The much hyped about 'upscale' place in Manipal is not that great after all. Maybe just not great for the vegetarians.

Now, I was told that the prices are high but the food there is amazing and we expect good food when we are hungry or we have heard too much about the place.

My rating and review is based on a vegetarian meal where me and my roommate ordered soups, appetizer and then the mains.

I am sure they stuck a balance somewhere by serving a soup too thick to my roommate and serving me flavored water. No, it was not clear soup it was supposed to be creamy and have a lot of cheese in it's authentic style.

The spicy cheesy fries were perhaps fries with red chilli with no cheese to be found. An amateur could do a better job at serving those.

For the mains we ordered soya veg fried rice where the first impression that I got was that it would have soya chunks in the rice. It was actually the soya sauce they mentioned. So it was fried rice which was black in color because of the sauce. That's it. Nil on flavors. Literally, nothing. Just like any other place you order fried rice from.

Paneer butter masala on the other hand looked promising. I would have garnished mine with coriander at least but I found the fine okay here. Again, not as amazing as the reputation of the restaurant but just okay. Then I noticed the paneer cubes made with sour milk. They ruined everything.

I would give it a 4 on 5 on ambiance and 3 for the service because they were slow turtles. They took away the quarter plates before we were done with the fries, got the food way before. Didn't really understand why was the table cluttered.

As for the bar, it was pretty and well lit. Maybe they serve drinks better.