right, visited this place with my wife for a lunch buffet on a saturday afternoon to celebrate our first wedding anniversary and was left thoroughly disappointed! the food was just about average, nothing really praiseworthy,ambiencewas also just about average, but the service is what disappointed me majorly and that is what i'll be talking of most.
let me elaborate, i make a booking of 2:30 pm via zomato and reach the restaurant around the same time, we go to the restroom, get freshened up and settle down at our table by 2:40 pm. a waiter asks us if we'd like to go for the buffet or a-la-carte, i evaluate the options and choose to go for the buffet, so by this time it's 2:45 pm now. i just go and take a bowl of soup and a couple of starters and while i'm just starting with my meal, a waiter comes and informs us that "sir it's 3 pm now, the buffet will be closed, hence please take whatever you'd like cause we'll be removing the items now"!!! get this, just 15 mins into my meal, i'm told that the buffet will be closed, hence please take all that you want now. anyways, i just get on with it, grab a couple of plates and take multiple servings of all the items which look good and interesting to me (regardless of whether i'll be eating them or not, i took a serving cause hey, the buffet was about to be closed and i had to take everything i wanted at one go.)
annoyed by this i just settle down at the table around 3:10 pm with multiple plates around me full of food. i start tasting a couple of items and then comes another waiter and informs us "sir we'll be closing the dessert counter now, hence please take all that you want"!!!
so basically, i had not even had a single serving of any of the items properly and had to make sure that i take all the dessert items as well.
once again, i go to the dessert counters with a couple of plates, take multiple servings of all the items present and return to the table and somehow manage to fit all these plates onto the table at one go. and at this point of time i'm fuming with anger but kept my emotions under control cause after-all, it was our wedding anniversary celebration. mind you, if the food had been good then perhaps all this wouldn't have mattered much but the food was also strictly just about average.
after that, all waiters just got busy with removing the items one by one from the buffet, no one cared about people still having their meal and no one was interested to attend to their requests.
hence a few questions to the management.
1.) if you intend to close the buffet by 3:00 pm sharp, why take bookings itself for 2:30 pm. you seriously expect me to finish my entire 3 course meal in just 20-25 mins??
2.) if a booking is still made by a customer for 2:30 pm, why give him the option of buffet itself, when you know that you'll be closing the buffet at 3:00 pm. being a responsible 5 star hotel, aren't you obliged to notify your customers, who come at 2:30 pm, that the buffet will be closed at 3:00 pm.
3.) still, if you're hell bent at closing the buffet at 3:00 pm even for customers who've come just at 2:30 pm, why are you hell bent on removing all the items? just leave them there, don't refill and we'll help ourselves with whatever is remaining. why the urgency to get all the items of the shelves. are you running a restaurant or a mess?? (let alone a 5 star restaurant).
what is the purpose of all your urgency?? absolutely ridiculous.
things do not end here, while making the booking, i had mentioned that we'll be celebrating our anniversary, now even a small budget restaurant arranges for a small cake and a token gift on special occasions like birthdays, anniversary etc. but what does the grand lalit ashok do?? nothing, absolutely nothing!!
finally, i just pay the bill and walk out, thoroughly and completed disappointed and annoyed with my experience here.
i had huge expectations actually, considering that the lalit is a well established brand among 5 star hotels and has been around for quite a while. but was left absolutely devastated with my experience here.
even a small roadside restaurant would take better care and would provide better service to their customers than what i got here, and to think of it, it is a 5 star hotel. yeah right!!