Pickles that didn't tickle my taste buds. Review on Pickles Coffee Shop, S D Road, Secunderabad

What good advertising can do to a not so good product! Pickles, the coffee shop attached to Hotel Basera, is a clear example.

There were ads all over the place. Very inviting ads...I also saw some discount coupons in a local magazine...and above all else, this place is a stone's throw away from Sangeet. So a friend and I decided to try the place out for dinner one day so that we could club it with a movie at Sangeet.

We had 2 hours to spare before the movie began and thought that was enough to have a leisurely dinner. How wrong we were! We were seated fairly soon but beyond that, the service was slow.

We ordered something to drink and some sort of corn cutlets. The drinks took ages to arrive, but they were quite good. The corn stuff was rather sad. Usually my friend and I hit away at starters, this time we were both going, 'Pehle aap' and 'Nahin nahin...aap kha lo'. Finally we decided it wasn't worth it and decided to move on to the main course.

For some reason, my friend settled on chhole bhatura. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't the best either. The time that it took to arrive was what was truly annoying. That night they were playing Phil Collins and I enjoyed the music. By the time dinner came, we'd already spent an hour and a half there. We still had half an hour, so we ordered rum and raisin chocolate mousse.

I'd expect that this would just need to be served. I have no idea if they started growing grapes only then to make raisins or what...but sitting there, that's what it felt like! The dessert arrived when we had about 10 minutes to spare. We ate the stuff pretty quickly (it had a little more rum than it should have) and rushed to Sangeet.

By some coincidence, I landed up at the same place the following evening with some friends. I ordered spinach and corn florentine. It was quite nice, but the serving size was rather small. I sampled some of the other things that my friends had ordered and realized that it wasn't the best of restaurants or coffee shops in Hyderabad/Secunderabad.

Last week, I was out shopping with my parents in Secunderabad and we were very close to Pickles. It was quite late in the afternoon and after thinking about where we could go, we decided on Pickles only because we were so close.

It took a while for us to be seated. My father, like me, cannot stand spicy food. Its probably one of the reasons I decided to take my parents there. A place that serves continental food must have some options for the likes of us. I can't remember the name of the dish, but the description was very nice. It was some vegetables and cottage cheese in cheese sauce or something very close to that.

I checked about a dozen times to ensure that it was not a spicy dish. My mother ordered lasagna and my friend and I ordered Cottage Cheese Steaks. All these dishes were from a section called ''Go West''.

After waiting for what seemed like eternity, my father suggested that we order a starter. We ordered Funky Fries and these were served to us rather quickly. This is an assortment of potato fries...smileys, pompoms, cutlets etc. Very good and absolutely yummy. The food, though, took its own time to come.

Finally the food arrived. The way the food is presented is really appealing. My father dug into his dish that had no visible cheese sauce and instantly started gulping down glasses of water. It turned out that they had sprinkled freshly ground pepper all over the food. I called the waiter and told him about it...the gentleman went to the phone, spoke to someone and came back to me very politely and said, ''Ma'm, that is not pepper, that is a herb''. I said, ''What kind of herb?'' and he says, ''Its an Italian herb Ma'm, its called Oregano.''

Somewhere in the middle of all this my blood began to boil. As if one would ever mistake oregano for pepper! The man then told us that they chef forgot to add the white sauce and so brought some tasteless white liquid in a small cup.

During this fiasco, the other food arrived. The lasagna seemed to be the only nice dish. Our cottage cheese steaks left a lot to be desired. I just love cottage cheese steaks...I've had them at Eden and Sage & Onion in Madras, and at On The Way in Hyderabad. Absolutely yummy stuff at all these places. At Pickles however, the steaks were plain slices of thick paneer (cut into a heart shape) covered with a brown paste and a green paste. None of the yummy arabiata sauces they're served with elsewhere. Innovation I thought...until I dug into my food.

The brown sauce was nothing but dal makhni ground to a paste and the green paste was regular coriander chutney. I hate dal makhni...and to think I got just that for a fancy order of cottage cheese steaks! Utterly disappointing.

I usually write a bad restaurant off after the first visit. For some reason, I went to Pickles on three occasions before I decided to write a review. Everyone speaks very highly of the Ohri's group of restaurants in the twin cities. I have visited all their outlets and have really found nothing in them that is worth writing home about.

There are so many places in Hyderabad that I simply love to visit...Pickles is not one among them.