For those of you just looking for a ‘glance-through’ review, Clarks Exotica is worst resort/restaurant I have ever been to. It’s a total waste of money, time, effort, and whatever is worth not wasting on a lump of pig poop.
I have been to the place only once and I’m not gonna come within 100m of its vicinity ever and will also advise others to save themselves from this place.
Don’t blame me for my harsh words but my review is based on the much hyped ‘New Year’ party organized by them. Isn’t first impression, the last impression? So here it is:Food: cr@p (better food found on local stalls serving ‘Chinese’) Management: not bothered about anything (except making money).
Ambience: don know if 2 acres of dry land even qualifies as ambience or very large football ground with no goal posts.
Now for those who are patient enough to read on please allow me to describe my plight (plus 4389 others) on New Years Eve (31st Dec 2011) and justify my critical review. The event was called Dreamspin 2012, which was very well marketed on all the well known websites.
The event boasted of a good lineup of DJ’s, carnival food, IMFL (Indian Made foreign liquor), acrobatics, fireworks blah blah blah…
Also, to top it all, it was one of the most affordable parties for New Year’s in Bangalore with 4k a couple VIP pass for unlimited food and drinks. And now here’s the kicker, hold your breathe, there was a snapdeal voucher selling the same pass for Rs2248!
Now who can let go of a deal like this. So I and 11 other (poor) friends of mine decided to go for it.
We drove down 30km to the place; all dressed and excited looking forward to a great New Year party, especially me as this was going to be my first official large scale New Year party.
Looking at the line up of cars a kilometer away from the place got a few of us worried, but what the hell, more the merrier! After reaching the place, we discovered that we weren’t the only Indiana Jones de puttar who had found out about the snapdeal offer, apparently everyone there had the same voucher crowding at the entrance to pay the remaining amount and get the passes.
Once we got our wrist bands we were led into a snake like structure of barricades, something you can see at an Iron Maiden concert. This was the time, the girls started realizing that wearing stilettos wasn’t such a good idea.
After walking through the barricades we were led into a huge empty space which was more like a badly maintained, gravel filled school football ground, littered away to glory.
Now was the time the girls realized that they are screwed and so did the guys, pushing some of us to the brink of breaking down and crying from the crappy looks of the place. But we still knew somewhere in our mind, that this would all be compensated by good food and drinks, and so we decided to get some food as all of us were famished.
After looking around for a while, we found one lone counter giving away food, with people surrounding it and haggling for food, while the ill informed waiter on the other side convinced them that food will arrive in ten minutes.
After the food arrived, we were shocked to see the food being distributed in tin foil containers like the ones you would see in any Indian Railways train.
We had to literally spread our arms and get our hands on any thing we could, with no markings to tell if the food was veg or non veg. The sight was no less horrifying than a relief camp giving away food to Tahiti earthquake victims. After 20 minutes of screaming and shouting and getting some food we felt like tramps, all of which turned out to be non-veg, disappointing our vegetarian friends.
The biryani and kebabs in the tin were worse than what you can buy at one of those ‘after 11pm’ *thelas *on the streets for 7 bucks.
The drinks counter was no consolation either, making things rather worse. Here is the list of the exotic IMFL promised by the organizers: Knights whisky, some salaam-e-express vodka, Hercules rum and god-knows what! Something that you wouldn’t find in even the shadiest wine stores in the city.
Kudos to Clarks Exotica for putting in that extra effort to find some rare exotic liquor. The guy behind the counter was pouring rum and vodka together (again relief camp style) making some weird concoction smelling like puke! The place had no volunteers or officials in the area (fearing that they would be beaten to pulp), there were no dust bins, and a stinky pile of garbage next to the stalls and a stage playing some music which nobody cared about.
All that was just too much to tolerate and we decided to leave and before we ended up spending our new year in a hospital spraying diarrhea from both ends.
The escaping was no kids play, as the influx of crowd was just huge, and as there was only a common entrance/exit, we had to somehow push our way out, but it wasn’t over yet. The exit was closed due to huge crowd rushing in not knowing their next few hours will be worse than getting a colonoscopy with a 3D camcorder attached to an elephant’s foot.
We just couldn’t handle it, and wanted to just escape the area. Then we noticed that some god send had found a loose opening in the barbed wiring on the other side, and that was it, we rushed to it and slipped through helping a few others also along the way like Jews escaping the camps. Once in the parking lot, we heaved a sigh of relief and exit the area as fast as our legs and cars could manage.
Clarks Exotica was a total nightmare and most poorly organized event I could ever imagine. The organizers were just interested in money making and checking tags while going in making sure nobody enjoyed the party without coughing up, and giving away free gastroenteritis for 2012.
The place not only got itself a huge negative publicity but can and will attract quite a few consumer court charges for cheating and fraud.
Not so Exotica now is it?