Marco Polo in China

If you're in Calcutta and need a place to eat, the one place NOT to go is Marco Polo in China on Park Street.

It's a fairly expensive restaurant, by Calcutta standards at least. A meal for two with an alcoholic beverage each, an appetizer, a noodle/rice & an entree can cost you anywhere between Rs 1500-2000, depending on the drink you order and your choice of meat (prawns will cost you more than chicken/lamb/fish).

For a restaurant in that price range, the service is extremely shoddy and the waiters terribly clueless. It's a well-known fact that restaurants, shops & small businesses in Calcutta aren't as good on customer service as, say, those in Bombay. But if I'm paying approximately 2 grand for a meal, I expect some level of customer service. Consider this - they had very few chicken options as appetizers, so I asked them if they can make a relatively simple dish, pan fried chilly fish, that was on their menu, with chicken instead of fish. Their response was an outright no. I asked them if they could just check once regarding this, and the answer again was 'no'. Now, I've made this request before at much smaller & cheaper Chinese restaurants and they've happily obliged, so I know it's totally do-able. Their rudeness pretty much pissed me off, especially since they didn't even try to check with the chef if my request could be accomodated.

I asked the waiter if they had any Chinese sauces available as there were none at the table. His answer was 'no'! Can you imagine a Chinese restaurant without any Chinese sauces?? Neither can I. Even a tiny roadside Chinese restaurant will serve you the regular chilly sauce-soya-vinegar combo!!

We had ordered Lat Mei Kai for starters. It's a spicy pan fried Thai chicken dish that goes well with the red sweet sauce (that looks like a diluted version of tomato ketchup) you get at any decent Chinese restaurant. I asked the waiter if they had the sauce available, though I was pretty sure it was a request in vain. This time he didn't say no. I was about to fall off my chair in shock when he came to me with a bowl of tomato ketchup!!!!! I was too stunned to speak.

The food was upsetting as well. Our appetizer was burnt and the Chicken in Hot Garlic Sauce we had ordered tasted more like Chicken in Sweet Garlic Sauce. And the worst of it all? They had completely screwed up the Mojito we had paid Rs 250 for! It tasted like fresh lime water!!!

The ambience of the restaurant too was pretty confused. It's like they couldn't make up their mind whether they wanted to be a Chinese or a Bengali restaurant. They call themselves Marco Polo in China but they have Indian food as well as Pastas on offer, and the ambience is very Bengali!! Go figure.

My verdict : TWO THUMBS DOWN

PS: Incidentally, they have another branch on Sarat Bose Road (or Lansdowne Road as it's more commonly known) called 'Marco Polo' (only) that serves Indian & Continental. That's a much better bet. I've had continental there, and the food is much better, though both restaurants would fall in the same price range.

We Love Chinese

Yesterday I had the strangest dining experience of my life ever. Four of us went to a very popular Chinese restaurant on Park Street called Bar-B-Q (If that isn't a strange name for a Chinese restaurant I don't know what is!)

Going to a popular restaurant on Saturday night at 9pm in a city that loves to eat out isn't a good idea in the first place. But they're one of the few restaurants that serve good "Indian Chinese", so had to go!

When we reached we were given a waiting time of about half an hour. After waiting for about 45 minutes we got a table right near the entrance of the seating area! There were at least 50 people waiting to be seated right next to us! Each glaring at us, possibly b/c we were the only ones completely exposed to them. While we were eating, the crowd of people waiting just got larger & larger, until finally this one guy was standing right next to us!!

Despite repeated requests from the restaurant staff manning the entrance, he wouldn't move. And then suddenly he was yelling at us, "Can't you guys eat faster? Don't you see there are so many people waiting?"

We were shocked, we didn't know what to say! We had been seated not more than 20 mins...our starters had just arrived. And not that our getting done would've made way for the more than 50 people who were waiting!! There were about 396 other people eating at the restaurant!! I'm not exaggerating...the restaurant has three sections, each with their own kitchen and can accomodate upto 400 people, I think.

Guess the hotel staff had had enough by then. They got the man escorted out of the restaurant. Which brings me to the question...why let such a situation arise in the first place? If you know there are 50 people waiting to be seated in one section of the restaurant alone (I'm sure there were people waiting in other sections as well), why keep letting people in?

Why can't restaurants tell patrons that they're stretched over the limit? Is it greed or hospitality? Given that we're in India, my deductive abilities tell me it's the former. Pure greed to mint money. Which I'm sure the restaurant is doing enough of given it's capacity. So why ruin your equity among your customers by letting such unpleasant incidents occur?

Restaurant Woes

One thing that ticks me off completely is bad service at premium restaurants.

I recently went to a restaurant that serves Indian, Thai & Continental food. It is situated in the IT hub of the city and is not exactly cheap, the average price being Rs 250-300 per dish. The food wasn’t great and the service was pathetic.

We ordered a Crispy Fried Lamb (a Chinese preparation) for starters. The waiter dropped the food all over the table while serving and did not clear it up until we asked him to. When we did, his expression was as if we’d asked him to do something that WE were supposed to do!!

For main course, I ordered a Neopolitaine Chicken Pasta (which comes in a tomato-based sauce) that was supposed to be served along with garlic bread. What I got instead of garlic bread was plain white bread with garlic butter on it!!! The bread wasn’t even toasted. Apparently, they had run out of the bread that is used to make garlic bread but they did not even bother to inform me about it and instead served such rubbish!!!!!

My friend ordered a second Nan which took 20 minutes to come! Fifteen minutes after he ordered, another waiter came to my friend to ask if he had ordered another Nan!!!

My point is, one doesn’t bother or complain about bad service if one is going to a cheap restaurant. But one’s expectations are completely different if it is even a moderately premium restaurant – you expect the food & service to be commensurate with the amount you’re paying.





The photograph above is of the interior of the restaurant I'm talking about. If they're savvy enough to have their picture up on the net, they should also by sophisticated enough to offer good service.