Schezuan Court, The Oberoi, Bangalore: Restaurant Week India

Restaurant Week India is a Citibank initiative that facilitates top fine-dine restaurants in the city to showcase their best to the masses at a fraction of its usual cost (900+ taxes). RWI is currently running in the cities of Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi (from 19^th until 28^th). We were recently invited to experience a meal at the Schezuan Court, The Oberoi, as a part of the initiative.

Having seen the menu online prior to reaching the restaurant, I was looking forward to the Oberoi experience. The menu seemed classic, without any frills, which made me feel that the restaurant had picked the best to be showcased and was confident of what it was putting up. I along with a friend, Suhasini, reached at the designated hour to be cordially welcomed to the staff. The Chef came and explained the menu to us and also suggested a few things we could pick from.

Suhasini and I together decided to order a good mix from both the vegetarian and non vegetarian options. For starters, we ordered the crisp fried lamb with peppers and steamed vegetable wontons with chilli and garlic. The crispy lamb was nice and crisp but had an overdose of salt while the wonton sheets were inconsistently wrapped. For soup, we ordered the lemon coriander chicken soup. The soup was mildly flavoured with chunks of bokchoy, mushroom and baby corn floating in but lacked the punch we expected.

Off to rather rough start, we were looking forward to the main course to redeem what didn’t work. The menu had a plethora of choices, from which we chose to go for the Steamed fish with banana chilli in soy sauce, Prawns in XO sauce, Stir fried Chinese greens, Braised Tofu in black bean sauce, Smoked ginger fried jasmine rice with babycorn and mushrooms and Pan fried noodles with vegetables.

One bite of the tofu and it was magic, it was silky, has a slightly crisp outer covering with a subtle bitter sweet flavour from the sauce. Later, we were told that the tofu is made in house and is a specialty. The pan fried noodles, which looked good initially, had suddenly turned soggy. From the looks of it, there seemed a heady dose of cornflour in the gravy. We finally dug in and both Suhasini and I were not at all pleased with what was served. The fish was well-made,soft and the sauce aptly flavoured. The ginger sticky rice was a welcome change after the noodles. Ginger and jasmine rice sounded like a pleasant combination and what we got surpassed our expectations. Strong dose of ginger blended really well with the jasmine rice. The stir fried greens looked nice on the plate, asparagus, legumes, snow peas, bokchoy and baby corn in a subtly flavoured sauce. It was a good dish if one could overlook the mature snow peas in it. The prawns on the other hand were well made in terms of the texture of the meat but were inconsistently seasoned; of the two pieces I had on my plate, one had the right amount of salt and the other had an excess of salt in it.

The service was courteous but what surprised us was a lack of attention to detail. The glasses we were served water in initially were dirty and the crockery was chipped in places.

For dessert, we ordered the honey fried noodles with vanilla bean ice-cream. The noodles were nice and crisp with a thin coat of honey and a generous drizzle of sesame. Warm noodles with vanilla ice-cream did make a good end to the meal.

Despite there being a lot of misses in our meal, there was a lot that did work for us. Also, having listed the negatives and the positives in all honesty, I feel it might just be an off day in the kitchen.

Ratings (Out of 5)

Food: 2.5 | Ambience: 3.5 | Service: 2.5 | Overall: 2.5

Meal for one: Rs.900+ taxes (valid across all restaurants participating in Restaurant Week India)| Credit Card: Yes | Wheel chair friendly: Yes

Address: 37-39, Mahatma Gandhi Rd, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560001| Tel: 080 2558 5858

Disclaimer: This review was done on an invitation from the restaurant. Due judgement and care has been applied by the author to remain objective and unbiased in the review, but readers need to consider this review keeping this fact in mind.