It was about a month back that we, a family of five gujaratis, decided to eat a Sunday lunch at Nimantran - a Gujarati Thali Restaurant (Vile Parle East). Interestingly this is located in the heart of a predominantly Gujarati community.
There is ample parking space at this restaurant that operated from the ground floor of Parle International Hotel. This place offers a fixed gujarati thali and is open till 3pm for lunch and around 10pm for dinner.(estimated time)
As we found our way to the entrance, I saw the first signs of un-professionalism. There were two waiters laughing, giggling and pushing each other around, they stopped, tucked in their shirts and went silently towards the kitchen when they saw us approaching.
The ambiance of this place is decent, nothing spectacular. The only signs of this being a theme restaurant were some paintings of gujarati folk in their traditional dresses (kediu) and women with the endless array of bangles. A Love Aaj Kal music CD was tuned up played a bit too loudly. This could have so easily been a gujarati instrumental.
There is a sitting capacity of about 50 in this air-conditioned place, which I eventually realized, would never be a constrain. A piece of information that I find worth mentioning here is that there is a big transparent glass wall through which you can see the cooks preparing chapattis. I wonder why, it is not that a chapatti making process attract as much TRP as a rumali roti or even a tandoori roti.
Anyways, we were led to a table for six. Now, the first signs of mis-management. The placement of the table and the flower vase stand (which I guess also doubled up as a crockery cabinet) was such that I couldn't even get to the seat without moving the entire table to make way. Annoying.
Since this is no ala carte, we could just wait and stare at the kitchen for those waiters to show up and start serving. Considering that there were only two other customers there, still no waiters in sight. I could bet that those waiters were continuing whatever game they were playing when we entered the place. This was the first of almost a dozen times that we felt like leaving the place, this was strike one! Somehow we didn't! Someone had cautioned that although the service is not great, the food is very good. All that was soon put to test.
I saw two waiters emerge from the kitchen and walk laboriously towards our table. They were carrying big round steel plates with 6 small bowls each. They didn't really seem too keen to serve. But suddenly a smiling face jumped up from somewhere and offered to serve water. Wow so much for a start! He filled up five glasses but we realized it was cold and requested for plain water, his smile vanished. It was only as genuine as Rakhis swayamvar. Strike two!
Eventually, after what seemed like aeons, they started serving the starters. Khaman dhokla and vegetable pattis. It seems like no one noticed that there was very little green phudina chutney (probably left over from the earlier patrons) in a small bowl at the center of the table, only enough for one. No one bothered a re-fill. Anyways who wanted chutney when we had soft khaman dhokla and although not gujarati, vegetable pattis. I started munching on them and realized: Cold and oily. Double fried an hour ago. Yuck! Strike three!
Now our gujarati taste-buds are, almost always, jumping to munch on some mouth-watering kathiyavadi delicacies, some surti-undhuya some turiya patra, or some brinjal bharta. But I wonder who serves sweet-chole, sweet- potato sukha bhaji and sweet-peas bhaji and tried to pass it off as gujarati food' Strike four, five and six!!! Sweet-kadhi and rasagulla (again that's not gujarati man!) together with cold thepla and a ready-made (bottle walla) pickle servings offered strike seven! By now the Love Aaj Kal songs had started repeating, spicing-up the tastes of agony on the platter.
Now gujaratis eat khichidi. And when they do this, they need an endless serving of pure ghee. They need to be served steaming khichidi, in which they make a depression and fill it up with ghee (ghee no kuvo (a well of ghee) we call it). And all is well when this well is allowed to overflow. Alas, these guys didn't serve ghee at all. Strike eight, nine & ten! All over man!
NOTE: If you don't have the nerve to serve pure ghee, think twice before starting a Gujarati Restaurant!
We had to part with Rs. 150/- per head for this ordeal. We believe money is never an issue if one can serve quality stuff.
I can't help compare this experience with the gujarati thalis I have eaten at Pakvaan (at Ahmedabad). The service, quality and ambiance is top class. Only at 2/3rd the price. Try it if you can, for a real Burp Experience!!!
khamir123
