Sree Gupta Bhavan, popularly known as ‘Loiee’ has opened their outlet and restaurant at 100 feet road, Velachery next to Sangeetha Restaurant , opp to Subway.  It was quite a talk around our area, we decided to check the restaurant out for dinner on a Sunday.  It was just 2 days old when we visited the restaurant. The restaurant was brightly lit and buzzing with activity.  Ground floor is dedicated to Chaat and sweets counter and more like a fast food joint.  First floor is the restaurant and was almost full with people waiting. Surprised at the reception this restaurant has got in an area filled with restaurants every few steps.

Quality of Food :

We had Cream of Tomato soup, real good soup after a long time. Perfect in flavor, ready to have that pepper and salt to get that aroma, good consistency.  This set our expectations high.

We went for a Tandoori platter –  Kesar Paneer Tikka, Mushroom Tikka, Veg Hariyali kebab, Tandoori Stuffed Potato with mint chutney and salad.  Kesar Paneer Tikka was succulent, tasty. Mushroom Tikka nothing to complain, Veg Hariyali kebab was pasty and tasted odd. Tandoori Stuffed potato was a roll and outer covering was leathery, cut it open and the stuffing was nice.

Combo thali was an interesting offer, so went for it.  It had Veg fried rice, Gobi manchurian gravy, 1 mix veg subzi, 4 phulkas, roasted papad, raita and pickle.  Veg fried rice tasted more like a pulao,  Gobi manchurian gravy was unpalatable. Subzi, phulka lacked salt. We also had Poori which had No Salt.

Moved onto Dessert and order Hot Chocolate Fudge and what we got was Vanilla ice-cream with chocolate sauce.  Sadly none of the Sree Gupta Bhavan Team understood what a fudge meant and after moving from one person to another and explaining it, we heard this from them

the restaurant is new and is taking feedback from customers to improve service.

We did not want to pay Rs.160 for few scoops of vanilla ice-cream and chocolate sauce and asked it to be replaced with Falooda.

Falooda was creamy, good with fruits but it did not have the sabja seeds that we normally get in it.

We wanted to parcel Pav bhaji and we were told we have to go down to the chat counter and order it separately there. Maybe a comfortable process for them, but we did not find it customer friendly – we do not want to go and stand in the counter after having our food in the restaurant. And sadly, by the time we went down to pick the Pav bhaji, it was sold out. Unfair!

Ambience : Neat Interiors but Quite Noisy, certainly not the kind you would like to go with friends and relatives.  We had to struggle to hear our own voice.

Service :  Dismal. The person taking the order kept saying ‘it is peak time’ for everything we asked. Not sure what that meant and how we are supposed to react to it

Price : Soup at Rs.70+, Side dishes at Rs. 180 to Rs. 200+, Thali at Rs.150+, Tandoori platter Rs.200, Falooda at Rs.160+, Poori at Rs.95+, prices match up with mid range restaurants in the area.

As the pictures show, lot of improvement is required in presentation and our opinion is that the team is having difficult time and is overwhelmed with the crowd.

We do expect better quality of food, service going forward but not too sure about any improvement on the ambience though. On the way out, we met the Asst General Manager who had interaction with us, took our mobile number and promised to share his email but we never got it till going live with this post.