Ten Degrees — Restaurant in Kodaikanal

TL;DR rude/lousy/inconsiderate staff, poor/redundant manager, bland food with almost no seasoning, “authentic” South Indian food that’s been sweetened for some peculiar reason

I was extremely disappointed by my experience here considering its relatively high ratings on most review sites.

Firstly, the staff were very arrogant and frankly quite racist. I was here with a group of 8 who only speak Tamil and barely speak English. After being seated at the restaurant, when one of the people asked a waiter where the bathroom was in tamil, instead of replying calmly that he didn’t speak tamil, the waiter audaciously decided that an acceptable way to respond way to would be to ignore the individual and motion him to go away.

The craziest part of this is the manager stared blankly as he witnessed this.

Already in a poor mood by this encounter, we decided to continue anyway as we had trekked quite a bit to find this place. Some of us ordered steaks while others ordered traditional South Indian food.

The steak was APPALLING. We found it hilarious that they claimed that their steak was one of their best dishes. It was bland, overcooked and it wasn’t medium-rare (what we had asked for). The sides were unseasoned and were still soggy from being boiled.

As for the tamil food, it was disastrously sweet for some reason and wasn’t spicy as claimed on the menu.

After having extremely poor meals, we were under the assumption that this place couldn’t get any worse, but boy were we wrong!

The restaurant was relatively empty when we were there so we could see the waiters in the back. We noticed them pointing at us and sniggering. At that exact moment, their tips went down the drain...

Meanwhile the manager went around asking every other table (yes, every other table) in the restaurant what they thought of the food and did not check in on us even once.

I ask anyone looking for good food, a wholesome environment, and a solid experience to STAY AWAY from this sh**hole. It’s put on a facade to seem like a fine dining establishment when in reality it’s a crummy cafeteria with subpar food.

The restaurant had Sivaji Ganeshan and tamil cinema photographs all over the place. For a staff and management that was explicitly (not implicitly) racist, I find it hilarious that they would plaster their walls with tamil icons. It seems like a “Get Out” sort of situation were they’d be willing to take South Indian culture for the purpose of marketing/selling their food, but mistreat ACTUAL South Indian people.

This is without a doubt a “Kitchen Nightmares” worthy restaurant - Gordon Ramsey time to...

I hate to provide a negative review. Just sharing my experience. So my friend and I went in the evening to enjoy some nice food before we leave kodai. We had left ten degrees to the end after exploring the other cafes as we had heard about it's food. We ordered kodai fries first. Whenever we go to a restaurant, we have the habit of not ordering everything together as we eat slowly. So we order one item at a time. The waiter gave us the fries and we were eating slowly. I had pulled up my book to read and my friend was on the phone. The waiter suddenly came up to us and told us in a rude manner that the restaurant was not a waiting place. We were shocked. It was just 10 mins that the fries had arrived and we could not even finish our food that he accused us. It was very unprofessional and we were sad to be treated as such. We visited almost all the cafes in town and everyone treated us graciously. We did tell the waiter about this and also told him that he could have asked politely. Anyways, we left immediately because it was embarrassing. We also asked another order of fried rice to be packed as we were hungry but did not want to eat there anymore. The place might be great with good food. But a little empathy can elevate tourist's experience to a...

Beautiful and calm restaurant one level above the street, accessible via an outdoor staircase. You can oversee the road with all the restaurants and shops if you take a window seat. It is very clean and a well maintained place, design and furniture are very pleasing and are way above every other place I've been to in 3 weeks.

The menu covers a wide range of dishes, including an interesting variety of curries, fish-based meals, but also some with beef. Pizza is also there. The side dish options (rice, bread etc.) seem a little bit limited compared to other Indian restaurants perhaps, but are sufficient in my opinion.

For Indian standards, it is slightly expensive, but still very affordable for European tourists, especially if you consider the quality they offer. My waiter was very professional, meaning he kept a distance while being very attentive to take orders. In all other places I've been to, waiters usually flocked around me because I was usually the only white guy in the place, which was awkward sometimes.

Overall, I recommend Ten Degrees unconditional because of the quality in food and service and the nice atmosphere. If you ever come by Kodaikanal, you should at least go for the homemade lemonade (70rs), which was the...