Saturday 23 February 2013

SPOONBILL, A STREET FOOD PARADISE??

My first review in my first blog. I'm honestly overwhelmed. It feels awesome writing this review and finally getting down to blogging.

Restaurant: SPOONBILL-I’m afraid it dint really work for me!

The restaurants been on my to-do-list for way too long. Finally, one late Saturday afternoon I go to the place with a friend of mine

Now, Your probably going to wonder, how in the hell is a place that is situated in the heart of our city(TTK Road), with Subtle yet sophisticated interiors(Except for the slightly out of place Chinese wall hanging's that's there for their Chinese festival) a clean show kitchen, Wifi, owners who are usually there and always smiling, and most of all, a place that serves Global Street Food- Yes the best of internationally acclaimed dishes from around the world in one menu not work for me.

Here's why
As soon as we were seated, we were offered the menu(which is just one double sided card).
Considering the menu was quite small and in a place like this, you don't want to have the normal fast food dishes like a shawarma or sandwich. We decided to be slightly adventurous and were pretty clear about the burrito and mutually agreed upon the currywurst.

Pre food and the food!
The Service aspect
The system is not new, but not common in Chennai. You place the order in the counter and are given a beeper . When your order comes to the pass, it beeps and you collect the food from the counter( Nice way to cut your labour cost!)

The food:
We ordered just 2 main courses
1)Lamb Burrito
2)Chicken Currywurst

Burrito is a common Mexican main course which is a tortilla(Something like an Arabic pita bread) which is usually stuffed with rice, kidney beans, meat, salsa and Guacamole(Avacado relish) and rolled like a shawarma.

Now that is a traditional Burrito, Coming to the burrito we had- the burrito was decently sized alright. But for one, had too much kidney beans in my opinion .
2)The meat is minced so fine, you can’t feel your meat and taste like it's only kidney beans.

3) Guacomole, (Avacado dip)Honestly, it was the only saving grace( just about)although It dint really have a nice mixture of flavours, but whatever.
And finally, there was no damn rice or I couldn’t feel it. Now that’s just the first of our dish, our second dish wasn’t any better.

Chicken Currywurst: They seemed like poorly seasoned and made sausages which were highly overcooked and stretchy. The sauce it came with was an absolute disaster. Apart from being a bit too sweet as well.

Pricing:
Non veg dishes are priced around Rs 250 on an  average. Our bill came to Rs 590.Pretty reasonable pricing I agree, but the food was way below par. The bill also includes one of our main-course’s being converted into a meal which is an additional drink + fries.

On the brighter side, the place has wifi and is comfortable to sit and really clean. Also if you end up going on a weekday between 3pm-6pm you get to pay for only one main course and get the second free!(pretty decent)
Verdict:

A neat place with a pretty kick ass menu. The two dishes I had were a bit of a let-down. May be their Turkish donor and Chinese food that they have for the festival is better. It’s a relatively new place and I think we can cut them some slack. May be if I have the courage I’ll go again and try something different on the menu. Restaurant’s always have their good days and bad. It’s a place that usually gets decent reviews so I'm not going to play it down as doomed.