Yellow Chilli - Chillies should either be red or green

Yellow Chilli

Burrp page: http://mumbai.burrp.com/listing/the-yellow-chilli_powai_mumbai_restaurants/1482460861

Place: Hiranandani Garden, Powai

Food:   - 4/10

Buffet variety:   - 3/10

Service:  - 2/10

Ambience:   - 5/10

Value for Money:   - 5/10

Food
I'd been to Yellow Chilli once before, for their weekday lunch buffet that mainly caters to office goers. I had not particularly enjoyed the fare and I suspected it was because the target audience was:

1. on office lunch break and just needed something light to eat,
2. also comprising of foreigners who stay / work at Hiranandani and would not like spicy food.

So for my birthday treat to my family, I decided to try Yellow Chilli's Sunday lunch buffet, which i assumed would cater to a more hungry weekend crowd. Plainly put, i was wrong.The buffet only consists of one veg soup, but since we were a group of 12, we managed to coerce them to get us a chicken shorba (they wouldn't call it soup, coz it's an Indian restaurant and Indian cuisine does not have soups. I'm just quoting!) The shorba was awful - just some diluted chicken stock with a few pieces of chicken inside.
For starters, there were only 2 dishes - Chicken tikka and hara bhara kabab. The chicken was dry, though the veg kabab was very good. Soft and flavorful inside, with a nice crispy brown cover outside.
The salads were just about okay too. There was no experimenting, just the same old - chana, lettuce, chicken leek, beetroot. I was really looking forward to the chicken leek, but it had no special flavor or dressing.
After so many uninteresting dishes, I didn't try all the items in the main course. I dug my hands in the dal makhani, chicken chutney, murg do pyaza, mutton biryani and pulao. Surprisingly, they were extremely tasty and if not for them, this restaurant would have got a 0 rating.

Buffet variety

One veg soup, one veg starter and one non veg starter does no justice to a buffet. I think the appetizers and salads could be beefed up a little.

Service

Horrible!! Let’s start with this - it was my birthday treat, right? So somebody got cake and asked the waiter to keep it in the fridge. Now either they have a very bad fridge or they simply did not put it in one! The chocolate was oozing when they got it at the table after lunch was finished.

Apart from that, our soup came after people gave up and started with main course. Maybe they just weren’t equipped for a group of 12.

Ambience

The ambience of this place is alright. Not bad, but not great either. It’s a good place for an office lunch. Not a very family or couple friendly restaurant.

VFM

For the bad food and service, we had to shell out Rs. 460 (inclusive of all taxes) per head. Totally not worth it.

Location

If you work at Andheri East, or live in Powai, this restaurant is at a convenient location for you. One word of caution – Powai is a traffic nightmare, so avoid coming here on a weekday.

And in conclusion...

I was very open in telling the supervisor that we had a bad time. He insisted that we should try the dinner buffet, which is “much better with a bigger spread”. I might give it a go. But with so many restaurants planned, the chances are low.