For the past couple of weeks, I have been seeing some posts on a new restaurant that opened at Technovalley here in Trivandrum, close to the UST-Global and Infosys campuses… So, a couple of days ago, I got the chance to visit… The place looked ok as shown in the pics below… Pretty much a neat/clean space, hopefully not just the “new” shine 🙂 Anyways, I reached there pretty early and so found myself to be the only customer there… But within a few minutes of ordering, found the place almost packed…
Once I sat down, they gave me what they called their welcome drink, which turned out to be some Ball-Grape Juice in a shot glass… The juice was great and refreshing… Just a bit too sweet for my taste… The menu here is pretty big and consists of quite a set of options spanning across, Kerala, North Indian, Chinese and Arabic cuisine… Even though they say continental, there isn’t much of that in the menu (Just the creamy soups and Broasted Chicken)… So, I went for their Cream of Chicken Soup, Dragon Chicken as the starter and then for mains, their Mixed Fried Rice and Chilly Fish and then for dessert (will mention why I went for this later below), their Falooda, which they call as the Chefzi Special Falooda…
So, the first of arrive was the soup, which among the choices was the Cream of Chicken Soup that I went for… This was basically a medium thick Chicken soup with added cream… It had some pieces of shredded chicken meat in it as can be seen from the pics below…
Even though it looked great, the problem I had with this soup is that unless I eat the pieces of Chicken, I couldn’t taste the presence of Chicken anywhere in the thickened creamy broth and it felt more like a bowl of white sauce (Béchamel) with some pieces of chicken in it that I wonder if they forgot to use Chicken Stock at all in it… Irrespective of that, the soup was seasoned well with especially black pepper and garlic…
Along with the soup, I was served the starter, which was the Dragon Chicken that went for… When I was ordering this, I asked the waiter if its spicy and he told me that its a medium spiced starter and hence I went for it… It arrived as shown in the pics below… The Dragon Chicken as mentioned in some of my previous posts is a Szechwan inspired Indo-Chinese stir-fried Chicken dish made with Szechwan Pepper and Cashewnuts… It is usually made quite spicy with the Szechwan Sauce…
However, unfortunately I couldn’t taste anything Szechwan in here… No szechwan sauce and absolutely no Szechwan pepper/chillies… Instead, all I could taste was the Tomato sauce and garlic… The Chicken however was cooked nicely and the vegetables were crunchy as expected… But the whole thing did not taste like a Dragon Chicken recipe at all… So, unless they are using the Vietnamese gà ?ông T?o, I don’t see the relevance of the name in this… I am not saying that the dish was in anyway bad… In fact, I felt it to be tasting great… Its just that since none of the elements of Dragon Chicken recipe is present in it, I would’ve gone with a different name in the menu… Maybe call it simply as Stir Fried Chicken or Sweet and Sour Chicken or something like that 🙂
Anyways, once I was done with both the soup and the starter, the main course arrived… Since this is my first visit, I went as usual for items that I am most familiar with, in their menu… So, hence the Mixed Fried Rice and Chilly Fish… Mixed Fried Rice appeared to contain Chicken, Egg and Beef along with the vegetables and the Chilly Fish, as the waiter said contained King Fish pieces in the sauce with onions, tomatoes, green chillies and bell peppers… They arrived as shown in the pics below…
The Fried Rice seemed ok… This is the only scenario where I can manage to eat some bits of Beef… It seemed to be made the classic Hakka style ie, just basic seasonings… However, the Chilly Fish unfortunately was not to my liking… Once again, the sweet and sour sauce made its way here and unless you manage to get any of the green-chillies in your bite, you are not going to taste the presence of chillies anywhere… Chilly Fish or Chicken or whatsoever need to be cooked in the Chinese Green Chilly Sauce and you can add other sauces like Soy or Tomato, etc to cool down the heat if needed, but the basic flavour taste of Green-chillies need to there throughout… That was completely missing from this… Another problem which I would normally consider to be a major one was that the fish used in this didn’t seem fresh but consider that its a rainy season these days, it can be forgiven as there is a shortage of fresh fish in such times as fishing stops due to the bad weather, but whats a problem here is that it seemed like some of the fish pieces were borderline to being off… Hence I stopped at that and I mentioned to the waiter to please inform the Chef that the fish seems to be almost off and so it would be best if he checks the fish and not serve that anymore… I am not sure if he informed the Chef or anything, cause I didn’t hear from them about it at all after that…
So, altogether I couldn’t enjoy my main course and so I didn’t eat more than a few bites and hence was looking for other options and then of-course struck that desserts could be the safe option to take and hence went for what they call their Chefzi Special Falooda… The Falooda came as shown in the pics below… This version contained a lot of Pineapple and Apple, then of-course the ice cream, khus-khus and semolina along with some chilled milk and topped with a couple of pieces of cashew nuts…
What I thought when I had the first bite was that may be they have many customers who are diabetic because, the whole Falooda was not sweet at all… The Ice cream was mildly sweet and thats it… Not even a teaspoon of sugar seemed to have gone in to it… This is actually fine to me because I don’t like it when things are sweet beyond a certain point, which is quite low for me… But, the problem is that not even the fruits used are nearly sweet enough… The fruits seemed not ripe enough as they tasted not raw but pretty much bland and just watery… Its as if they cut the fruits and washed it leaving just the roughage and nothing from what the fruit should be tasting like… The chilled milk was not sweetened as well and so, pretty much everything in it was bland and so I’m sorry to say this, but this does indeed qualify to be the absolute worst Falooda that I personally have ever had…
So, on the over-all, it really seems that the team At Chefzi Grand is yet to get their act together over there and I do hope that they do so very soon… I just heard that their Indian items are good and hence will be going there once more to check that out very soon… Fingers crossed 🙂
