ZAFFRAN — Restaurant in Andhra Pradesh

This has to be my saddest dining experience ever.... And that too on my birthday... You kinda ruined the evening. The 1 star is only for the genuinely good server who is thankfully probably following his Novotel brand standards training. I have no idea what ambience some reviewers are talking about. Its is just an uninspired room that you walk into via the much better designed The Square. There is no dress code that is usually encouraged in a 5 star and so you have people walking around in their night pyjamas. There is no exclusivity or respite from the cacophony of the buffet area. The horrible food requires a paragraph on it own and here goes. Maybe they don't have their regular chef around due to this pandemic, I don't know, but this is the first time I actually felt that I should start putting reviews. The app that we are required to order from definitely did not show many of the choices that are reviewed about in here. Nevertheles, The Galouti Seekh Kabab was the smallest and thinnest I have ever eaten. And all I could taste was CHILLI!! You should have negative ratings formats for your stingyness which is not at all a characteristic of North Indian food. I wanted to kinda go inside the kitchen and actually ask what the chef had actually given me in the name of Mutton Rogan Josh. The gravy felt like the grainy flavorless salan. The Laccha Paratha was good and soft and flaky. THE BIRIYANI/GOD-KNOWS-WHAT-IT-WAS: I don't have enough words to describe this. This is a city known for its Biriyani and not even the smallest of canteens get it wrong. There were crushed fine bone pieces in our every bite. I think it was made with only extreme boredom and a shop bought garam masala powder I just didn't have the heart to order any desserts or mocktails and ruin my birthday mood any further. I just wanted to get out of there. Trust me there are amazing flavorsome food available in the whole of Vizag in the smallest restaurants as well as the other amazing 4star/5star hotels. Novotel Zaffran simply aint...

Bad experience on my marriage anniversary. Thank God, I didn't renew my novotel membership or else I'd be stuck with their horrible service. Being a doctor, i know the value of time but i wasted my valuable time and precious day in this hotel. I regret for my decision for having a dinner in novotel. Expecting to have a fine dine experience at Zaffaran, our bad experience started right at the empty front desk. Calling themselves a five star hotel, basic thumb rule of someone acknowledging the customer at the entrance is missing. After 15 min of waiting outside, we went into the restaurant and saw 2 waiters serving the table. They saw us standing at the entrance but none of them came to us or asked us anything. So l forcefully went to this waiter Mr BHANU and asked if we could get a table, he asked us to wait and dint mention any wait time and that point I could see 2 tables empty. So we waited outside at zaffran hoping they would call us..the time went on for almost 35-40 mins. Then, my wife went to the hotel front desk and asked if he could help us at zaffaran, even after the front desk personnel went into the restaurant and came out and they still asked us to wait. Which we did for another 10 min and decided to go to buffet since it's already late to go to other restaurants and we decided to dine at buffet. And, now the 2nd half of our bad experience begin in the form of food. Not one dish looked appetizing or tasted good. But I must say service here was good after complaining about our experience at zaffaran to the manager Mr. Srikanth. He tried his best to please us 🙏. Overall, Novatel standards have sunken to the lowest of the lows in terms of food , service and over all ambience. Every nook and corner is shouting for makeover...

We reserved a table for lunch, on the day of our wedding anniversary. I am glad I made this choice, the ambiance was very good, and the food was great ! Dal Makhani was one of the items we ordered, with which my mother and wife were so pleased that they asked to convey special compliments to the chef for the same! So delicately & authentically it was prepared. The starters and remaining Main course tasted good too, the quantities were on the higher side. The veggies used were clearly fresh and had a bite, spice was on the moderate side, which I appreciate , however unusual it is for restaurants of Andhra. All this said, I must mention most of the credit goes to the chef, the staff at the front end were not upto the mark, they could not explain most of what the preparations constituted of , on the menu. They were either clueless or had incomplete information , however polite. I would really recommend them to work on knowing what and how the items in the menu were made of. For instance, we ordered a warm almond cake for dessert and the cake arrived cold straight out of the fridge , on asking for why it was cold in contrast to what was written on the menu, the waiters were clueless. Except for minor training aspects like this at the front end, the substance and ambiance that we paid for, was...