Sunday morning seemed a bit unwelcoming as I was feeling a bit under the weather, thanks to I-don't-know-what-I-ate-last-night's meal I was not looking forward to the day at all. We had already planned a dinner outing as an excuse to celebrating my birthday that went by 3 days ago! Owing to this ill health, I was hoping not to experiment with anything pertaining to food. As luck would have it, this outing had to be done or I would disappoint a whole bunch of people so I resorted to the just-go-with-the-flow attitude!
My brother had been to a restaurant sometime in the past month and he could not help but mention about the kinda food they served and how delicious it was; too many times to miss! So quite comfortably we decided we would visit this restaurant in Mylapore called Mahamudra and see if it is really worth all the praise from my brother.
I have always had a problem with restaurants / antique shops etc. that claim to have "self proclaimed idiosyncrasies" of selling 'authentic-indian' or 'ethnic' or 'earthy' or 'traditional' COME ON!! You surely can do better than that! What is so 'Indian' about you when you sell a penny worth material at the cost of an unaffordable / unfounded currency with all these histrionic taglines attached to it, I deeply wonder. You won't see me buy from what's name such as "FAB INDIA", "DAKSHIN CHITRA" "KALPASTREE" and all those shenanagans, that's for sure!
So we find a place and start off with the infamous vadai and go with their top two choices as suggested by the waiter!
I have tasted better Vadais at home. In fact my mother had made the exact version of Vazhaipoo Vadai (Picture 2) which I thought was yumm and found the Mahamudra version of it to be dry and not so jaw-friendly! The first one was, again, dry and impeccably STIFF!!^&*!@#$.. I don't recommend it at all.
Next we moved to the main course, the one I was looking forward to as I had ordered 'Pesarattu' and I hadn't had it in a long time. In line with my health status the Pesarattu was also very bland; it seriously lacked life. For starters it had not a hint of salt and was served cold. So far my evening seemed to have shaped very well I thought. So shamelessly I ogled at the other dishes on the table hoping I'd accumulate a fair share and get away with not having mine at all.
My mum had ordered Mahamudra special which is "two dosas, one stuffed with a medley of vegetables and the other slathered with old-fashioned spicy ‘gun-powder' perked up with well-roasted cashew nuts.".. as you would have read from Shonali's article. This was by far the tastiest of all food items we had ordered. PS- It did not have cashew nuts.
By now my brother's face had started to sulk because I could no longer pretend to like my dish and had eaten up half of my mum's. In that very instant I checked on what he had ordered and that was the 'Red rice appam' which looked curiously appetising.
It was a decent dish, it didn't blow me away! Although I must admit it's cost did. For a dish that costs 
225 simply because its made from red rice, I was gutted. The ishtew was scanty and could have been warmer.
And the other dishes we ordered were Topi Uttapam and Ulundu Paniyaram. They were, again, so so. The Paniyaram needed a wee bit of steam on the insides as they were visually doughy.
After having ransacked the menu for some more time we did a bit of trial-error choosing certain dishes; half of them were not available and the rest we didn't particularly like. So we made our final move to the infamous dessert. I had mentioned before that my brother could not stop saying how awesome the dishes were, well, he was particularly talking about just one of the dishes; the Carrot Halwa. And Carrot Halwa was what we ordered.
Apologies for the blur. I was split between clicking the photo and eating it. As I was hoping this would be THE DISH we were all waiting for. As i was just about finishing the Paniyaram, my brother had started eating it already and I looked at him with such excitement thinking 'after all the fiasco, its all justified at the end.' Apparently NOT! The Halwa didn't taste half as good as last time, said my brother. And it must be true as he barely has anything good to say about food items he orders in restaurants and needless to say that his unprecedented memory is not very helpful in this regard either. So on the whole, it was a bad call to go to Mahamudra.
A few observations at the restaurant:
1) The waiter who served us had a very 'jumpy' attitude about himself that he would recommend ALL the dishes from the menu and mean it!
2) He also was not so gentlemanly as he brushed past the ladies in my table including myself when there was sufficient space around us.
3) He would offer to place the plates in front of my brother not by standing beside him but by standing beside me stretching in a hope to get a bit of contact perhaps? #SHAME ON HIM.
4) We had ordered 3 seasonal juices costing 120 each and my mum was the chosen one to find a hair strand in her glass!! *APPLAUSE EVERYONE* The waiter offered to exchange it for us with with an additional request from us to add some ice cubes in it. (The drink was called "SUMMER COOL" they atleast got the summer part of it right!) Ha!!
5) After all this, we had asked for finger bowls to which the waiter said, "No hot water Sir, sorry!" and gave all of us but my brother a bowl of cold water with a piece of lemon in it. After a while when my brother asked for his bowl to ANOTHER waiter, he offered him a perfect finger bowl :-)
Maybe, our waiter was gutted that we didn't go with his choice of ordering the entire menu card. Or perhaps he thought we didn't deserve to wash our hands in warm water :-)
6) A dish in the menu card that I found funny
7) They seemed to take pride in their 'food from the backyard' cuisine and lived up to serving most of them. The price leaves one skeptical though.
THE BILL: I rest my case.
Will I visit / recommend this place to anyone? Ha! Whaddya think!???
My brother had been to a restaurant sometime in the past month and he could not help but mention about the kinda food they served and how delicious it was; too many times to miss! So quite comfortably we decided we would visit this restaurant in Mylapore called Mahamudra and see if it is really worth all the praise from my brother.
I have always had a problem with restaurants / antique shops etc. that claim to have "self proclaimed idiosyncrasies" of selling 'authentic-indian' or 'ethnic' or 'earthy' or 'traditional' COME ON!! You surely can do better than that! What is so 'Indian' about you when you sell a penny worth material at the cost of an unaffordable / unfounded currency with all these histrionic taglines attached to it, I deeply wonder. You won't see me buy from what's name such as "FAB INDIA", "DAKSHIN CHITRA" "KALPASTREE" and all those shenanagans, that's for sure!
So we find a place and start off with the infamous vadai and go with their top two choices as suggested by the waiter!
I have tasted better Vadais at home. In fact my mother had made the exact version of Vazhaipoo Vadai (Picture 2) which I thought was yumm and found the Mahamudra version of it to be dry and not so jaw-friendly! The first one was, again, dry and impeccably STIFF!!^&*!@#$.. I don't recommend it at all.
Next we moved to the main course, the one I was looking forward to as I had ordered 'Pesarattu' and I hadn't had it in a long time. In line with my health status the Pesarattu was also very bland; it seriously lacked life. For starters it had not a hint of salt and was served cold. So far my evening seemed to have shaped very well I thought. So shamelessly I ogled at the other dishes on the table hoping I'd accumulate a fair share and get away with not having mine at all.
My mum had ordered Mahamudra special which is "two dosas, one stuffed with a medley of vegetables and the other slathered with old-fashioned spicy ‘gun-powder' perked up with well-roasted cashew nuts.".. as you would have read from Shonali's article. This was by far the tastiest of all food items we had ordered. PS- It did not have cashew nuts.
By now my brother's face had started to sulk because I could no longer pretend to like my dish and had eaten up half of my mum's. In that very instant I checked on what he had ordered and that was the 'Red rice appam' which looked curiously appetising.
225 simply because its made from red rice, I was gutted. The ishtew was scanty and could have been warmer.And the other dishes we ordered were Topi Uttapam and Ulundu Paniyaram. They were, again, so so. The Paniyaram needed a wee bit of steam on the insides as they were visually doughy.
A few observations at the restaurant:
1) The waiter who served us had a very 'jumpy' attitude about himself that he would recommend ALL the dishes from the menu and mean it!
2) He also was not so gentlemanly as he brushed past the ladies in my table including myself when there was sufficient space around us.
3) He would offer to place the plates in front of my brother not by standing beside him but by standing beside me stretching in a hope to get a bit of contact perhaps? #SHAME ON HIM.
4) We had ordered 3 seasonal juices costing
120 each and my mum was the chosen one to find a hair strand in her glass!! *APPLAUSE EVERYONE* The waiter offered to exchange it for us with with an additional request from us to add some ice cubes in it. (The drink was called "SUMMER COOL" they atleast got the summer part of it right!) Ha!!
Maybe, our waiter was gutted that we didn't go with his choice of ordering the entire menu card. Or perhaps he thought we didn't deserve to wash our hands in warm water :-)
6) A dish in the menu card that I found funny
7) They seemed to take pride in their 'food from the backyard' cuisine and lived up to serving most of them. The price leaves one skeptical though.
THE BILL: I rest my case.
Will I visit / recommend this place to anyone? Ha! Whaddya think!???
4 comments:
LOL!
Haha..As far as I know Mineral water costs 12 or 15 or 20 max if the brand is that good. But in the bill it says Minaral water. I guess it's something else for 30 bucks :D
godfather - MinARAL water - yes, thanks! I just noticed. :D
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