Saturday, September 19, 2009

Royal Symphony


Have you
ever been to a restaurant where the food, ambience, service was all good, but still you dont feel like revisiting the place? Simply because the place has no character, no USP. I recently had an occasion to go for a dinner party to one such place. It was at the President hotel's restaurant called Royal Symphony.

It is a decent place with good lighting and ample space even for big dinner party groups like ours was that night. The menu is predominantly North Indian (serving non-veg as well) with a few chinese and continental dishes thrown in. I thought the prices were a little steep for the place with the regular non-veg fare priced over Rs. 250 per dish. We had a few rounds of vodka with tonic water with the usual Indian appetisers like chicken tikka, chilly chicken, veg platter, reshmi kabab and the like. The food was good, the service was good and the table conversation was good. And yet, the whole experience left something missing.

First of all, the restaurant was very silent with hardly any tables filled. Also there was no soft music playing in the background and nothing around in the decor of the place to catch one's attention. The table settings were the standard run-of-the-mill stuff and even the menu card and the menu were uninspiring. In short, there was no USP and no character to the place to draw you back. The food was surprisingly good though with the murgh musallam and the lucknowi gosht being very tasty. The chicken biryani was among the better ones I have ever had. The fresh lychees with ice-cream and the generously sized sizzling brownees went down well.

However, Royal Symphony is a little too standard for my liking and the place does not leave you with a very good impression to call for a revisit.
The food is definitely good, but I would rather spend the same amount at Deccan Rendezvous or even Koyla for that matter.

2 comments:

  1. I second you on the bit about Deccan Rendezvous; about Koyla only if someone else is paying!

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  2. A good post on a place I had never even heard about. I totally agree with Shree on Deccan Rendezvous, but Koyla....... I reserve my comments :P

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