Fifty-Five East, Hotel Grand Hyatt (Santa Cruz East)

Every bit worth the financial indulgence

Let's face it - a Sunday brunch at a premium restaurant inside one of the city's leading five-star hotels is not going to come cheap. What you can rest assured of though is that the exorbitant amount will be well-spent here unlike at Marriott's Lotus Cafe. Named evocatively after the PIN code (400055) of the Hyatt and the fact that it is on the Eastern side of the Santa Cruz Station of the Western Railway, Fifty-Five East is where you go for the choicest in both oriental and occidental cuisine. In terms of the look and feel, the restaurant is the ultimate in the open kitchen concept with virtually everything (barring the Indian main course) available at live counters. The chefs are also extremely cooperative when it comes to customisation - you can actually choose a sauce from a different counter, and it will be willingly served you. An obligatory start would be at the sushi counter, where the tuna sushi with wasabi sauce delights in its perfection while the traditional hotategai (scallop sushi on rice) appears much too pungent for the Indian palate (and may therefore be assumed to be the real thing). If you want scallops at their best though, they are available at the next live counter where they are served whole in a glwith a sauce of your choice (lemon garlic or cocktail is recommended). The tuna or chicken cold salad is best left alone thanks to its dryness, and a good idea now would be to pass on to the western counter for the excellent chicken thigh in fried onions, best enjoyed with barbecue or Dijon mustard sauce. Among the other commendable western delicacies is the chargrilled prawn, which starts right where the scallops left off. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the chargrilled fish which reminds one suspiciously of the hilsa from Bengal; or the chicken counterpart which you may try with any sauce you like but always with the same result (you do end up admiring the different sauces though, mushroom being the best of the lot). The roast chicken with potatoes too fails to impress. Among the more traditional Italian dishes, the cannelloni with minced meat is decent, but the chicken sausage and pepperoni pizza is absolutely delectable in its simplicity (sausages and pepperoni slices neatly arranged on a wonderfully prepared crust). To come back to the oriental side, one thing you should not miss is the Thai shrimp ball noodle soup - a delicious broth containing flat noodles, shrimp fillings inside dough balls, and sprouts that is as nutritious as it is tasty. If you still have some space left for the main course, you can try out the pan-fried noodles with the chicken thai red curry, a tried and tested combination at various places. To get a little more experimental, the stir-fried vegetables and fish are quite brilliant, and the slightly pungent aftertaste of the fish will disappear with a generous helping of the dim sum sauce. Add the Asian favourite lobster crackers to that, and you have it all. By the time you reach the dessert counter, which is the largest of the lot, you are about to explode but try and hold it in looking at what is on offer. A perfect ending to a perfect meal comprises the seductive strawberries or chocolate mousse in vanilla ice-cream or a crepe with whipped cream and strawberries. The ice-cream, served from a dispenser, is incredibly soft, and some chocolate sauce added to it can make for a libidinous cold drink as well. One very significant positive on the buffet is the inclusion of beverages (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic) as part of the package, and it is difficult to resist the Duc de Roucher Brut champagne that you can have with your meal. Just make sure you have a bit of the champagne left by the end of the meal - for the strawberries in cream are best enjoyed with champagne, especially if you are here on a special date. And even if you are not, the very fact that you have paid over INR 3000 for this meal does entitle you to a little bit of food porn after all!

Ambience                ★★★★
Service                    ★★★★ 
Presentation            ★★★★★
Taste                      ★★★★★


http://mumbai.burrp.com/listing/fifty-five-east_santacruz-east_mumbai_restaurants/1585341851__UR__reviews

Spaghetti Kitchen (High Street Phoenix, Lower Parel)

Tolerable in parts

Spaghetti Kitchen is probably the least popular of the 4 big Blue Food restaurants given the number of empty seats even during peak hours, and it is not too difficult to ascertain why. Food here is simply inconsistent in quality, ranging from good classy stuff to the borderline unpalatable. Cheese garlic bread works for a good starter (being the one continental thing one cannot go wrong on), along with the delectable Cappuccino of Four Mushroom Soup (served rather evocatively in a coffee cup with a very soft crouton topped with minced mushroom pieces which makes the entire thing even tastier). Thereafter, one may try the starters: the Parmesan Cream Cheese Baby Potatoes - oven-roasted potatoes cooked with parmesan, cream and fresh herbs - certainly sound very appetising (in a rather synaesthetic way), but do not seem worth the money once you have tasted the fare. Among the pizzas, the thin-crust Pizza Primavera, with a good selection of olive, artichoke and asparagus toppings, is worth a try. Not so much so is the Pizza Giardiniera, where bell peppers, artichoke and jalapeno do not combine well at all.This inconsistency stretches on to its flagship pastas as well. The Asparagus and Spring Vegetable Risotto, made of premium Carnaroli rice and served with a green sauce, convinces you of the merits of this restaurant. Meanwhile, the Lasagna verde alla Bolognese di pollo, a spinach-flavoured lasagna with a whiff of chicken (and recommended by the chef), is extremely shoddy in its execution and presentation; and the taste too is far below Spaghetti Kitchen standards. One rather unique feature at the Kitchen is the steward collecting a payment card from the customer (for available discounts etc.) at the end of the meal and then swiping it at a terminal before even presenting the bill to the cardholder - a practice that is usually not followed anywhere in India. And mind you, those aforementioned discounts will be important - you need to comfort yourself on getting a fair deal at last!

Ambience                ★★★
Service                    ★★★
Presentation            ★★★
Taste                           ★★★


http://mumbai.burrp.com/listing/spaghetti-kitchen_high-street-phoenix_mumbai_restaurants/15558554__CA__menu

Lotus Cafe, Hotel J.W. Marriott (Juhu)

Exodus Cafe...Of money, that is

Whoever believes that all reputable 5-star hotels have top-class restaurants with excellent ambience and mouth-watering delicacies is yet to visit the flagship restaurant of J.W. Marriott. At Lotus Cafe, the only thing matching 5-star levels is the charge for the brunch buffet - you can eat all you like to make the most of the obscene amount you pay, but the quality of food does not live up to the quantity consumed as a result. The salads, especially the chicken and seafood ones with a dash of Thousand Island, Mustard and Cocktail dressing, ensure your meal starts with a lot of promise, as does the rich and smooth Cream of Chicken Soup; but thereafter, things only go downhill. Among the other starters, the Alu tikia is soft but not particularly appetising, while the braised chicken breast in completely bland. The Tangri kabab, a tandoori preparation of a chicken leg, is quite palatable, but whoever went to a 5-star hotel in Mumbai to eat Tandoori chicken? And so you come to the live seafood counter, where the tiger prawns, groupers and salmons look quite delightful; and you order a sizable helping of each. Unfortunately, once they are prepared and brought to your table (i.e. a good 30 minutes later, by which time you may sample the Beef Wellington - made of pork - and get nauseated anyway), the taste has been done away with - the prawn, though served in quite a regal fashion, is inordinately bland (roadside Chinese eateries handle prawn better); the grouper is chewy though somewhat tasty; and the much-heralded salmon has a faintly putrid aftertaste. The live spaghetti counter disappoints just as much, as the penne in cream sauce turns out to be the same as that you would get at any other continental place in Mumbai, and the promised pink sauce turns out to be nothing better than the tomato-based red sauce that is widely available everywhere as well (with the notable exception that it is utterly unpalatable here). A disgruntled customer may choose to walk out now, or pay a visit to the desserts counter with his / her dignity still intact. Some solace may be found here in the chocolate pastry and the rather variegated collection of Baskin Robbins ice-creams that are on offer. For all the bad food that is served here at exorbitant rates, Lotus Cafe may be recommended for a decent offering of mocktails. While the Virgin Mary (with unnecessarily pungent tomato juice) is best avoided, the Virgin Pina Colada, Virgin Mojito, Dune Runner (mango and cranberry juice) and Salient (mango, cranberry and lime juice) are absolutely delightful and cheer you up even as you struggle to ingest the abysmal food spread. In fact, in case Marriott allows it, a splendid way of spending the lazy afternoon would be to curl up beside the pool adjacent to Lotus Cafe with a glass of Pina colada. If for nothing else, one is spared the overcrowded interiors and Epicurean disasters within.

Ambience                ★★★
Service                    ★★★
Presentation            ★★
Taste                      ★★


http://mumbai.burrp.com/listing/lotus-cafe_juhu_mumbai_restaurants/197125712__UR__reviews

Status (Matunga West)

Was this a restaurant then?

You may pass the white 2-storey building a number of times as you walk from L.J. Road to Cadell Road and admire the way 'Status' is embossed on the top right corner. However, unless you are attentive enough to notice the words 'Refined Gourmet' below the title, it is very easy to mistake Status for an automobile or hosiery showroom. That said, if you do happen to go inside for a meal, you do get a favourable first impression from the interior decors, especially the interestingly sculptured showpieces that adorn the niches in the walls. In a full 4-course meal, you may find the beginning a trifle disappointing if you are the soup sort - the vegetable sweet corn soup is rather ordinary. However, you are left spellbound by the starters in both their vegetarian and non-vegetarian variants. Among vegetarian starters, the Paneer hariyali tikka is a good pick with extremely soft cottage cheese spiced up to perfection and duly complemented by fried onions. But even that is overshadowed by Tandoori mushroom, an unusual preparation of marinated giant mushrooms baked to softness over a clay oven and served red-hot. The non-vegetarian starters are no less, as both the Murgh Malai Kabab and Murgh Achari Kabab please the taste buds with some finely cooked chicken in freshly ground cashewnut paste and brown masala respectively. For the main course, with a slightly overpriced and strictly OK tandoori roti, you may want to consider just the Dal makhani, whose aroma of butter mingled with freshly cooked pulses is often enough to satisfy you after the variety of the starters. However, if it is the non-vegetarian fare that interest you more, go no further than the popular Murgh makhani, a dish of shredded and barbecued chicken cooked in a delicious butter and cream sauce - the perfect accompaniment to the bread and easily consumable thanks to being boneless. While the desserts are certainly not the specialty of Status, the Sizzling brownie, with sizzling hot chocolate sauce seductively poured over a freshly cooked brownie, is an excellent finale to a meal. Not so is the Caramel custard, which appears slightly under-prepared and leaves a putrid aftertaste. At Status, therefore, you choose carefully - certainly more carefully than the designer of the restaurant has chosen the look of the place.

Ambience                ★★★★
Service                    ★★★★ 
Presentation            ★★★
Taste                      ★★★★


http://mumbai.burrp.com/listing/status_mahim-w_mumbai_bars-pubs-restaurants/166788643__UR__reviews