Review: Vegetarian Thaali at Rajdhani Restaurant, Chennai

I am not an expert in Rajasthani or Gujarathi cuisine. After this vegetarian thaali at the Rajdhani outlet in Express Avenue Mall in Chennai, I wish I was.

We saw this restaurant tucked in one corner of the food court with this amazing looking thaali in the display window. My growling stomach urged me on for a try and I am so glad I agreed.

We went pretty late on a Saturday for lunch at the food court in EA Mall but it was jam packed. Maybe 2pm is not that late by Indian standards but since coming to Singapore I've gotten used to lunch at noon and my stomach was crying bloody murder by then.

The waiters were all Rajasthani or Gujarathi. They bring around this jug and a basin for you to wash your hands at your table before and after eating. He managed to pour the water in a slow trickle and it all escaped into the bottom of that basin. Smart!

Once we are done with washing our hands, the steady barrage of dishes follow. Yummy things keep appearing on your plate at lightning speed.

It was tough to take pictures with a 50mm lens in a crowded restaurant but this thing on top of the rotis, that small flat disk, was mindblowing. It tasted like a much thicker version of puran poli. It was hot and oozing out ghee. I am getting hungry as I type this and I just had my lunch so you can imagine!

The food was amazing. It could be because I am a novice at this cuisines but it tasted very homemade, and very authentic. The only time I had a better Rajasthani meal was at Chowki Dhaani in Jaipur but that doesn't count. This was in the heart of Chennai!

Priced at Rs 375 per thaali, its not a cheap meal. Its an unlimited thaali (except for sweets) with almost 30 items I think, so one round of every item is all most people will be able to manage. TH thought it was too expensive but then we seldom agree on these things so I will let you decide for yourselves. Definitely worth a visit.

Rajdhani Restaurant - Official Website

We visited the branch in EA Mall, same floor as the food court. I hear they have outlets all over India and abroad too. 

Feast @East, Grand Mercure Roxy Hotel, Singapore

If you follow my Project 365 blog, you would have seen this picture before. The vegetables are fake, the chef is not. Just saying.

This is one of those restaurants where there's enough space for a family dinner but at the same time, the ambience is cosy enough for a dinner date or celebration for two.

The placemats listed the history of some popular dishes in Singapore. Groovy idea, I say!

Oh, before I start talking about the food, I should mention that I was offered an assignment by Women't Weekly Singapore to review this restaurant for their June 2011 edition.

Please don't squint too much. You have the review coming up below anyway, and not a condensed version at that! :)

We were treated to a set menu and had 2 choices for drink, soup/salad, main course, and dessert.

I picked pink guava juice and TH picked fruit punch. 

Some rolls to start the meal. They were crusty and chewy and warm. With some salted butter at the beginning of a meal? Divine. 

TH's chunky tomato soup. It was very different from any tomato soup we have ever tasted. There were chunks of tomato in the soup and lots of coriander. There wasn't any cream in it as far as I could tell. Quite a homely, wholesome bowl.

My caesar salad with grilled prawns. This is hands down the best caesar salad I have tasted and I have tasted my fair share I must say. The dressing was spot on and not too heavy as some caesar salad dressings tend to be. The prawns were cooked perfect and didn't have any annoying pieces of shell or tail ends still on it. 

TH's entre. He could pick between pizza and spaghetti and he picked spaghetti (and I almost fell off my chair in surprise). This is probably the homeliest spaghetti we've tasted. There were lots of vegetables, the sauce was mild and had the right amount of flavour. The portion was huge and can easily serve two. So I think its safe to say that the vegetarian fare in Feast @East is like home made food :)

My entre. (btw, how do you make that small line thing appear over the 'e'? I don't know how to do that. Ok, so this is grilled salmon with some yummy sauce over it, served on creamy mashed potatoes. Again, the portion size was huge and after that salad, I couldn't even get through 1/3rd of it. So I packed the rest. It was the right thing to do.

TH's fruit platter. It was kinda forced on him as dessert that comes with the vegetarian set menu. Its like in-flight meals. If you are vegetarian, you get a vegan (sometimes fully raw) meal while your neighbour is downing a yummy looking chocolate cake and you are telling yourself "but I don't mind eggs in hidden form"). Anyway, fruits, I don't need to review. 

This right here is a plate of heaven. That mini apple die was to die for and paired with good quality vanilla ice cream and butterscotch sauce, it was perfect. We both fought over it (in a dignified way) and then polished off the fruits after that. I was glad I didn't try to finish the salmon. 

The restaurant also had pretty interesting deco. They had huge jars of candy all over the place and I saw people helping themselves to it. Groovy idea, again. 

I would recommend this place if you wish to have a quiet dinner with your partner, a celebration dinner for your family, or even a work team dinner for a large group. The food is slightly pricey, especially some particular dishes, but our entire meal was very satisfactory.

The average price for a meal (like this, with all these courses) will be around SGD 80 but they do have a very popular buffet for SGD 44++. 

Feast @East
Grand Mercure Roxy Hotel

50 East Coast Road, Roxy Square
(Opposite Parkway Parade Shopping Centre)
Singapore 428769

Reservations
Ph: +65-63405665

**Disclaimer**

This is not a paid advertorial and I am under no obligation to Women's Weekly or Grand Mercure to write this review on this site. The assignment was for the food article that appeared in the Women's Weekly magazine. 

Marche Restaurant, Vivocity, Singapore

About 2 weeks after we got to Singapore, I was home and jobless one fine evening when a junior from school got in touch with me through Orkut (remember Orkut?). I never knew him that well but he added me as a friend and later sent me a message saying "you are in Singapore? Have you been to Marche?". I said "erm, no". He said "go now!". I said "erm, o..k".

For days and weeks after that, that guy messaged me almost every day asking "did you go to Marche yet?". I am not even kidding. This is a true story guys. 

TH and I even passed by a few times because we love Vivocity Mall. But we never went in mainly because we were not the kind of people who would wait for 30 mins in queue to eat food we pay for. 

After 3 years in Singapore, we are converts. We almost love queues as much as any Singaporean out there. Especially if you are served shots of apple juice while you wait.

Marche is a lovely restaurant guys. It has a marketplace concept. There are fresh food stalls inside the restaurant (air-conditioned, thank God for that!) and you are give a card upon entering, which you hand over to the chef at whichever counter you intend to order food from.

As you near the end of the queue, there's a handwritten board that shows today's specials. I almost always end up ordering something from this list. 

Here's the special dish on the day I took these pics (it was New Years Eve 2010). Fresh pan fried Garoupa with a side salad. 

Hot from the bakery stall - cheese buns. 

This is our absolute absolute favourite. Savory crepes with a mushroom and vegetable filling. That cream sauce on the side is to die for!

Our table that day was next to the fresh fruits stall. What a lovely site!

The salad and savory crepe counters. There's fresh ingredients everywhere and the ambience is amazing.

Sweet crepe are served with fresh fruits inside.

There's also Movenpick ice cream to go with the crepes or to be had with some toppings of choice. 

Our drink for the day - rooibus tea.

Spicy chicken skewers. I couldn't finish the entire thing to decided to pack home the rest.

We have taken countless people for dinner here and never once been disappointed. We also always get raving reviews from folks we take here. They have very recently started a loyalty program and we have 2 stamps on it already.

Marche Restaurant
Average price of meal for 2: SGD 50

Sweet Obsession Restaurant, Gurgaon

Sweet Obsession

DLF Shopping Mall, Shop #b 143,
Arjonda Marg, Near New Delhi Public School,
Gurgaon, Delhi – 122001
Phone : 0124-4061615
Average Price : Rs. 500 (per person - yes they are not cheap!)

This is one of my favourite restaurants in Gurgaon/Delhi. Not that I have lived there long or been to many restaurants around there but back in the day when I used to shuttle a lot between Hyderabad and Gurgaon for work, I invariably went here for a meal during each trip. Suhel has always given me company and this time it was double the fun because we had our spouses other halves partners ermmm you-get-the-picture, along.

Their menu is extremely vegetarian-friendly. In fact, most of the items have one chicken variation and a few vegetarian variations. Amazing for folks like TH who find maximum one or two options in a Singaporean menu.

Macho Nachos to start off the meal. Yummy nachos with some shredded vegetables, olives, and lots of cheese. Served with sour cream and tomato salsa.

Veni's grilled chicken with mustard sauce, mashed potatoes and stir fried vegetables. I didn't try this because I was way too full after my main course. The sauce did look delicious though.

Suhel's Chicken Chimichanga. Didn't try this either but he seemed quite happy with his order. TH ordered Vegetable Chimichanga so it looked exactly same from the outside. I will spare you the picture.

My Chicken Fajita that comes with flavoured rice, mashed red beans, assorted vegetables and warm tortilla. It was delicious and really a lot of food for one person. I'd suggest buying this to share so that you can also try some of their gorgeous desserts.

For dessert, some chocolate fudge cake with chocolate sauce and creamy vanilla ice cream. They make their own ice cream and this is the same fudge cake used in their famous Death by Chocolate so its divine. We ordered this because we really didn't have enough room to even share a Death by Chocolate among the four of us.

I had some pictures from an old trip so I am posting those here. We didn't order any of those this time, actually. The quality won't be great because it was taken using my first camera, a Nikon L10.

Now, when a dessert parlour says death my chocolate, they mean a dish with loads of chocolate, chocolate ice cream, pastry, sauce and the works, right. But when Sweet Obsessions says Death by Chocolate, they mean Death.by.Chocolate. It comes in a bowl made of chocolate, with vanilla ice cream and chocolate fudge inside. The fudge is warm and has a heavenly contrast to the cold ice-cream. I did die and go to heaven!

I remember the chocolate truffle pastry tasting delicious too! 

Some other dishes we tried the first few times:

Vegetable Lasagne

Chicken Quesedilla

The food is pretty amazing and the ingredients are very fresh. They had a nice informal ambience initially but have since done some redecorating. Still, the food is the same so it doesn't matter. Definitely drop by if you have some time to kill in Gurgaon and have some space in your stomach. 

Whole Earth Peranakan Thai Vegetarian Restaurant, Singapore

To be fair, Singapore does have its own share of vegetarian food and restaurants. It may not be easily available in regular food courts but there are tons of restaurants that will cater to vegetarians, especially Indian.

Whole earth is one of those out-of-the-box restaurants that serve good, flavourful vegetarian food. Their monkey head mushrooms are most popular although we didn't order it during this trip.



I've been to this restaurant near work a bunch of times but thanks to my Project 365, I had my 'good' camera handy last week when we went there for dinner.



They serve peanuts that are just rightly salted, a sweet-ish pickled fruit/vegetable which I think is pear, and vegetarian sambal with calamansi. The sambal is very strong and spicy. Awesome to munch on while you wait for the food.

They have a bunch of healthy drinks to pick from. This is Owen's orange soursop juice. Note: they don't serve soft drinks. How's that for a message?

Olive brown rice. Wonderfully flavourful and a must-have if you visit this place.




Tom Yam fried rice. I love this too. Its mildly spicy and has a lovely note of lemongrass in it.



Hong Kong fried noodles. Was okay, quite passable.



Assam Pedas or Mock fish curry. The mock fish in it looks remarkably like fish and the gravy is really unexplainable. It has a pretty strong flavour so all may not like it.



Thai Battered Oyster Mushroom - sin on a plate. Its deep fried, its super crisp and the sauce is wonderfully orange-y. I love it!



Eggplant with sataw or stinky beans. The beans are definitely 'stinky' and quite bitter so order this dish if you really like eggplant and sambal and don't mind experimenting.



Yam ring. This is another deep fried dish that's super crispy outside but the yam is very creamy and yummy. Every table in the restaurant had one order of this so a must-try, definitely.



Mushroom Rendang curry. I love rendang! It has wonderful notes of Kerala cuisine so I never pass by an opportunity to eat it. This was my favourite dish of them all. The mushroom had a texture very similar to chicken but the flavour definitely won't put off a vegetarian. An absolute must must MUST try!

Whole Earth Peranakan Thai Vegetarian Restaurant
Website
*No added MSG

Average cost per person will be between SGD 25 to SGD 35 depending on what you order.