The Kitchen - Rain Tree Anna Salai

To celebrate a special occasion, four of us headed to the Rain Tree on Anna Salai to check out this hotel. Its been around for a while and we thought it would be a good time to check it out! The guy (?manager?) just as you enter the hotel is a disaster! I asked him for dining options and he suggested that we try out 'Chinese Coffee Shop' which serves good Chinese food he said! Curious to see what a Chinese Coffee Shop is like, we entered the restaurant named 'The Kitchen' only to realize that this was a regular 24 hour coffee shop with a buffet and absolutely no Chinese in it. We decided to try the buffet nevertheless and allowed ourselves to be seated by the pleasant waiters!

The buffet spread is not exactly huge by any stretch of imagination. You have a choice of two soups like most places and the soups were pretty average. The starter section was actually impressive - they have small portions of multiple starters in small glasses or tiny plates so you can try out various dishes without wasting them. The prawn cocktail was very good, the chicken salami and other cold cuts were quite tasty. The main course section was average as far as the selection goes, but a few dishes were quite outstanding. The cottage cheese gravy was one that stood out, while in the non veg section, the crab gravy, the mutton gravy and the chicken gravy were all edible! You get quite some choice with the breads and they were pretty good too. Biriyani was there and was better than the ones in most buffets, but well............my standards for biriyani are extremely high, so.......

We also ordered a couple of dishes a-la-carte, an outstanding malabar fish gravy which was the best dish of the day. There is a pizza counter and you can choose between the non veg pizza of the day or it veg counterpart. The pizza is thin crust and was actually excellent, much better than I expected it to be and it had quite some meat in it. They have a small but nice selection of cheese and the chef actually got me some blue cheese which is is not part of the buffet (Unless you know what blue cheese is, DO NOT). The dessert selection was probably the best of the lot. Quite a few desserts were excellent, the chocolate mousse being the best of the lot.

Service was outstanding. Waiters were very attentive and always smiling and made the experience pleasant. Priced at Rs 1085 per head, but yeah there are better buffets in the city for this price, but I would like to go back and check out their a-la-carte menu!

Food 7/10
Ambiance 7/10
Servcie 9/10
Price 7/10

Rain tree is located on Anna Salai!