So as an extension of my mystery shopping experience at Aloft, I had the choice of having either the buffet dinner or a-la-carte at Estia. Estia is their mediterranean restaurant and it is tucked away inside the main restaurant. There is no way of knowing that the restaurant exists as there were no boards or no signs of this, and even after you enter the main restaurant, you only notice that there is a separate section and if you don't ask for it, you might just think that it is an extension of the main restaurant!!! Now that was one long sentence, but it kind of tells you about the location of Estia. Just enter Aloft on OMR and ask for it!
I asked what is their specialty and we were suggested a few dishes of the menu. The menu was colourful, but not one that has a pleasing look as it was sticky all the way and sort of cramped. We decided to have a chicken soup and it was called AVGOLEMONO and since I was doing mystery shopping, I could not ask them to email me the dishes, so I had to write them all down! The soup was refreshing! We had a cheese borek, which is cheese with greens stuffed in puff pastry and it was ok! We asked for two main courses, first we asked for GAMBAS PIL PIL which is tiger prawns on a bed of polenta, then asked for MELANGANE PARMAGIANNA, which was supposed to be like a greek lasagna, but when I saw SOUVLAKI KEBAB on the menu, I changed my mind. The tiger prawns were cooked to perfection and tasted great, while the souvlaki kebabs were super juicy and super tasty. They were served with flavoured rice and stuffed pita bread and I had them with the pita bread! The pita bread could have been better, but the kebabs more than made up for it. But the waiter messed up the order and forgot to cancel the parmagianna and so we were left with three main dishes. Knowing fully well that I can write off the check to the hotel, we decided to taste and it turned out to be great!!!!! Glad we did not return it.
Being full with a nice meal, we were craving for dessert as we wanted something sweet, we asked for baklava and I spotted a white chocolate creme brûlée on the menu which I asked for. The baklava tasted good, but it was not the typical baklava with layers of puff pastry and stuff, but some kind of a rolled baklava. I am not sure if this is baklava and it certainly was not a great baklava, but it was not bad. The white chocolate creme brûlée, which might look very nice on the picture tasted pathetic! I had to leave the whole thing behind as it was very watery and wrongly flavoured. The total cost of the meal was Rs 1600 something, but if you remove the extra main course that we had, you can easily have a meal here for Rs 1200 for two.
But in general the meal was very good and I am surprised that Aloft is not promoting this restaurant! There are not too many Mediterranean options on OMR as far as I know and obviously I cannot compare this to Kryptos or Azulia,this is not a bad place for a meal!!!
I would rate this experience a 3.5/5
Estia is the mediterranean restaurant at Aloft on OMR. It is right next to the Sholinganallur four road junction.
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