Ottimo — Restaurant in Kolkata

ITC Royal Bengal and its restaurants are my all time favourite. I can never wait to get back to Royal Vega and the Grand market Pavilion. However, Ottimo had been on my list for a while now and I chose it to celebrate my wedding anniversary. Before I share my review, I'd like to state that the hospitality and the service are impeccable there. The food is also good, except a minor hiccup faced by us. The sauce in our tortellini dish was almost split and when we enquired about it, the chef told us that the dish was prepared at 60°precisely but the butter is gradually separated as it cools down. We consumed the whole dish WITHIN 10 minutes of service. If what the chef said is indeed true, then should this dish even be served!!!( I mean you can't eat it directly off the cooking pan!). Anyways, I'd forget about the sauce in a jiffy if giant sized mosquitoes weren't feasting on me. It was really uncomfortable and unpleasant. I informed the staff about it and after a few minutes, someone with a mosquito racket entered and tried killing mosquitoes around us!!!! (This is the last thing you want to experience when you go for fine dining!). I was so harassed by the mosquitoes and so shocked by the pest control (with a mosquito racket!) that I simply skipped dessert. Honestly, even though the place was upscale, the food was good and the staff was courteous, I couldn't help but recall highway dhaba scenes where you have mosquitoes all around and they use rackets and kachuachaap. One doesn't go to a place like Ottimo just for food.... It's about the whole experience. Needless to say, my experience was really...

Maybe I went on a bad day, but the experience I had at Ottimo was disappointing to say the least.

Two of us walked in, there wasn't maitre d' to show us to our table. We walked in and waited and even with multiple servers in the restaurant, there was no acknowledgement. So we seated ourselves. Then the most grumpiest server came with the digital menu and asked our water preference.

When she returned with the water, we had already decided our antipasti but she wasn't willing to take the order and said someone else would come to take the order. We had Trisha for the rest of the dinner and she was pleasant and attentive. Kudos to her.

Now on the food - even more disappointing. The chicken meatballs was undercooked, the calamari fry was definitely not fresh seafood. You mostly just tasted batter.

For mains we ordered Carbonara & the chicken breast. The Carbonara had undercooked cold pasta served over a watery sauce with large slices of bacon. The chicken breast was overcooked that the chicken was hard. Finally, the much talked about Tiramisu - it was floppy. It was soo soggy that it wouldn't stay up. A totally overall disappointing meal from service, food to ambience.

I understand why the restaurant was more...

Ottimo offers well prepared Italian fare with an Indian influence. Flavors are crisp but not overpowering and menu items are oriented to the local population of Kolkata and their preferences.

We tried a variety of pastas and pizzas which were well received by our party of nine. The restaurant also offers traditional Italian second courses which we did not try. The pastas are divided into two types which I will call bold and simple. In another country, I would have called them adult and kids, respectively. The bold pastas were flavorful and interesting. They may not be well suited though to all palates. The simple pastas were crowd pleasers without potentially offensive tastes. The pizzas tended towards the simple.

Service was perfect as is typical at five star hotels in the city. Both mocktails and cocktails were artistically prepared. The hotel itself is tastefully decorated with its wide marble hallways and abundance of oil paintings. Restrooms, dubbed cloak rooms in the signage, are grand and immaculate. There is free...