A Five Star Experience

Its very rare for me to visit restaurants in star hotels. I get to visit them at times during our client visits. I had been to one such restaurant in Nungambakkan the other day during a recent customer visit. The seats were already reserved for six of us when we went there at around 7 in the evening. It was a restaurant that specializes and serves south indian delicacies. The interiors there was one of mood elevating. They also precisely knew how to jackup the ambience. On one side of a dais, there was this girl, an amateur, dancing bharatanatyam making small steps to the natuvangam of an old man. It was funny to see her stop and pose, whenever somebody tried to take a photograph of her. On the other side, there was a parrot fortune teller. who was looking very sleepy during that early evening time. The parrot seemed to be drawing everybodys' attention with its chirpiness. We settled for samplers and were served food items that were popular across regions in the southern part of India. We started with Banana Bajji and Vada. We were served Appams, Idiappams and parathas. The side dishes were too many and i dont remember the names of all of them. But i remember tasting different chutneys and also the avial and Poondu (garlic) kuzhambu. I should admit the taste of all these items were divine. I normally dont eat parathas, but the parathas served there were so spongy that they just melted in my mouth. I asked for a glass of grape juice without ice and the waiter astounded me by asking "At what temperature"?. I am not sure if any juice gets boiled anywhere. Finally, the bill arrived and we asked it to be billed to the company. I was curious to know the price of the different food items and just sneaked
into the bill. I could manage to see only the price of poondu kuzhambu and it read Rs 850 against it.