warned us that we will be full by the end of the meal, and by the time the main course arrived, we were pretty stuffed. We took a nice long walk and came back to have the main course.

The pita bread was baked to perfection and served with herbed mayo, plain mayo, onions in vinegar, green olives and a spicy tomato dip for you to make your choice and stuff with whatever suits your taste buds! Among the mocktails, the iced cappuchio was a revelation. It was something unique and blend was a new taste altogether! The apple and cranberry was alright, but the litchie martini was out of the world!

The food is served in typical French Style, with large plates, small portions and a dash of reduced vinegar on the sides of the dishes. I am not sure if Greek and Moroccan food is served this way, but Lebonese food is definitely not served this way, so it was interesting to eat such food in French Portions! But do not let the portions fool you, as by the end of the meal, you are more than stuffed!

The chef decided to serve us some complimentary 'pre starter' as we were waiting for a few friends. It was a tiny pancake stuffed with something inside which was pretty alright, but that size is what fooled us and made us gorge on the pita bread!

For starters you have a choice of hot mezzie something and cold mezzie something. Both were heavenly, a kind of bread stuffed with minced meat and served with dips.
The moroccan lamb soup was like our dhal, served with minced lamb, but it was tasty nevertheless, but just a bit more familiar. The salads served were a mixed seafood salad that had squids and prawns, the chicken salad stuffed in pita bread and a minced lamb in Humus paste (Humus is a mediterranean, Arabian dish, a kind of a garlic paste). The humus was simply amazing and with the small amount of minced lamb cooked to perfection, it was a revelation.

This was followed by the grills. We had a choice of Chicken Shwarma, Moroccan Lamb, Asian Turkey (or chicken). We were offered the option to take a mixed grill which is a small portion of all of the above and needless to say that is what we chose! The schwarma was alright, but the chicken and the lamb were out of the world. The lamb meat was overcooked, but it retained its flavor and with the herbs on top, it was amazing. The chicken grill was definitely not bad and was fully consumed by us!

The chef then gave us a kind Greek Alcohol that is supposed to ease the tummy. (When we told our waiter that he was right about the quantity and that we were getting full, this was served). I do not know what went into that tiny serving in a large wine glass, but it was again, heavenly. For all I know, there was some sonf in that sorbet and it really eased out our tummys and made some space for the others to follow. Apparently it is called Ouzo and is some famous Greek drink!

This was followed by the main course. We had the Prawn something, the Sear fish, Chicken something and Lamb something! The prawn dish was the best among the four choices. It was some kind of a 'puffs' stuffed with prawn and some kind of a sauce that goes extremely well with the whole dish. It was served with some rice and some humus paste. The sear fish was alright and so was the chicken, but again, the lamb was cooked to perfection here. Everything seemed like perfect.

Desserts were served next and we had the mixed platter and we served with semolina cake, baklava and some greek cake. The baklava was simply superb while the others were not bad!The meal ended with Greek coffee which was not bad either, but nothing special!

The service was extremely good, attentive and friendly. The waiter took the pains to explain each and every dish that was served to us!The meal set us back by Rs 1600 per head, but it was worth every penny that was spent.

All in all, it is a great place to go to. Full service will be available from Feb 2009 with a choice of international wines and the full menu.

Food 9.5/10

Ambiance 9.5/10

Service 9/10

Price 8/10

Kefe is the roof top pool side resto at the Taj Mount Road, located on the small road opp Spencers Junction.