Novotel, Chamier Road - Dinner at Food Exchange

Novotel's 7th property in the city is here and this is the second hotel to be located in the centre of the city. Hotel Ibis, Anna Salai is the other one. This is a welcome addition to the Alwarpet area which hasn't had any luxury hotel other than Crowne Plaza for a long time. Will be interesting to see how they integrate themselves into the area which has majority of restaurants amidst residences.

Food Exchange is the main restaurant at Novotel with a capacity of 72 diners including Private dining rooms. There's a lounge bar in the ground floor with screening of matches but they are yet to receive the liquor license which is expected very soon. They've just started (few weeks), and Food Exchange has a menu right now which covers most of the major cuisines. They've got varying menus depending on the meal and also a separate midnight menu. We were here on an invite to try out the menu and the Mr. Ramesh Kumar, the F & B manager gave us nice company and conversation.

Ambiance

The place is neat and has the easy feeling of a lounge with comfortable seating. There are tables that can accommodate anywhere from two to 12 guests. There's also a lengthy table in the center for a large group. The actual cooking happens live and is the centerpiece of the restaurant with chefs tossing and churning up fresh Indian breads and grills. Very nice setup indeed that will keep your eyes busy.

Mocktails

We started off the humid evening with the refreshing Lady Marmalade which is Orange juice, ginger ale, lemon and marmalade. The slices of orange inside the drink lent quite a citrusy flavor while the marmalade was faintly noticeable.

Watermelon Breeze - with coconut water n fresh lime!

Food

Starters

Thai Beef Skewers, peanut sauce

The peanut sauce

Usually one sees this dish prepared with chicken skewers in the city, so it was nice to have beef for a change. The beef morsels were tender yet had a mild bite which is great. Topped with the slightly sweet, peanut sauce with bits of peanuts was delicious.




























Vanjaram Meen Varuval, lemon oil

Again a slight twist on the usual marinade that's used to prepare Vanjaram, this fish fry starter was light on the masala. Could get flavors of the lemon oil and turmeric as well. Good stuff.

Main Course

Pizza

They have classic pizza choices in the menu and we decided to go all out meat this time. We tried the Mascarpone, Parma Ham, Rocket leaves and the Crisp Bacon, caramelized onions, wilted spinach pizza.

Liked both the variants of pizza. Especially the crust n topping which was wonderfully risen and crunchy as well coated with olive oil. The Parma ham made its taste easily apparent though it seemed to be cut so thin while the crisp bacon needs no description.

Kung Pao Chicken with Steamed Rice on the side

For the main course, we decided to try the chicken for once, since we'd tasted the beef for starters. It was recommended to try the Kung Pao chicken with steamed rice to get the true flavor of this dish. Indeed, the combination was a neat one with the soft soya and spice coated chicken pieces standing up for itself nicely. Would recommend having this with steamed rice for a change if you've never done so.

Pad Thai

The Pad Thai was made with the usual trimmings of peanuts, seafood and prawn. Tasted good but I would have loved to get the zing of some citrus in there. You could ask the Chef to customize it according to your preference while ordering.

Dessert

For the desserts, it was the Tender Coconut payasam parfait with cookie granules and Hazelnut choco fudge with Berry consumer.

The cold Parfait was a perfect choice for the tender coconut and I couldn't decide if it was partially frozen bits of payasam or tender coconut that I was biting into. Yummy texture. The cookie granules would have been better off spread evenly I thought than bunched together.

The Hazelnut choco fudge was a safe bet and tasted very nice. Texturewise it felt a bit like a thick cakey brownie with thick Berry compote. Quite delicious. The hazelnuts weren't incorporated rather found whole so it was nice to get that crunch occasionally.

Yet another Novotel property with a classy ambiance and nice choices of dishes this time in a central location. The hotel will be receiving their liquor license soon so you can have all these dishes and more with some alcoholic beverages in a few months. The buffet is priced at 1099++ as an inaugural offer right now. They can be reached at +91-7824808009.