Aug 13, 2013 03:32 PM
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This review is particularly about the Bikano Chat Café located on the second floor of Jaipuria Mall in Indirapuram, Ghaziabad, UP.
Coming to the location and ambience of this food court, it is quite alright. It is pretty huge and spacious and I believe can seat 150 plus (maybe more) people at one go without anyone bumping into one another.
So I had to meet a friend who had travelled over from Mumbai and stayed in an apartment behind Jaipuria Mall. So the obvious choice to meet up was at a restaurant or on the common area of the mall. It was really hot and we couldn’t sit at the green area outside the mall and we looked around and found Bikano Chat Café at the top floor.
First of all, coming to the staff, they are not helpful at all. We wanted to have some coffee and the beverage stall was empty. Several people were seen tapping at the counter and calling out for service but no one bothered to come out of the door. So we went to the adjacent South Indian and Chat counter where very apparently the fellow didn’t understand English. I told my friend (who initially tried to talk to him in English) that unlike other metro cities Delhi and NCR mall staff can’t understand a word of English and asked her to speak in Hindi. Then she asked for coffee, and instead of guiding her about the procedure to order items, he just said that it would be at the beverage outlet. After several minutes of loitering around and we realized that people had to first buy tokens at a counter at another corner of the food court and then the attendants at the beverage stall would come out and announce that the asked item is ready. So we paid for two coffees and waited and finally someone came out and left a tray on the counter and went back in. The coffee – good lord! Ghaziabad definitely is not the place where you find coffee connoisseurs but yet. This one was like milk with a bit of cheap cocoa powder sprinkled on it. We asked for coffee and not chocolate flavoured milk!
I have had food at other Bikano cafes and I know their food is not at all the type that you can relish eating. A chain outlet like Bikano should understand that if something ‘not local’ is being served, it should at least partially have the taste of how the item is made in its native place. Bikano’s South Indian and Chinese dishes are extremely bad and it was the same at this store too. It is essential that people from the place where these dishes are made be brought over as cooks. It appears like all the staff of Bikano were previously employed in professions that has nothing to do with food and then were trained for two days to prepare a couple of dishes. Even the regular items like ‘papri chat’, ‘dahi bhalla’, ‘raaj kachori’ etc aren’t really great. People go to a restaurant for a change from their daily routine. People don’t visit a snack bar to just munch on something and fill their bellies. Haldiram fares still better in the sense that at least their ‘chat’ items are up to the mark.
This place is good in terms of a certain amount of peace you can get by sitting around. Perhaps if you need to have a business meeting, this is an excellent place to visit. Even on a Saturday evening, not even half the tables were occupied. Well, you might say that shows that this outlet is bad for visiting and hence they hardly get any customers. If I have to be selfish, I would say I am happy that they repel customers because it gave me some peace and quiet to sit around and gossip with my friend. This was what made me rate the place as average.
To summarize:
Food – Very bad
Ambience – Good
Look and feel of the restaurant – Good
Peace and quiet – Great
Staff – Average to poor.
