"Vindhyas" , located on the ground floor of the Orchid Hotel at Vile Parle is one of the few restaurants in Mumbai that dishes traditional fare from 9 states on it’s menu . I visited the place with very high expectations last week for a family dinner and came back disappointed that my high expectations were not met . The restaurant itself is not so bad , but having heard a lot of good things , I guess my expectations were probably a bit too high .
Location -Good
For someone living on the western suburbs , the location of Vindhyas is perfect . Its located near the the airport off the Western express highway , so getting there is not an issue at all .
The Ambience - Excellent .
They have designed the place to resemble traditional south Indian houses with the thatched tiled roof , the lighting is perfect , live traditional carnatic music which is non intrusive and waiters smartly dressed in dhoti -kurtas . They even have one of the waiters come up to each table and announce how the vindhyas encourage using your bare hands for eating .
The food : mmmmm........somewhere between good & excellent
Starters : We ordered a chicken dish from Andhra ( kodi vepadu ) which was excellent and I highly recommend it , and fried prawns ( raal porichathu ) which wasn’t that good . The masala was less on it and somehow it wasn’t that tasty .
Main course : The chettinad chicken gets a 4/5 but the mutton dish gets 1/5 (forgot the name !! ) .
The mutton pieces weren’t cooked properly and there was no salt in it . The malabari parathas though were perfect !! excellent taste and they just melted in your mouth . We finished up with thair-saadam (curd-rice ) which we all loved . It was chilled and reallllyyy tasty .
Misc : They give different types of papadamms and munchies on the table which was a nice touch along with read & green chutnies . Don’t miss out on the guy going around to all the tables with lots of different achars . They had prawns (loved it!! ) , chicken , fish , karela , garlic ( recommended ) ,
mango ( baah!!) , lime ( so -so) pickles and what’s more , it’s all free .
Service : ho-hum !!
While most of thie things were ok with the service , on more than one occassion we had to repeatedly ask them to refill the water in our glasses . When you come to a 4-5 star hotel , you expect such things to be taken care of without asking , isn’t it ? I guess they should take a cue everyone’s neighbourhood udipi restaurant where half glasses are looked upon as a crime , right ??
Cost : EXXXPENSSIIVEEE MAN !!!
the starters were about 375 bucks and the main course dish was 475 bucks each . But I suppose ,
that’s the price one has to pay for going to a 5-star hotel .
Anyway , the whole experience itself was fun !! but not one I am going to repeat for some time now
:-)