Dandydish

Maharaja, translated in to english, means the Great King. And so when Maharaja by Vineet opened its doors in Saudi a long time back, I was really looking forward to a feast. Well, it was operational in Khobar and Riyadh, both significantly far from Jeddah, so it had to wait. The restaurant is the brainchild of Vineet Bhatia, a Michelin star chef. It is making waves in every location it has opened. So I had to try it out. On my last visit to Riyadh, this dream was fulfilled. A few colleagues from work ( 7 to be precise) headed to this place for dinner on a working weekday. Nestled in a fairly quite location just across the main Tahlia street in Riyadh, this place was failry easy to locate on the map. We called ahead and made a booking, but upon arrival noticed that although the place was occupied, it was not necessarily overflowing with patrons. The decor was minimalist yet chic, in line with the many fine dining options now available in homeland India. The menu looked...

The place is a no nonsense affair, it just promises good Burgers. And boy, are they good!! Section-B opened sometime back in Jeddah and going by the number of people that que up during the opening hours at 1.00 pm, you know it is a raging success. And yes, they work only 4 days in a week, from Wednesday to Saturday, 1.00 pm to 4.00 pm for lunch and 6.30 pm to 11.30 pm for dinner. The story of their origin in interesting. 6 friends got together and took 9 months, just to come up with the perfect recipe for their burger with the help of their chef. If this is not love, tell me what is!! The diner itself is casual and chic. Service is quick and you can see a lot of friendly smiles all around. Their menu is simple and straightforward. They offer 3 burgers. The "B" and "B-mini"which are Angus beef patties and the 'C" which is a fried chicken patty. There are 7 additional toppings to choose from and 3 sides. Thats all. But dont get fooled by the small ...

A few years ago, when i stopped blogging, it was for 2 reasons:- 1.) I was Lazy! 2.) I thought the food scene in Jeddah was not happening and it felt kind of saturated to post anything new. All that has changed now. Of course I am still lazy, but the food scene in Jeddah is literally exploding with new places. So where do I begin from? Of all the places i have been to recently, one place stands out amongst the rest. We used to always lament the fact that we miss authentic Gourmet Indian food. Of course, both Zaika and Bharat are up there on the list, but we felt this was not enough. This is no longer a problem! Punjab grill opened doors sometime last month, and boy, was it worth the wait! This restaurant is located in the Ascott hotel at the end of Sari street. We obviously had great expectations from this place, having always loved their innovation, their playfullness, their unique twist combining authentic Indian cuisine with the contemporary. The location is easy ...

It was an impromptu decision. We decided to go out for dinner with some good friends and plans were made. The only thing not planned was the place to go to. We were finally bundled in one car and started driving without actually knowing where were we headed to. Suggestions from the ladies was sought who duly informed us that they felt like chinese food. Last week while driving past the Hamra district, I had seen the hoarding of a new place called Chopsticks. I remembered this well as the tag line was Fresh Chinese cuisine. So we headed to the direction of Chopsticks. Once there, we were greeted by an empty restaurant. It was a weekday night and we reached the place by around 10.00 in the night. But the interiors were so warm and welcoming that we did not let the empty space bother us. Once we were seated, our server, Paul got us some complimentary Kiwi shots. It was fresh but overtly sweet for my taste. However the others on the table seemed to like this. The menu is quite exte...

Birthdays are a big deal for me. Especially if it is of my better half. I normally like to plan well in advance and fill the special day with small bits of surprises all throughout. Food is an equally important part of it and I have 2 main requirements while plannig this aspect. 1.) The place should of course be exclusive 2.) It should be a place that we have never been to before. Wife's birthday was yesterday and so I began planning 10 days before this. I called up the various so called chic places to find out about their menu, availability and decor ( cos I wanted a sea facing set up this time around, after all I need to capitalise on the Red Sea.) Most of the places that I called up had a restrcition in terms of the vegetarian options that they served. Some others did not have a sea view, which I was very particular about. After a lot of phone calls and discussions with freinds and colleagues, I zeroed in on Noodles located inside the Rosewood corniche hotel. The guy on the p...

It is part laziness combined with the fact that I have not been to many interesting places lately that resulted in a lull in my posting on this blog. However, a dinner yesterday night changed all that. Last couple of times during our trips to the Mall of Arabia, we glanced across this place called Chapter that claimed to serve malaysian cuisine along with some boutique bakery stuff. Honestly, it was the boutique stuff that kept us away from this place. But yesterday we were accompanied by our very good malaysian friend and hence it seemed like a safe bet to try and sample the malaysian fare. The place is chic and looks more english than malaysian to be honest, but it was new and clean with comfortable seating and seemed very welcoming. Once seated we were handed over the menu cards that had a lot of stuff that spelt malaysian with a detailed description of each item. We could see our friend's eyes light up on seeing the menu, which is always a good sign. He asked...

In my post a couple of months ago, I had mentioned how much in love I am with Al nakheel located at the corniche. ( http://dandydish.blogspot.com/2011/06/long-absence-from-my-last-post-is.html ) Well, yesterday was an extended new version of this love. Red Sea mall was the venue. Wife and me visit this place once every fortnight on Tuesdays for some social commitment. Most of the time we end up having dinner in the food court here as we are usually short on time. Yesterday we reached this place a bit early and had time to kill. During our previous visits to this place, we had seen that Al Nakheel had opened an outlet here by the name Ara'es Al Nakheel but we never really ventured out there. We still are pretty regular with our visits to the original Al Nakheel at the corniche and something inside always told me that this would not meet up to the orginal standards. I was wrong!!! Once inside what struck us most was the chic decor. Very contemporary. Very stylish. We d...