Food | Photography | Experiences

If you are looking for a place to spend time with family/friends and want to avoid hopping places , bluO  is the solution to your conundrum. We recently went to check out bluO and it turned out to be a nice experience.
The 17-lane bowling centre with its predominant blue lighting and good music set up the mood for a fun-filled afternoon with the Food-adda team. They also plan to introduce pool very soon.


BluO offers you wide varieties of food items; from finger food to full fledged main course in Indian, Mexican, Chinese and a range of other cuisines. We were quite amused to see mains on the menu. After all, who orders Dal Makhani and Naan while bowling. On enquiring further about this, the management explained to us that they host a lot of corporate parties, kitty parties, birthdays and anniversaries and after a game of bowling , patrons like to sit down for a full course meal. Point taken.

We munched on our appetizers at the bowling centre. The bluO special Nachos were crisp and loaded with cheese,while the Chaat masala fries were tangy and spicy. Both these dishes were quite good. The other appetizers (spring rolls, garlic bread platter and hummus bowl) we tried were just decent.


After a game which had more gutters than strikes, we went to the Karaoke lounge. The Karaoke lounge provides a more intimate atmosphere and has a good collection of Hindi and English music. Here, we had our mains, Paneer Tikka pizza, Veg Khowsuey and Paneer Lababdar with Naan. The Paneer Tikka pizza had way too many large chunks of paneer to our liking, tastewise its okay. The veg khowsuey is one of the better ones available in the city and is one of the noteworthy dishes on the menu. Paneer lababadar was creamy and delicious.              

The food at bluO might not be the most authentic but it has been tailored in accordance with the Indian palate and is pretty decent.

Verdict
State of the art bowling alley, karaoke lounges,video games, well stocked bar and an array of global cuisine to choose from, bluO has got something for every age group. A nice place to have fun and relish it with some appetizing cuisine.
Damages : 2000 for two people (bowling included)  

Zambar, the fine dining coastal cuisine restaurant is hosting a Hyderabadi food festival. The cuisine in the festival showcases the Nizami style food of Hyderabad. The festival is on till the end of March after which the menu will be updated to add a separate section of Hyderabad cuisine. We went to check out the special menu with the Food-Adda team. Here's our review :








The evening started with a shot of Rasam with some Papadam. For starters, we were served Aloo ke Garlay which are basically Batata vadas and was pretty standard stuff. However, The non- vegetarian foodies with us couldn't stop raving about the Shikampuri kebabs (pan fried minced mutton kebabs). They also tried the Chicken Tikka and found it to be quite good.










The main course was Mirch ka Salan (flash fried chillies in a mildly spiced peanut-sesame-coconut paste curry) served with Malabar Parathas. The Salan was delicious but the with the parathas, it gets a bit dry.The non-veg offerings on the menu are Achari murg, Nawabi curry and Machli ka Salan.
No Hyderabadi menu is complete without the Biryani and this was no different. The veg biryani we tried was better than what most places serve but somehow 'veg' and 'biryani' don't go well together. The Chicken and Mutton Biryani served at Zambar vary in their cooking styles. While the former is cooked Moplah style, the latter is prepared the Awadhi way and was preferred by the carnivores in our group.

We were invited for a meet and greet at Malaka Spice by the Tastykhana team. Tastykhana.in is one of India's first online food ordering portals and currently their services are available in Pune, Mumbai , Bangalore, Delhi ,Noida, Gurgaon and Faridabad. They have tied up with around 5000 restaurants which is quite impressive considering the fact that Indian Restaurant owners are very hesitant about experimenting with anything even remotely related to the Internet.

Tastykhana founders Shachin Bhardwaj and Sheldon Dsouza decided to venture into India’s vast food industry in 2007 when Bhardwaj noticed the need for more web-available information in Pune’s restaurant sector and since then they have never looked back.

Other than ordering from website the service is also available through mobile apps for Android and iOS. We have ordered through tastykhana a lot and our experience has been good most of the times.

What we Like

• Discovering lesser known restaurants - From Punjabi to Italian and from Burgers to traditional Indian thalis,they have an array of restaurants to satisfy everyone's taste buds. We got to know about quite a few small eateries in our locality that serve lip smacking food at nominal prices that we wouldn't have tried otherwise. 
• Advance Order - Getting a particular cake for a special occasion or ordering lunch at office , advance order has made life easier and the best part is, its delivered at your doorstep.     

What needs to be improved

• If one of the restaurants is closed for the day or it doesn't have staff to deliver the food, the customer is informed 20-25 minutes after ordering. This process should to be automated and customer should be informed earlier about it.

The Tastykhana team appreciated our feedback and were open-minded to our suggestions. They are currently trying to automate the whole process and make the whole food ordering experience better for the users. The team spoke about further additions to their service and the website which are in the pipeline.
They plan to come out with calorie counter on particular dishes and make pictures available for items which are on the menu.
Now this is one service we all can drool over. It’s food, and we are crazy for anything to do with food! 


      

The response to the cook off was overwhelming and now the Le Meridien and Food Adda team are thinking of covering each and every region of Italy in a series of such events. We look forward to such an amazing event in the near future.