Jeera Alu Shimla Mirch (Cumin flavoured potatoes and peppers) - quick and easy all-time favourite

Lofty mountains, picturesque valleys, swirling mists, chilly breezes, and tummies grumbling for food - this is how I remember one nostalgic afternoon in Kodaikanal, one of the popular hillstations in Southern India. The resort had a restaurant perched on a hilltop with glass all around where you could see the valley view all around you. The food was piping hot - simple roti and Alu Subji, but with a slightly different recipe than the usual thing we ate at home. The aroma of that dish has stayed with me along with happy memories of a great vacation. As young as I was that time, I did not waste any time recreating the simple comforting dish the moment I got home.

Fast forwarding to the present day, Alu Shimla Mirch has always been a very popular dish in our home, and the goto dish when any last minute guests turned up. The flavour of the green pepper or capsicum elevates the everyday potato to a different level, and a strong dose of cumin with a secret spice further makes this taste exotic.

This vegetable dish is ready in a jiffy, since in a typical Indian home, the potatoes are boiled in a pressure cooker along with the usual rice and daal. The green peppers are coarsel chopped meanwhile and then they are stir fried together with the spices. In the wintertime, we sometimes get small green peppers, and my mother makes a further variation where she stuffs the boiled mashed potatoes into the peppers and then sautees them in a pan. This changes the presentation but the taste is the same as the following recipe.

Ingredients -

4-5 large potatoes

3 green peppers

1 Tbsp cumin seeds

3-4 green cardamom pods(elaichi)

hing and turmeric

1 tsp cayenne pepper

1 Tbsp oil

salt to taste

pinch sugar

Method -

1) Scrub and clean the potatoes and boil them either in a pressure cooker or in a pot of boiling water. You can also microwave them if in a hurry, but the texture is slightly different from boiled potatoes. You can use 4-5 Idaho potatoes or 10-12 small new potatoes. Peel and chop the potatoes.

Note - the ratio of potatoes versus peppers here is more to your liking and also on how much the peppers cost :). There will not be much of a difference in flavour if you add 2 versus three or four peppers, since this is a strong flavoured vegetable. More peppers of course mean more vitamin C and more nutrition.

2) Destem the peppers and remove all white parts. Cut into largish pieces, such that the pieces will be intact even after getting cooked.

3) Heat oil in a pan and add the cumin seeds and cardamom pods. As they splutter, add hing and turmeric powder. Immediately add the chopped peppers. Sautee for some time until the peppers are cooked.

4) Add the chopped potatoes, the cayenne pepper, salt and a pinch of sugar. Stir everything together and cover. Let it simmer for five minutes.

5) Your Alu Shimla Mirch is ready to be devoured.

This is a simple and easy family favourite that is liked by young and old alike. I hope you try this simple recipe and let me know what you think.

Rava Besan Ladu and Diwali Greetings

Diwali is here again, once again reminding us that the year's almost over. Diwali brings with it several twinkling lights, great food, happy times, vacation for the kids, and alas, lots of smoke and pollution due to crackers. I have never really caught on to what fascination people find in things that make a loud bang!

In our childhood, Diwali used to be a leisurely festival. Preparations would start weeks in advance, where initially my grandma would get all the various grains ready to be ground from the 'chakki' or neighbourhood flour mill. A different delicacy would be made everyday, and stashed away out of sight so that we kids could not sneak out anything before the big day. There was the bad with the good, since this was also the time for exams, and it would be torture trying to study with all the different aromas wafting out from people's windows. The dreaded exams would give way to a 2 week vacation, and the first job would be to build the 'killa' or fort. This was almost always a group project, run in grand fashion with the bullies haggling over 'design', and the meeker kids doing menial tasks like filching and carrying bricks, sand , mud etc. from the neighbourhood as needed and assembling it before the 'construction' began. The completed 'fort' would be either painted in a maroon paint called 'geru' and/or sprinkled with mustard seeds so that a verdant fuzz grew over it by the great Diwali day. Lamps would be lit in the fort and crackers burst around it.

I have no idea if kids still do this, or engage in these simple but exciting pursuits since the virtual world of Wiis and Xboxes has taken over. Also, with our busier lives, and the proliferation of goodies available 'ready-made' in the market, the number of goodies made at home is dwindling, and hence the interest in them too. But nothing can really equal the pleasure of feasting on fresh, hot chaklis that your mother is lifting out of the kadai, or home-made shankar palas or laddus. Although I have been away from home for Diwali for most of the last several years, there is one thing that I always make at home, and this to me brings the quintessential feeling of Diwali - rava besan ladus.

These Ladus are slightly time consuming and difficult since they are made with a syrup, and also are mostly common in my family, compared to the pure besan ladu that is more widely seen. I am providing the method and recipe for a small measure, but the quantity can be doubled as needed.

The recipe is as follows -

Ingredients -

1 cup rava/semolina

1 cup besan/chickpea flour

1 cup ghee

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

1 Tbsp crushed cardamom

5-6 cashew pieces

2 Tbsp raisins

Method -

1) Heat half cup ghee in a kadai and add the Rava to it. Roast the rava on a Very Low Flame until it becomes slightly pink and lets out a nice nutty aroma. Remove and set aside.

2) Add the remaining ghee to the Kadai and add the chickpea flour or besan. The chickpea flour will initially soak up all the ghee. Keep roasting the besan patiently on a low flame. The besan will gradually change colour and at some point dissolve in the ghee and become slightly liquid. Continue roasting till its a nice brown colour - but not burnt. Remove and set aside.

3) Crumble the cashews and the raisins and powder some cardamom pods. You can also add some grated nutmeg if you wish.

4) Put the sugar in a thick pot and add 1 cup of water. Heat till the sugar dissolves and a simple syrup is made. Continue heating until you get a 'ek tari paak'. This is a marathi term that might be difficult to explain, but I am sure that this has some equivalent in candy terminology. I will try to explain this roughly - as the syrup thickens, check if it starts coating the spoon. Take a little of this syrup between your thumb and forefinger( after cooling slightly slightly), press down, and lift your finger. Check if the syrup forms a strand between your thumb and forefinger. IF you see one strand, you have 'ek taari' or 'one strand' syrup. You want something which is slightly thicker than what you get with the one strand. The thicker the syrup, the more rapidly, it will harden. We want a medium syrup so that our roasted flours soak in it for a couple of hours and absorb all the sweetness. This way, the mixture also cools down enough to allow you to roll the ladus. If the syrup is too thick or hard, everything will harden into a solid ball and will not be pliable at all.

5) After you determine that the syrup is a desired thickness, switch off the heat. Add the cashews, raisins and elaichi powder to the syrup. Add the roasted flours. Start mixing immediately.

6) This is the crucial point in this recipe. If your syrup is very thick, everything will start hardening and will dry up at once. You will have to start rolling the ladus right away. Ideally, the mixture will be a thick liquid that you can cover and let rest for some time - anything between half an hour to four hours. Everyone has their own tack here that they develop over years of making delicious ladus. Keep checking periodically to see if the mixture has solidified and come together like a dough ball.

7) Start rolling the ladus. Take a small amount in the palm of your hand, squeeze as you would squeeze a ball and roll on your palm to form round balls.

8) Place on a plate and let cool.

I wished to share this simple and traditional recipe for rava besan ladu. The description here is a bit crude, and especially esoteric to someone not exposed to Indian cooking and I apologize for it. I am not a pro at this myself, and only ever make this once a year. I have tried to describe this as simply as possible, and am posting this for the benefit of anyone who wants to try it out.

So what are you cooking this Diwali?

Review: Indijoe's Pune - Multi-cuisine buffet that ends with chocolate

I had heard about this restaurant, belonging to a big nationwide group(BJN), and had heard various accounts of the diverse cuisine that they offered. Their website calls it an American style diner, but the next paragraph touts it to have Mexican, Italian, Lebanese etc. type of food. http://www.bjngroup.in/restaurants/indijoe.html

While I did not see any, or many 'American' type of dishes, I can only conclude that it wasn't included in that day's menu, or maybe they have a different a la carte' menu in the evening.



But to begin at the beginning - This restaurant is located in the Jewel Square mall next to the Taj Blue Diamond. For some reason, any reviews that I read had led me to expect a fast food counter, self-service kind of place, so it was a pleasant surprise to find a decent dining space. We got a long picnic style table with attached benches. A glass wall looked onto the terrace where they had a guy making pizzas and prepping vegetables. A tiny bit of the koregaon park skyline was also visible - mostly some tree-tops. We went there on a saturday morning around noonish, and along with one or two other diners, got first dibs on the buffet.



There was an extensive drinks menu, with various cocktails and beers. I don't think I saw wine. Mocktails included sodas, iced teas and some fruit based drinks. The buffet was laid out in a smallish area, but the vegetarian stuff was labeled well. There was a salad section - not a salad 'bar' - that had a bowl of lettuce and some tossed salads. There was a 'mexican cucumber salad' that had some cucumbers etc. tossed in some chilli powder, not particularly mexican tasting. There was a simple salad of sprouts, onions and tomatoes dressed in lime juice. Then there was something with cottage cheese and pineapple in a creamy thick dressing that I gave a wide berth dreading the obvious presence of mayo. There was one salad called tomato mozzarella scallopini, which was thinly sliced tomatoes and mozzarella with some basil. This was just about ok tasting.

There were some assorted breads - dinner rolls and some french type bread and some cubed cheese. There was a tray of chat with some chutneys that I did not taste.



One positive thing was that there were an equal amount of vegetarian and meat dishes. There were two big pots of soup - cream of broccoli and almond turned out to be very watery with a broth like consistency. The soup tasted right, so looks like it was made that way by design. Needless to say, it was not impressive.



There was some thin crust pizza - not too great -- the sort you would get in Cici's e.g. There was one vegetarian and one chicken pizza. There were two vegetarian appetizers - cashew cutlets and vegetarian seek kabab. The Veg seekh was typical -- dry and minty and not something I usually go for. The cashew cutlets were mostly potato based with a cashew inside and deep fried. The meat section had Chicken wings.

There was a lasagna called Cajun grilled vegetable lasagne. This was a creamy concoction with no noodles and lots of vegetables. There also did not seem to be any or much cheese, so I can only assume that the creamy sauce contained the cheese. But there was no clearly visible ricotta layer that you will generally find in a lasagna. There were lots and lots of vegetables which made me happy - thin layers of grilled eggplant, cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, beans, mushrooms, baby corn etc. etc. The overall taste was tomatoey and comforting, but once again, I failed to understand what cajun elements or spices it contained.



There was some grilled fish in abundance and a sea-food salad that kept my carnivore companion happy. There was some sort of non-veg thai curry too. The oriental section contained burnt garlic noodles, ginger rice and some green veg thai curry. Although assured by the server that it was totally vegetarian, i detected a slight itch like thing when my throat protested, so that got a wide berth too.



There was a live pasta counter that was not very impressive. There were 2-3 already cooked vegetables, that the chef added less than a spoon of to the pasta. There was a choice of red or white sauce. The dish when put together was ok - not really great.



Moving to desserts - they had a diner style revolving(fast) display where they had mini desserts or 'shots' already assembled and you just had to pick a cup or two. There was a lot of cut fresh fresh fruit (no error), and viola - a chocolate fountain. This is the first time I encountered one in real life and I was thrilled to bits. ( Later my bubble was burst when someone told me how ubiquitous a chocolate fountain is in Pune - it seems even places like Big Bazaar have them). There were some pound cake pieces and marshmallows with skewers that you could dip into the fountain, and dip I did. The chocolate was super rich and super sweet - the kind that makes your eyes glaze and takes you on another plane. I could have gone with a darker, more bitter taste, but I suppose this is mostly to attract the kiddies.



The check, when it came was not much - two buffets costing around seven hundred odd. I think this place was likeable overall. The music was very loud, as seems to be the norm in Pune. The food was above average. The overall ambience was ok. The service was good - there when you need it but otherwise unobtrusive. The one slight disappointment was not finding anything mexican on the menu.



We left the place with a heavy step and a solemn promise that we always make to ourselves while leaving any buffet - No More Buffets!!!

Bowtie pasta with Gouda sauce

Down with a cold and confined to bed, I was dreaming of something comforting all day like a mac and cheese or a chowder. After finally getting down from bed, a raid of the fridge revealed a sad lack of vegetables, so pasta was the de facto choice. There are no frozen treats handy here, like stouffer's or AMy's mac and cheese, so I prepared myself to slave some over the kitchen stove, telling myself the heat and steam would only help my cold. I had wanted to try the Amul Gouda cheese for a long time, but hesitated since most stores don't have any refrigeration that lasts 24 hours and who knows what happens during the power cuts? The same applies to buying any expensive imported cheeses. But I had finally taken the plunge this weekend and bought some of the Gouda. A simple cheesy sauce with bowties seemed to be a good test run for the cheese.
The pasta or the cheese is of course just a 'method' as Rachael Ray so often says. You can use any pasta on hand, made from anything. You can also use any cheese you want or any ready made blend you may have. I think I remember one '30 minutes' episode where Rachael made a sauce with smoked gouda and added chipotle peppers. That must definitely have been the inspiration for my sauce, although I used simple or unsmoked gouda and had no chipotle peppers on hand. The small voice in my head that kept screaming 'what, no veggies ????' was pacified by adding some chopped olives and tomatoes. Herb De Provence, my favourite spice blend from the 365 brand, gave this a rosemary intensive flavour. You can of course use any dry or fresh herbs like basil, oregano etc.







The recipe is as follows -
Ingredients -
5 cups dry bowtie pasta

2 Tbsp chopped garlic

2 chopped medium onions

1 tsp Herb de Provence

1 tsp crushed red pepper

1 tsp black pepper

1.5 cups milk any kind

1.5 cups vegetable stock or water

2-3 tsp flour

2 cups grated gouda cheese ( ~ 200 g)

salt to taste

pinch of grated nutmeg

1 cup sliced/chopped olives

2 small tomatoes chopped or 1 cup grape tomatoes

olive oil
Method -
1) Fill a large pot with water and set on one stove to boil. After the water starts boiling, add salt liberally and add dry pasta. I used roughly 5 cups or half of 500g of Barilla Bowtie pasta. ANy brand or type can be used here. ROtini will also be good for this sauce.

2) Chop 2 medium onions and finely chop the garlic.

3) Heat about 2 TBsp of olive oil in a pan and add the onions. Sautee till they are softened without burning. Add the garlic and let it change color slightly but take care that it does not burn.

4) Add 2-3 tsp all purpose or white wheat flour to the pan. I have used ordinary atta or wheat flour in a bind, but it does give a more earthy taste. Stir the flour into the onions and garlic on a low heat. After frying for 3-4 minutes, add 1 cup of stock and one cup of milk. Keep stirring so that no lumps are formed.

5) Once the sauce thickens, guage the thickness and add some water or milk if you need it thinner.

6) Meanwhile keep an eye on the pasta, and after 10-12 minutes check if it is just cooked. Drain and wash with cold water to stop cooking.

7) After the sauce looks cooked, add the seasonings -- peppers, salt, herb de provence or other herb mixture and nutmeg. Stir and let it bubble to absorb the flavours. Add the chopped or sliced olives at this point. Also add roughly chopped tomatoes or whole grape tomatoes. You should be able to see the tomatoes. We do not want them to dissolve in the sauce.

8) Add the grated cheese and stir until it is incorporated into the sauce.

9) Add the cooked pasta to the pan and mix everything. Let it all simmer for 5 minutes so that some sauce is absorbed into the pasta.

10) Serve hot with some pepper sprinkled on top with crusty bread to mop up the sauce :)
You can add a whole lot of veggies in the beginning along with the onion -- mushrooms, coloured peppers, spinach, steamed broccoli, zucchini - the list is endless. This was a very rich treat that made me drowsy, so I am going back to the land of dreams.


Oh yes, the Amul gouda cheese gets a lot of points from me. Though I am not a big cheese fan, it did have a different flavour, and was slightly bitter and sharp. Tasting something like this in India was very welcome, after all the waxy looking and salty 'processed cheeses' that seem to be omnipresent. This cheese did Not taste like the good old 'cheese cubes' and hence seems promising. Costing around 90Rs for a 250 g wheel, it also does not break the bank.


Have you ever tried this kind of sauce, or this cheese? What is your favourite comfort food when you are ill?

Review: Seasonal Tastes at the Westin Pune – an overall unremarkable experience

This blog has been mostly about posting recipes but many a times, I have thought of including a section for restaurant reviews. This has mostly been when I have been awed or highly impressed by any particular restaurants, or to write about places that are all time favourites. After spending a disappointing afternoon at the new Westin hotel in Pune, I decided to get down to it and narrate what I saw and felt. There are plenty of review sites and most of them require you to go through the tedious process of creating logins. But why go through all that when I have my own blog? Now I can only hope that the google gods smile on me and this review comes up in searches to provide people with some useful information. I personally did not find a lot of detail available on the web for this place, and I am hoping to provide a level of detail that will provide people with a better picture of what to expect.

Its been a long time since we had an opportunity to spend some good time as a family and were looking forward to going out some place nice in Pune. There seems to be a proliferation of new restaurants in Pune, most vying for the label ‘multi-cuisine’ and ready to charge you an arm and a leg for it. I also find that frugality or ‘value for money’ seems to be out of fashion, and people seem to take pride in dishing out the big bucks. That’s perfectly fine since this is a free world J
Since this was a special occasion, we wanted to go some place nice and the search narrowed down to three places – Westin, Barbecue Nation and Sen5es. The challenge was having good vegetarian choices and also Indian vegetarian choices. Barbecue nation was ruled out since none of us could bear the thought of having a hot grill on the table, and having to sweat and cook our own food. Isn’t that what we do in our own kitchen anyway? Westin was chosen over Sen5es since it had a buffet that was described in their own words as ‘lavish’ and ‘best in town’. Even taken with a pinch of salt, it seemed to provide more choice than Sen5es which has an eclectic but very limited menu. I personally love Sen5es and as this review will soon portray, it definitely turned out to be much better than the Westin.
‘Seasonal Tastes’ is the casual 24 hour café type place in the Westin that has a ‘big’ buffet. I have never had the chance to visit a Westin anywhere else, even in the US I am more partial to the Marriots or Holiday Inns or Wyndhams etc. The Westin building itself is huge and can be spotted from miles around in the area. There were elaborate security checks where even the bonnet of our car was opened, purses were scanned through an airport style scanner and there was also some body scan type thing. Men folk were frisked. All the restaurants are on the second floor, and Seasonal tastes was situated at the far end of the lobby towards the right. The décor is modern to put it simply. The place is spacious with tall windows that offer a panoramic view of the surrounding area, mostly the urban landscape of the surrounding buildings of Kalyani Nagar.
I had reserved a table and requested for a good quiet spot. But no one there seemed to have our reservation and the only reply given was ‘I am not aware of it, someone else must have taken your call’. We finally got a table with four chairs somewhere in the middle of the floor, while there were several booths facing the windows and facing a pool that were empty but not given to us because they were ‘reserved’. This was our first experience with the mis-management. As I had found earlier from some reviews and from calling the restaurant, the buffet was 900 odd rupees with taxes, coming up to 1200 approximate ( 25$ approx). There was a separate flat charge for alcoholic drinks – only wine/beer. Our server appeared and was totally untrained and unable to explain anything at all. He informed us that if we wanted soda or coffee, there was a separate non-alcoholic package for 300 rupees roughly. There was no separate menu for any other drinks, like cocktails or scotch etc., or there did not seem to be any option for ordering just one soda or one lemonade etc. After being told we would take the non-alcoholic package, the server kept asking us what beer we wanted. After a lot of time spent in trying to explain alcoholic versus non-alcoholic, we gave up and just asked for water. This was a very disappointing beginning, as we would have expected a better mannered and better trained person in a 5 star hotel. This was no different than trying to explain something to a high school kid at the McDOnalds counter.

Although the buffet promised everything under the sky, I had reconciled myself not to expect anything on the lines of a vegas style buffet, and had blotted out images of the MGM Grand or the Rio buffets from another lifetime.

The counter closest to us was the salad/sushi bar. The sushi was unremarkable. There were two kinds – veg/non-veg. The veg rolls had either carrot or cucumber in them, certainly no avocados. The Wasabi was a bit watery but easier to spoon. But hey, sushi in Pune!! Wasn’t that something?? Moving on to the salad bar, my hopes of having some crunchy romaine or baby spinach or micro greens were dashed when I saw some solitary green leaf lettuce leaves in a small bowl. There were a lot of marinated things in oil like garlic and olives etc. The olives were simple green and black olives that you get in a can, and not kalamata or any other gourmet type olive. There were a few pieces of fresh cucumber in a small bowl ( smaller than a cereal bowl) and some various marinated veggies like peppers, mushrooms etc. There was some shrimp and other meats I did not look at and I suppose there were boiled eggs somewhere. They had two kinds of gazpacho in shot glasses – tomato and pepper. Both tasted fine, but were almost room temperature. They would have tasted even better chilled. There was a mushroom pate also served in a shot glass which was creamy and earthy tasting. There was some kind of jelly like strawberry or cherry at the bottom of the glass which I did not much care for. There were some sauces in small bowls that were unlabeled but no dressings in sight. I later saw some bottles on a very high shelf – asian sesame, tahini, etc. There were 4 or 5 bottles, and none of the usual suspects like ranch, honey mustard, Italian, blue cheese etc. I drizzled something from the bottle labeled asian sesame, but it turned out to be mostly sesame oil. There was a glaring absence of plentiful raw veggies on the salad bar. There was some broccoli which was steamed but had almost turned black.
Overall the salad bar was a 2.5 out of 5, points given mostly because there Was something akin to salad, that’s all.

There was a carving station with a deli counter that advertised burgers and sandwiches made to order. None of us wanted to go there. Somewhere down the line, I ventured to the burger station and opted for a vegetable burger with No Mayo – stressed 2-3 times to not put any mayo on the burger. I was not asked for any cheese choices or any other toppings like pickles etc., nor mustard. After a long 20 minute wait, I was served something unimpressive looking. Of course the first dreaded action on my part was to lift the bun and turn it over – it was slathered with mayonnaise. The server of course appeared clueless. One young person questioned another young person and they were happily exclaiming ‘Oh **, it was no mayo’ and laughing. So is the Westin employing trainees from schools or just neglecting to care about the service they offer? After declining to wait again to try my luck, I just opted out of the burger.

There was a teeny weeny Indian section, the reason for the limited Indian food being given as this was a ‘multi-cuisine’ buffet with ‘several other’ options.
There was a mutton biryani and London style butter chicken, no use to vegetarians. There was one daal and one mixed vegetable. It is a bit surprising that a big restaurant should serve something as mundane as ‘mixed vegetable’. The image it conjures up is a bunch of leftover veggies, and in recent times, the ubiquitous packet of frozen ‘mixed vegetables’ in my freezer. There was a paneer dish described as Paneer in a rich and creamy cashew sauce. It turned out to be huge chunks of paneer floating in a white watery liquid, something like half and half. I gave it a wide berth thinking that my neighbourhood small restaurant gave me a much better version of this ‘rich cashew gravy’ ( which is more a dessert than a vegetable, and something people in Pune seem to be fond of). So Indian food was totally ruled out. This was a big disappointment for one of us who only ate Indian Veg and no Paneer. Bread such as roti or naan was served at the table. This was brought almost 20-25 minutes later by which time, the one sole vegetable and dal had been discarded. The whole Indian experience then gets 1 out of 5 from me, so unfortunate since any restaurant in India should proudly be able to cook good Indian food.
There was a big station near the entrance where a lot of South Indian chutneys were displayed along with a sign of dosa made to order. We ordered one dosa from a snooty youngster who seemed to be too good for us. There were other cooked foods in chafers which I will run through real quick.
Bowtie pasta in some creamy tomato sauce – just average with no seasoning
Baked vegetables in a béchamel type sauce – lacking salt or any other seasoning
Huge container of crispy bacon
Pan fried snapper – seemed ok according to one of us who tasted it, but had the skins on the fish
Asian fried rice – Had eggs so ruled out for me
Stir fried vegetables – some vegetables in a watery soy based sauce
Seafood panang curry – Good according to one seafood eater among us – had shrimp, squid, clams and crabs
Some asian noodles
There was a sign advertising various noodles that could be made to order – Singapore, Korean etc. I opted for a pad thai made without any fish sauce or eggs etc. This was brought to my table and turned out to be spicy and tangy and hot. I think this was the one thing I actually ate with relish.
There were 2-3 cheeses – unlabelled along with some crackers that seemed to be more ornamental.

Now we come to the dessert section. There were fifteen plus items and were arranged artistically. There were some eggless desserts. Ras Malai was the only Indian dessert but it was soft and perfect. There was some mango and blueberry mousse in small glasses – average, new York style cheese cake – unimpressive , a few shortcake/ mascarpone type cakes with fruit topping etc. There was Tiramisu which was disappointing as it seemed to be actually made with layers of dry cake, thin layers, but dry layers of what seemed like chocolate cake. There was a chocolate pudding type thing with an exotic name which was good. There was ice cream with a lot of toppings. I had hoped for fudge or caramel sauce but it was not available. The ice cream was strawberry or blueberry. The ice cream was placed on ice like on a salad bar and a lot of it had melted. Ice cream toppings were good – chocolate chips, almonds, raisins, pecans, hazel nuts, gummy worms etc.

Inspite of this pornucopia of ‘options’ I didn’t really eat anything substantial. We mostly grazed on a few fancily arranged things, and then I filled up with a huge bowl of ice cream. The whole anticipation of eating something exotic prepared by a five star trained chef was dashed, and there was not even one sumptuous thing I could enjoy, as a Vegetarian. The omnivores in our group weren’t too pleased either. Overall the whole experience was disappointing and frustrating. Average food and below average service soured the whole experience. I think I have had better food paying 7$ at Golden Corral. Some would argue that it is unfair to compare a place in Pune with a place in the US, but I think it is warranted for a place like the Westin, which is touted as internationally acclaimed. Why shouldn’t a customer expect such a place to live up to some standards? I spent the rest of the day repenting we did not goto sen5es, wistfully recalling our stellar experience over there. Although this is not a comparison between the two, I mention Sen5es since it is the other place I had contemplated.
I hope this review is helpful to anyone who is thinking of visiting the Westin hotel. It is of course written with my perspective, based on my dietary restrictions and personal expectations based on prior experiences elsewhere.