Haven Sampoorna, Velachery

I was little hungry, happened to be around Velachery and came across Haven Sampoorna, which I’ve always wanted to try out. Grabbing my chance, I went in here.

I was greeted with the Bon Appetit on the door and the Vegetarians are Awesome, Sexy and Brainy banner. I immediately fell in love with the place, as I’m a vegetarian and proud about it.

Next came the decor. The ambience, though a little noisy with all the customers, was pretty impressive and fitting for a fine-dining place.

Now for the foodie part. As I had gone alone, I ordered for a Tomato Basil Soup, a haven pasta and a yellow bird lighted mocktail.

My hunger took control of me and I couldn’t capture the soup or pasta. I did, however, manage to capture the mocktail before I finished it.

Soup: I enjoyed the soup. It was not very thick, but wasn’t watery either. It was perfect and tasted good.

Haven Pasta:

The waiter must have thought me to be a novice foodie because when I ordered for Haven Pasta, he repeatedly asked me if am sure about it, as it would contain olives. He described them as “black olives, black things, you want them?”. I said, please bring it. He tried to recommended something else, a plain cheese pasta, but I insisted on this. And I don’t regret it.

The pasta, though very less in quantity(It costs Rs. 220, but the QUANTITY was befitting for Rs. 150 at the most), almost made it up in taste. I loved it. The olives were just fine(boo to the waiter), the sauce was plenty and the penne was cooked well. I enjoyed every bite of my pasta.

Mocktail: It was good. Am not a good connoisseur of mocktails, so I’ll leave it at that.

Now comes to the speed of service. It was 7.50 by the time I went in here. The pastas were supposed to take long to cook and therefore should have taken long to be served. However, the speed of service was amazing and I finished all the items and was out of the restaurant by 8.15.

The one area where I felt they could improve was helping the customer making informed choices. Ex: Drinking water. They had a bottle of Bisleri water on the table(which would obviously be charged) and didn’t even ask me if I need regular water or bottled water. They didn’t even serve water, until I requested for it. Am not a fan of bottled water at hotels(prices above MRP disgust me) so, I obviously requested regular water. Next part was when the waiter had no clue about the pasta choices. Because there were quite a few Chef’s Recommended and Signature Cuisine choices in the pasta menu, I asked him which one would be good. He simply kept on repeating about the plain cheese sauce pasta, even after I made it clear that I don’t want it. These are areas for improvement.

Overall rating:

Quantity: 3/5

Taste: 4.5/5

Cost/VFM: 3.5/5

Service: 4/5

Ambience: 4/5

Total: 4 / 5

Originally posted a month ago on Zomato: http://www.zomato.com/review/Zgmmn

PS: I take a particular liking to this review, as this was the first review of mine that won Zomato’s Write for bite contest for that week.

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Human, Existentialist, Knowledge Hunter, Blogger, Social Media Aficionado, Open Source FanBuoy, Tea Lover

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