What's for lunch??

I loved this place. Good food, good service and a pleasant atmosphere.

The place in discussion here is the Chilli Grill that has opened up in the Rawdah district in Jeddah. When a colleague and me started off from work for lunch, we were unsure about our destination. The only thing we were sure about is that we wanted to go someplace new and were in mood for something light. It would be wise to mention here that my friend N is a hardcore non-vegetarian. I have seen him eat veggies maybe once or maybe never in the one year period that I have known him. It was him who suddenly remembered having seen this place opposite the Swedish embassy when he was there a couple of weeks back.

When we parked and got out of the vehicle, a huge banner at the entrance of the restaurant greeted us. Lunch deal with all the options clearly mentioned caught our attention. I usually like to order my own food from a menu but the options mentioned in the list was not bad and so we decided to go in and opt for this deal.

For a Tuesday afternoon, the place was quite full with office goers from the vicinity. That is always a good sign. Means people from around trusted this place. The décor inside was like a coffee shop meets burger king kind of place. Small but pleasant. The single’s section was on the ground floor and the family section I presume was on the first floor. There were around 4-5 tables, and we took the only one that was available.

In short the lunch deal was like this: - Soup or Salad + Main + Side dish + Drink. The soup / salad option included cream of potato soup, noodle salad and rocca salad. For the mains we had to choose from either half chicken or chicken wings or hamour fillet or cheese burger or a hot dog sandwich. The sides read as fries or onion rings or coleslaw or grilled corn or rice or mashed potato. The drinks were the usual sodas and iced teas. Quite expansive, if you ask me.

N and I decided to order the noodle salad for starters. We were informed it was not available today. That set bells ringing in our heads. But we had to get back to work and were too lazy to get out and go someplace else, so decided to stay on. SURPRISINGLY N ordered the rocca salad (don’t ask me if he finished itJ) and I opted for the potato soup. N decided to have the Hot dog sandwich for mains. I explained to the waiter that I was a vegetarian and cannot order any of their mains and asked if I could order two side dishes instead. Surprise of surprises, he not only agreed but told me he would give me 2 pieces of grilled corn instead of the standard one. The 2^nd side I decided was rice. N decided to have his usual coke and I opted for water. Within 2 minutes the waiter came back apologizing that the rice was over. Before I began crying, he quickly told me that he would instead give me 2 more side dishes instead of the rice. It was for the first time in the kingdom that I experienced such customer service and was genuinely happy. I opted for the onion rings and mashed potato along with the grilled corn. Everyone was happy with this bargain.

The potato soup was rich and creamy which means it was fabulous. It felt like freshly prepared soup instead of the run of the mill canned versions. The rocca salad was minimalistic with rocca leaves and tomatoes with a sprinkling of parmesan and Italian dressing. I ended up having most of the salad, it was that good. The corn was good and grilled just right. The mashed potato was passable, nothing to write about. I am yet to have bad onion rings anywhere, its onion in batter deep fried, what can be not right about it:-)

N said he liked the hot dog. It was nothing extra ordinary but was a good fresh piece of meat in tube form with some fresh bread and some tantalizing mustard and mayonnaise.  We had a quiet time chit chatting and enjoying our meal. The lunch set us back by SAR 70/ USD 19 (SAR 35 per person is the lunch deal). I happened to glimpse through the regular menu. It was all the things mentioned above with additions in each section of course. Their sandwich and burger section looked quite interesting. The salad section was small but if the rocca salad was any indication, I can assume these would be good too.

The deserts looked interesting but we did not have any. We were quite full and our office does not encourage sleeping after meals at work:-) Managed to take a pic of one that was available though.

Why did I love this place so much? Most probably it was the customer service here that won me over. By the end of the meal I had forgotten that they did not have 2 things out of the 4 that I wanted. What I remembered was the good food I got served by the smiling Filipinos which made my day.