Cafe Argyle House — Restaurant in Mall Road Area

The Café Argyle will beat a beauty contest hands down with enough to spare. It is easily Shimla's prettiest café and it's advantageous location on the Upper Mall Road, gives it easy accessibility to the throngs of tourists parading on the scenic Mall. There're real potted flowers at the entrance of this beauty in an old Raj-era building. Accessed by pretty steps in blue and white, the wood and concrete structure has been tastefully designed in bright teal and yellow with magenta overhead lamps that shine bright, warm colours even during the day. The design, colours and the spick and span interiors is what drew me inside. Since it was breakfast time, I looked at the breakfast menu, which is sadly not designed for health-conscious patrons. There were parathas, pancackes, eggs to order and toast, but only with white bread. No mention of oats or muesli. I ordered the old, reliable cappuccino, and it did not disappoint. The Argyle has probably the best beans in town. The cappuccino is the best I've had in Shimla and was absolutely refreshing, hot and rich in flavour. The prices match coffees in the bigger metros. I enjoyed people-watching over coffee, from my seat overlooking the bustling Mall Road outside. It's a café great for socializing and you may want to have lunch or dinner here, if you can find a seat during the season. The design and colours of this beauty will linger long after I bid...

Terrible experience. We had ordered loaded nachos, frappe and virgin mojito. 10 minutes after ordering, we get loaded nachos, that too was returned because the nachos were soggy.. We kept looking for the service staff but they were too busy chit chatting among themselves and did not bother to give attention on the floor. 40 minutes later we were served with virgin mojito, which was bland. We asked them to add some sugar syrup and they took it. The mojito arrived 15 minutes later, added with sugar syrup. Frappe still nowhere to be found. Even after adding the sugar syrup, the virgin mojito tasted bad. We cancelled the frappe, paid and stepped out. Wasted an hour and a half at that place. Also, the place hardly had 10 people at that time, so kitchen did not seem to be overloaded with orders. Please visit somewhere else or a street food vendor rather than wasting time...

Wanted to try this for a long time and I thought today is finally the day. But a total disappointment. We ordered KitKat shake and banana shake. They only had one mixer I guess as they gave KitKat shake 1st and we had to wait for Banana shake for atleast 15 mins. I had to wait for it as it is not good manners to start alone. Finally they came and asked if we can have cold coffee as they did not had bananas. For that also they were taking a lot of time. Even the KitKat shake was not good at all, no chunks of KitKat and the taste was also sour like the milk had gone bad. At the end we had to cancel the Cold coffee order and for the bill they said that we have to pay at the counter, so they didn't even print the bill, to save taxes as well. And it is expensive like a 5 star hotel. Overall, a pathetic experience. Please don't even think of...