Avartana Restaurant Review – ITC Grand Chola
Summary :
- Avartana Restaurant At ITC Grand Chola is a great place to try South Indian Food in a tasting menu format
Reservation
Our first meal in India was at Avartana Restaurant at ITC Grand Chola . We had landed in India late evening and was staying at ITC Grand Chola so wanted a convenient dining option . Based on online reviews we had made reservations ahead of time since it was Valentines Day when we landed .
Dining Experience
Once we were settled in and all washed up we went downstairs for dinner . The welcome was very warm, and the restaurants was decorated very beautifully. There were some flowers in a bowl at the entrance . I always appreciate fresh flowers . We did have to wait about 10 to 15 minutes before our table was ready.
We choose a tasting menu, which I didn’t think was very common in India but I could be wrong. We were very much looking forward to the food since this was our first time in Chennai, India and we are huge spicy food people .
The dishes were like what you would get at a tasting menu in a very high end restaurant in North America or Europe, but with the South Indian . Each dish was very well made, interesting and very familiar flavors.
It started with some initial appetizers. We had some a watermelon based dish , rasam ( broth like soup ) and some deep fried items . We also had some interesting cocktails. For main course , there were many familiar tasty dishes in tasting menu size like mini string hoppers, rotti and appam .
I really enjoyed having very familiar dishes in a tasting menu size and got really excited for the rotti and mini banana leave rice !
The tasting menu also came with a few desserts. Since it was our anniversary, we were treated to a complimentary special dessert. The server asked us to guess the ingredients used in the dessert .
Some parts that I don’t remember fondly was the guessing of the ingredients of the special dessert . The server kept on pushing us to guess and I had no interest in doing so . Also found the servers to be a bit pushy. They really wanted us to do a review of the restaurant right away, they pushed quite a bit to see if we would do a review while we’re at the restaurant . I thought that was super annoying, and I decided right there and than I’m definitely not going to be doing a review for the restaurant.
My recommendation would be for them to be not so pushy . It would put off their foreign guests . Overall, a good experience. Definitely worth visiting for a pleasant and interesting twist on South Indian dishes.