It has been a while since my last visit to the Fine Dine restaurant near Infosys, Trivandrum (behind Kunnil Hypermarket)… Not that I was avoiding the place, but rather my frequency going out to eat at restaurants reduced a bit because of being busy with work… Today on the other hand got the chance to do so and so decided to visit Fine Dine again… However, unlike my previous visit, I decided to try something other than what I have had before… At the same time, I heard that they have a new chef working there… But still the menu is the same and I went for my usual Chicken Lung Fung Soup, but instead of going for the usual fried rice route, I went for their Cheese Omlette as the starter with the soup and then for mains, went for their Neymeen Pollichathu and then finally finished off with a glass of their Chocolate Milkshake… They were served as seen in the pics below…
First lets talk about the soup… I have had the Lung Fung soup here before as I have mentioned in my previous post… However, this one looked completely different as in, having a brownish color as can be seen in the pics below… The Lung Fung soup is India is of-course different from the one in China as in here we don’t see the use of Snake meat… 🙂 However, this one is different from any other Indo-Chinese version of this soup that I have ever seen as well…
Coming to the taste, first of it its a thick soup and the dominating flavours I could make out were those of Cinnamon, Star Anise and Pepper along with of-course Ginger and also garlic which gave the slight sweetness to it as well… It kind of made me wonder if the chef (accidentally) put in some garam masala to it or whether its a mistake and they gave me the wrong soup… On asking about that, the waiter confirmed that it is indeed the soup that I ordered… When I thought about this soup kind of reminded me of the Malabari soup recipes like the Kayal soup and so on as it seemed to me that this chef cooked me a Chicken variant of that soup… But at the same time, there the usual ingredients of a Chinese soup like Green Onions, Chives, etc as well…
Anyways, even though not quite what I expected to get, I did really enjoy the soup quite well… I felt the flavours were all quite well balanced and the Chicken pieces in this were cooked perfectly… Looking forward to having it again in the future… 🙂
As I was having the soup, the waiter brought over the Cheese Omlette… It arrived as shown below…
It was indeed a nice Omlette… Inside of-course were cheddar cheese which I found to have melted as shown in the pic below… What I liked about this one compared to the other Cheese Omelettes that I have had is that the Cheese did not overpower and mask the taste of the Egg… Thats actually not that easy to do since the flavour of the Egg is a very delicate one… The Omlette was not as fluffy as I would normally like ie, the French style, but I can give them that one cause they had to melt the Cheese in the egg and that cheese they used was good… Not too sour and/or salty… And as I said, the quantity of the Cheese was just right to be able to enjoy the taste of the egg too… I am definitely looking forward to having more of this in the future 🙂
Next up is the mains… After I was done with the Omelette, the waiter brought over the Neymeen Pollicathu, which is what I ordered as the mains… As we already know Fish in the form of Pollichathu is pretty much the acting brand ambassador for Kerala Cuisine worldwide for quite a while… It can be thought of as a variation of the “en papillote” but the main difference being that instead of baking paper, we use Banana Leaf to cover the ingredients, which in our case in fish coated in a masala paste with chillies, onions and tomatoes along with curry leaves… They serve as wrapped form as shown below and the customers get to experience the theatre of unwrapping the treasure inside… 🙂
As mentioned above, what I got here is the Neymeen (Kingfish) Pollichathu and so, when I unwrapped mine, what I found is a slice of Fish coated in the masala paste, garnished with three slices of Tomato on it… Coming to the taste, first of all, the Fish was cooked with absolute perfection… It only needed the slightest touch with the fork for the piece to break apart into flakes of fish… 🙂 As you may know, this method of cooking locks in all the flavours and juices thereby making the ingredients ever so tender when done right… The masala was a bit too spicy for me but it was the classic Kerala style masala with red chillies that we usually use with garlic, onions, red chillies, green chillies, kudampuli (if I’m not mistaken) mustard and curry leaves all bound with coconut oil…
My only complaint is that it ended up being too spicy for me… But otherwise, this is one of my favourite seafood dishes… So, hoping to try asking them to reduce the use of chillies next time 🙂
To be honest, I didn’t plan on having a dessert this time, but unfortunately after having the Fish, it really felt like my tongue was on fire and burning… Also, this place doesn’t have much dessert options too… So, I ended up ordering for a glass of their Chocolate Milkshake and it came as shown below with a tiny scoop of Chocolate Ice cream…
The milkshake was fine… Good flavours of Chocolate and Milk as usual… Best of all, it was refreshing and thankfully cured the burning sensation in my mouth… So, I guess a good option as cure for similar situations 🙂
Anyways, altogether, I felt its an enjoyable lunch that I had from the place… The new Chef seems promising… I wish the Chef the best of wishes and I for one am looking forward to trying more from the Chef in the future… 🙂