The Sea Secret - NIBM — Restaurant in Pune

A late review. Chose The Sea Secret (NIBM) for my birthday lunch, last month. Did not want to wander off too far, with mum and a friend in tow, as it was raining cats & dogs hence their NIBM outlet was extremely convenient.

To begin the meal, and while away time, they sent papads and chutney to our table. The chutneys they serve with the papads and seafood starters are superb! Btw, we havrats requested more papad after we polished the first plate. 🤪

We ordered:

Sol Kadi: I dont see how people get this one wrong. The Sol Kadi here sucked. It was sweet, had too much kokam (or kokum syrup), absolutely no warm hit to the throat of chilies, ginger/garlic. Nope, until they work on this recipe, do not order this. They did not charge us for this but i hope they improve on this recipe the next time i visit coz i love a good Sol Kadi.

Dont give up on this write up just yet coz the food was a BOMB! 🥳🥳

Butter Garlic Prawns: Not the usual butter-garlic but no complaints. This one was creamy and so yum!!

Rawa Fried Bombil: 5 crisp medium sized bombils fried to perfection. These were so good that we reordered this. 😍

Rawas Achari Tikka: Juicy, succulent pieces of rawas with a fantastic achari hit. The achari hit did not overpower the palate at all.

Prawn Manglorean Sukka: It wasn't "sukka" but the flavour was nice. We would've definitely preferred it "sukka". We ordered Amboli and Appams with this so they assumed (they shouldn't have) that we'd prefer it with a little gravy. Wasn't bad at all, in fact it was quite, quite good but definitely not "sukka".

Amboli: It was superb. I'd never tried amboli. This was my 1st time trying it and i was fida over it.

Appam: They were a tad rushed to make it, hence the 2st two appams served were soft & limp. We requested them to cook them to cook the rest to a slight crisp, correct texture and they very kindly complied.

We ordered a Malai Matka Kulfi to share. It was by Grameen Kulfi, and it was superb. It had that light reduced milk flavour and gave off a light caramel hit. Apologies, we dug into it and i realized i hadnt ckicked a pic hence the half eaten kulfi pic. 🙈 They very sweetly comped this as a birthday treat.

The washroom was quite clean. The service was excellent!! The manager Mr. Ahmed was extremely kind, courteous and very open to honest, polite, constructive feedback. Loved that! Now i only hope they rectify that Sol Kadi recipe. Meri gaadi ussi par atki hai. 🙈😄 Taken away 1 star because Sol kadi is such an important part of a seafood meal.

Our bill was 3553. We had opted for a 20% discount Zomato slot, plus Zomato suddenly gave me a birthday code for an additional discount 🥳, and we ended up paying 2550.66. Absolute paisa...

I've dined at The Sea Secret with my wife several times. That aside, both branches of the restaurant have been used by us to entertain guests. Lunch at the NIBM Branch today was one such instance. The standard of the food was as per our expectations. However, I can't say the same about the service and the ambiance. I'll take the liberty of writing herein a short account of my experience today and another instance during Oct 24. According to the web site of the restaurant the Hours of Business on Mondays at the NIBM Branch commence at 1130 o'clock AM. I reached the restaurant today at 1215 o'clock PM. Cleaning of the premises was in progress. As the time for the arrival of my guests drew close I insisted that the work be stopped. Thereafter the staff gathered behind the bar and spoke to each other in loud voices. If that was not bad enough, the sound of utensils from the kitchen was very loud. I had to speak to the staff about the unacceptable noise level. This is not my first disappointing experience at The Sea Secret. The earlier instance was on or around 24 Oct 24 at the Deccan Gymkhana Branch. There the Hours of Business commence at 1145 o'clock AM. On reaching there at about 1215 o'clock PM I saw that the entrance door was closed. I knocked and got a response promptly. In reply to my question I was told by the man who opened the door that the restaurant would open at 0130 o'clock PM. The next moment I found that the door had been...

We pre-booked the table as it was our anniversary and heard of this restaurant being good in terms of taste and dishes but sadly we were utterly disappointed. The service is super slow even when the restaurant was not completely occupied. You have to wait for a long time until you catch someone's attention and the gesture him to come to youd to attend your table as unless that you are going to get ignored completely by the waiters. This is a big minus being in the hospitality industry. The ambience is good but we found no one even at the reception desk to direct us to the table. We started with Chicken Hot and Sour soup which was average and bland. We had to add soya and chilli sauce to make it palatable. Even for bringing the sauces they took 15 minutes as it was evident that they had no sauce vessel ready and they just unpacked and washed the sauce vessel on our request which is just unprofessional. Then we ordered BBQ prawns from their grill menu. The prawns were fresh and juicy but the taste wasn't great. We wanted to try more sea food but till now we were plain frustrated for spoiling our special day. In main course we order butter chicken (one of our friends have recommended us) which was good. The preparation was different than what you get usually in the restaurants and tye quantity was great too make it the silver lining of this dull night. There is a lot of scope for improvement and I hope they do as we decided not to...