I am starting off this new year's blogging with the restaurant that I started my blog with, the Great Kebab Factory. Well, this time around I was at their new outlet in Egmore in the Radisson Blu premises, and we got there after we almost tricked a friend into treating us for dinner as 'his wedding gift' to us! I say almost because we ended up going dutch and paying it all ourselves, but had no regrets doing so! For those who did not know, the Great Kebab Factory is a "sit down and let us serve you the buffet" kind of place. The only decision you make is 'Veg' or 'Non Veg' and after that everything is brought to your table in a particular order. You can ask for more (if you still have the space)!

The place is not as fancy as their main outlet near the airport, in fact, I would not imagine that this is the Great Kebab Factory if the board was not outside and the ambiance is very so so, considering the fact you pay a grand and a half for dinner! But everything about the ambiance, the price and any thing else you can think to bring this place down disappears when the first roti and a small cutlet to be spread lands on your table - the Galouti Kebab! I have had this kebab elsewhere and you tell yourself that 'Hey, it is not bad', but the minute you have it at TGKF, you know that the others are imitators, at best. I wonder how they make it here and since it is the first kebab that is served, it sets a very high standard and makes the rest of the kebabs look bad. As soon as you put it in your mouth, it disappears like magic! The prawn grill was another brilliant kebab, juicy, succulent and super tasty! The lamb sheek, the other chicken and the fish were all good, but paled in comparison the first one! In fact, I would not mind going here and taking 5 or 6 helpings of the Galouti and heading out. My friend, in his second helping, took two galouti in a single roti! We all took the help of the wonderful lassi here to send the other kebabs inside, but galouti did not need any help!

Then came the rotis, the gravies and the biriyani and all of them were reasonably good! We were stuffed by this time and were glad that they served us only portion of the four desserts all of which turned out to be great! We all had a bite of each and could not ask for a second helping as there was no room in the stomach. In fact, given a choice, I would have rolled home!

Service was first class! Water was filled regularly and there was somebody who caught your attention if you need something so it was wonderful that way.


I would rate this experience a 4/5, if the ambiance was classier, I would have given it another half!


TGKF is located at Radisson Blu hotel, Egmore on the same road as Ethiraj College, towards the Egmore COOPTEX junction. For a classier ambiance, I prefer the one near the Airport!

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The new theme restaurant by the Mouthful Group is open to public! The setting of the restaurant is simply superb, with an elegant waiting area in the ground floor and some superb interiors to mimic the rain forest setting (reminds you of the Rain Forest restaurant in Adyar, very similar settings). There are speakers all over which keep throwing out sounds through your meal which is more of a distraction than being an attraction. There are sounds of elephants and a waiter walks around in a tiger costume and I am not too sure if both the elephant and the tiger are found in the Amazon Forest, I thought it was more of an Anaconda place!!!

We ordered one Raan (whole Lamb Leg) cooked in Moroccan style, one Afghani chicken, one baby corn fry, one crispy corn and some desserts! The Afghani chicken was probably the best dish of the lot, it was soft, well marinated and well cooked with some superb flavor! The Raan was not as good as the one in Flame Grill (by the same group), this one, though flavored well, was very dry for our liking, and being priced at Rs 1100, you do not want such dishes to go wrong. The crispy corn was a new dish and I thought it was great too, the baby corn fry was the usual fry. The death by chocolate was a brilliant dessert, while the sizzling brownie was the same old brownie!

I would love to go back here for the ambiance, the food being well priced and tasty and the service was excellent. The raan might have gone wrong that day and I would not mind trying it out again before deeming the raan here as less edible than their other outlet!

Food 7/10
Service 7/10
Ambiance 8/10
Price 7/10

Wild Amazon is located just beyond Citi Center, towards the beach!

A pretty unassuming restaurant, located quietly in small bylane in T.Nagar, Mouthful does conjure up some mouth watering exotic dishes without burning deep holes in your pocket.

As you enter the restaurant, almost nothing catches your eye. A small ice cream stall outside, a tandoor counter and a few people waiting are all part of most restaurants today. A pleasant waiter seats and presents the not so outstanding looking menu and looks at you till you politely remind him that you do not know the menu by heart and that you need sometime to make your choice.

Open the menu and BANG. Quite a few 'exotic' names come up. The Raan being one of them. There are a couple of other restaurants in the city that serve pretty good raan, but I have not seen any of them offer a choice of marinades. Most restaurants marinate one piece of the leg piece (a lamb's leg piece mind you) and hope that they sell off, so if some one has ordered a raan, then you have to try your luck the next time. However mouthful offers you not one, not two, but three different marinades of raan-the Moroccan Spiced Raan, The honey glazed raan and the Afghani raan. We were told that on that day, the lamb was relatively smaller and that they could give us one for half the price and we took one Moroccan and one honey glazed raan. The menu offers a range of whole cooked chicken in the same flavors and a few more exotic dishes. The places also serves mukthaba (a malaysian paratha), regular western frontier foods and the usual multicuisine (read, does not belong to any particular cuisine) too.

I am not too sure about the authenticity of the Moroccan flavors as yours truly has not travelled to Morocco, but I assure you that the Lamb Leg tastes great. Succulent, juicy, tasty are all the adjectives that you can use to have a taste of this lamb 'Leg piece'. The honey glazed raan was equally tasty and the fact that on a weekday, I saw quite a few of these leg pieces move from the kitchen to various tables, does testify its taste. The honey glazed chicken was equally tasty and is served with some sweet pulao. We also ordered some butter chicken masala and another house special gravy and an assortment of naans, parathas and roti's.

Talk of dessert and again a few exotic names come up. Burj-Al-Arab and Amazon forest are two catchy names and live up to expectations as well. While the Burj is a large tower glass with four scoops of ice creams and nuts and the works, the Amazon forest is tall, but flat on top bowl, with six different scoops of ice creams, again with the works.

The place also serve Tandoor Bakra which is a WHOLE ROASTED LAMB. Costs about 4k, but you have to place your order atleast 8 hrs earlier with 50% advance payment. Would love to try that!

A pretty satisfying meal and with the bill coming up to Rs 1894 for 6 people, it is not a bad deal at all!

Service is not five star, but very polite and courteous at that. The matron does know the dishes well and the tastes match what he explains.

Food -8/10
Ambiance- 5/10
Service 7/10
Price-8/10

Mouthful is located in T.Nagar. take the road bang opp, the Rohini internationl on G.N.Chetty road, take the first right. It is about a 100 meters into the road, next to Green Trends.

Noted to be a great place for North West Frontier food, the service in recent times, especially during weekends, when they run full, leaves much to be desired. For example you might find that something you ordered might not be served at all, but worse, claimed that it was definitely served. We did bring it to the notice of the manager, but how would you complain about waiters not assigned to your table conveniently ‘not looking’ at you, rather than excusing themselves and asking ‘your’ waiter to come over? So you have to wait till ‘your’ waiter sees you waving your hand.

But that said, the food at Kabul is still one of the best in its cuisine. Do not let a plain menu fool you, the food being served is definitely worth more than the simple printed 2 page menu and the prices. Both vegetarian and non vegetarian are equally good and close to authentic. You have a choice of fruit drinks served in decent sizes, my favourite however is the jal jeera-a great appetizer.

The signature dishes are probably the biriyani varieties- they have 5 different varieties and they are not just different names or the same tomato rice served in different colours. They are actually different biriyanis. The chicken zafarani biriyani is the less spicier version with a tinge of sweetness to it and if made well, will blow your mind. The murgh mutton biriyani is quite as nice and there is one version that has potatoes in it, the name of which I cannot recall, however the description on the menu will tell you that you hit the right dish. I must say that all the 5 varieties are decent, one better than the other, next to a well made muslim marriage biriyani!

The Thanghdi kabab was decent, though the flavouring could have been richer, while the Raan (which by the way is a whole lamb leg cooked to your choice) is way tastier. Their paneer dishes are very very good and will also tempt a hard core non veg guy. The gravies are of decent portions and most of them give out the aura of being made somewhere in the North West region itself. Naans, kulchas and stuffed parathas are a standard and are not anything extraordinary (and you don’t expect it to be).

The choice of desserts are very minimal and more often than not ,you will be offered a choice between strawberry ice cream and kulfi. The kulfi is served in the earthen pot and is probably the same as any good road side kulfi (which is by no means inferior), so I suggest you have your desserts elsewhere.

All in all, a nice place for the specific cuisine. Its expensive for a couple but will work out to be very comfortable on the pocket for a large group of people and will make you feel you got what you paid for (if the service is not pathetic on that particular day). The ambience is unassuming and very northy and the waiters are dressed in kurthas to give you that feel, not a bad job overall.

Food- 7/10

Service- 2/10

Ambience- 5/10

Kabul is located on TTK Salai right after the adidas showroom.

Its not a place to hang out and meet. Its a place about one word-FOOD. Loosen your waist and start. You cant order anything there and neither is it a buffet. Welcome to the Great Kebab Factory where the only choice you make is 'Veg or Non Veg'. They have a fixed menu and bring it in a particular order. And at anytime you can ask for any of those dishes, but I strongly suggest that you don't. Because when I did,I realized that as they kept bringing i was not able to eat towards the end because I had filled up my stomach with what I thought tasted great, only to realize that tastier dishes were coming up. So let them bring it to you, dish by dish. And at the end (after they serve biriyani with naan and dhal makhni), the waiter will ask you if you want a refill of something, and at that time you can ask for whatever you think you have space for, but then again, remember that there is whole of dessert to come by too so leave some space for the awesome deserts to follow. By the time the deserts are over, they would have stuffed food right down your throat and if you yawn, the person opposite to you can almost see food in your mouth. You might not want to drive after that, so i suggest you go with a chauffeur. Come home and sleep, don't you dare try anything else. When you wake up the next morning you will hate food, the oil and the great taste of food is soooooo good that it hits you hard. You probably won't feel like eating kebabs for the rest of your life. Don't worry, that is a normal feeling and two days later you will crave for that food again. The second time I went, I held back the urge to ask for any kebab in the middle. Just sit back, relax and let them serve you in their fixed order.

Go there only if you have skipped lunch and you have had a light breakfast. The girls only wasted the food when they went with us, no offence to the women, but i suggest you girls don't even have the breakfast the day you plan to go there, even better if you can also skip dinner the previous night. Except for one, all of them ate only one bite of each kebab. It costs 675(including tax) for NV and 555 for the veg kebabs. Worth once in a long while, but the food is SIMPLY SUPERB.