Sudeep D'Souza

Back in July, I got to spend a couple of nights in The Claridges, Surajkund. The hotel itself is very nice and spacious and is located about 25 km from the airport. As you enter the hotel the lobby and the reception is very spacious and inviting. The room The room is very spacious and airy. All the amenities that one expects in a 5 star hotel are present. We did not get much time to spend in the room as it was quite a hectic 2 days filled with meetings and discussions. The swimming pool The swimming pool is really nice. We spent a lot of time in the pool - might explain the lack of time spent in the room :). The swimming pool is next to the spa and it is an elevated pool with nice privacy. The water was warm and just lovely to lounge in for hours together. They do not sell swimming gear at the hotel so make sure you carry it and also they are quite strict with the clothing in the pool. Restaurants and Bars Dhaba - is a north Indian restaurant that has a rustic feel to it. T...

A couple of weeks ago I got to spend a night at the Novotel International Airport Hotel. The hotel is located in shamshabad about 3 km from the International Airport. The hotel is 5 star and there are a lot of facilities available at the hotel to keep one engaged for a day. In this article I will review some of the facilities I did get to use in the airport. The room The room is very ordinary. There are a lot of other 5 star hotels that have rooms that are much more spacious and luxurious. There are two views, the swimming pool view and the airport view but there is not much to view either way so it does not make much of a difference. The room has all the standard accessories and fittings one expects in a 5 star hotel.   We did not get any night service where the bed is prepared to sleep in. Newspapers are only given on request. The television has a few foreign language channels other than the usual cable channels that one gets in India. The Square I had all my meals at the...

A few days ago I went to have dinner in the new themed restaurant "Dialogues in the dark" which is located at Inorbit Mall, Madhapur, Hyderabad. Having read about the restaurant at the website and a few reviews in the WOW Hyderabad magazine I was quite excited. So gave them a call to make a reservation and was told that I can choose either a non vegetarian meal or vegetarian meal. We arrived there at about 8:00 PM and paid for our meals which needs to be done in advance and it costs Rs. 750 per person all inclusive. Any cold drinks (no liquor is served) purchased in the restaurant were to be paid for after the meal. We were then asked to deposit our mobile phones and any other bags we were carrying in the locker there. We were then escorted to the door and then handed over to a visually impaired person who guided us into a pitch dark place. It is incredibly eerie when you walk in first as you cannot see anything not even your finger if it is a centimeter from your eyes. ...

Have you ever walked into a coffee shop and wondered what to order having not been able to understand the different coffee drinks available on the menu? Lokesh Dhakar in this post does an amazing job in explaining the different coffee drinks. Below are the images for the types of coffee drinks that I have seen in the Indian coffee shop menus. Happy coffee drinking. Americano [uh-mer-i-kan-oh] Caffé Latte [caf-ay lah-tey] Caffé Mocha [caf-ay moh-kuh] Cappuccino [kapp-oo-chee-noh] Espresso [ess-press-oh]

You hear a lot of it in the news that food prices are rising and that people are not able to afford to eat out any more. Today we paid a visit to Paradise Restaurant in Hyderabad and ordered take away (Read my earlier post Food in Hyderabad  about why you should do take-away and not eat at Paradise) and here is what we got for a gift pack that costed us Rs. 220. 1 Chicken Biryani 1 Mutton Biryani 6 pieces of kebabs 1 Butter Chicken 2 Romali Rotis We usually eat Biryani from Hyderabad House and all of the items mentioned above would have costed us nothing less that Rs. 500. A few days ago we ate in Chutneys and for just 1 palak paneer, 4 rotis, 1 soup and 1 plate of idli the bill came up to Rs. 450. Chutneys used to not be this expensive - its only of late that they have really increased their prices. And on the other hand the small idly-dosa tiffin joints that you see all over Hyderabad have pretty much kept their prices stable. Another kind of restaurant that most...

Cooking can be hard to learn if you do not have the right tools and guidance. Many of us miss out on learning how to cook when we are at home due to a zillion reasons that each one of us can quickly come up with from just laziness to "I will never have to cook". All of this changes when we have to travel abroad or have to live on our own and have no option but to cook. At that point of time the phone calls home and the lack of information in the cookbooks in the market to address the novice cook just don't seem to alleviate our suffering. Many years ago my parents came out with a cookbook that addressed this need. This cookbook teaches you to make some of my favourite and simple dishes such as plain rice , tomato rasam , chocolate cake , Lemon Souffle and many many more recipes. You can catch all the other recipes from the book The Amateur Cooks Companion on DSouza Web .

Its been a while since I blogged about food in Hyderabad. Well here goes... A few year ago if one wanted sizzlers and russian salad there was a hole in the wall in Banjara hills called Flame which subsequently closed down. Then we found Indi Joe's in the City Center mall in Banjara Hills. They have excellent starters and sizzlers. I especially like the Pomfret sizzler - its light and tasty. I didn't like the mexican and the pastas much - but then that might be a personal taste. Well we all know Paradise. The food there is cheap and good. But one day we decided to visit Persis Gold the fine dining restaurant in Paradise and even though the food was good I came out completely unsatisfied. The reason being that you are served the same fare as the takeaway but the prices are atrociously expensive. So my take is just do takeaway do not eat in the restaurant, at least not in persis gold. Green Park has some excellent food. We usually do the ala carte`. The hot tandoori rotis with no...

Update : The last that I have heard of this place is that it has closed down. Pity, as this was one place you could expect some quality conti food at a reasonable cost. Sizzlers, Steaks, Russian Salad... Do these dishes make your mouth water? If the answer to this question is " Yes " then I know just the place that you can have this food to your hearts content right here in Hyderabad. On Road No. 12 Banjara Hills right next to Pizza Hut is a hole in the wall kind of a place - it has about 4 tables on the mezzanine floor and 2 tables and the kitchen on the ground floor - the sizzlers and the russian salad are really good. You would have to put up with the fumes while your food is being cooked but its worth it. There is an option to order take-away too but I am not sure what would a sizzler taste like when eaten 10 min after it has been sizzling so my advise would be to have it at the restraunt itself. Happy Eating.

Biryani - A must have for all those who visit Hyderabad. There are a lot of places that serve biryani and in all the years that I have been in Hyderabad I have never been to two places that serve the same kind of biryani. There is a biryani that is called Hyderabadi Biryani but to be frank I never really made out the difference. For all the historians that are food lovers here is one version of the Biryani Story . But then for those that want a Hyderabadi twist to the story here is another version . Well I did a search of Google and I got another story altogether. Enough about the history - let me get down to where one can find some good biryani to eat. The best Biryani to date that I have had at a price that would hardly pinch your pocket is Cafe Bahar . Its address is - Cafe Bahar, Old MLA Qtrs Road, Hyderguda, Hyderabad . The best way to enjoy the biryani is to take the biryani home and eat. The place is not the cleanest place you would want to be eating your food and neither do...