We are two hungry people. Further, we are made to wait two excruciating hours for our food. Royal Madrasi has a lot to make up to this evening. When our order — the Biryani celebration meal and the Chicken celebration meal — arrives, we are too drained to notice how it’s neatly packed in plastic containers inside a box that says ‘Get into feast mode’.
All right then, feast mode it is — we dig in. But wait. Where’s our chicken sukka ? The fruit and cream? We frantically open one container after the other and realise that what was listed on the menu and what we were offered are completely different.
The Biryani celebration meal is a combo listed as consisting of biryani, chicken sukka with coconut flavour, fruit raita, curd rice topped with cashew/pista/pomegranate, and fruit and cream topped with nuts and raisins for dessert. What we are given is not exactly a celebration — it’s more like something put together in a hurry. There are two boxes of biryani instead of one, a spicy chicken gravy and onion raita.
The biryani is average; so is the chicken curry rice that’s part of the Chicken celebration meal. We don’t see any trace of the promised cashews or pomegranate in the curd rice.
The chapattis are soft though, and the bowl of vegetables ‘to make it a balanced meal’ does arrive, even though it is beans poriyal, which sticks out like a sore thumb in this ensemble. Dessert, a drab carrot halwa, fails to redeem the meal. We feel let down.
