Zaitoon Restaurant, ECR — Restaurant in Zone 15 Sholinganallur

We went to the restaurant on 06 Jul 25 between 3pm to 4 pm after hearing about a lot of hype about the place. Frankly the place let us down in every count except for the restaurant setup and ambience. Issues:- The worst is the fact that we were down due to food poisoning most likely due to the juice they served as welcome drink or something in the food. The fish they served in the fish mango curry was not fresh. The food tasted bland. Flavours were missing all the things we ordered...chicken kozi rice, fish mango curry and samak mashwi. I admit that the Kerala porotta was good. Service. Initial reception on ground floor was good with a token number being assigned to us and getting a link on our mobile phone which kept us updated about our queue status till we were told to move to second floor. Similarly the order was taken promptly. But then it took about 30 mins for the order to come. Also we had placed an order for orange juice as an add on order later which never came. In fact It came but was redirected to another table by a supervisor with 'i couldn't care lesser' attitude( details in next para). Staff attitude. While most of the staff were courteous and listened to our repeated request for an orange juice for which multiple reminders were sent. As we were standing there fed up of the long wait of 30 mins for the juice, there came the juice which my son insisted on. And in front of us a very caring lady to whom we had reminded was directing the guy quickly to our table saying that we were leaving. However, the supervisor told him to go to the table on which he was waiting as he was receiving complaints from there as well. When this lady told him that this juice was meant for us and that we were leaving unhappy, he said " so what.let them leave". That really showed us the standards of the restaurant.

To the owner/ CEO(if you care to see this). A good restaurant is a one which makes each and every customer happy, with the exact same quality of food for how ever small order, at any time of the day, each and every time they visit. Food should touch their hearts more than filling their stomachs. The experience we had was far from good. Worst was the part which made us sick. Unless I am helpless I would avoid any Zaitoon...

Worst worst service. We went for Sunday lunch. We waited for 40 minutes to get a table. They transformed the hallway in the party hall in the first floor to accommodate the crowd. That place had around 10 tables with just one staff to take orders. We ordered one soup, 2 starters and one biryani. Soup and 1 starter came in 15 mins. Then they forgot to bring the rest. We had to remind so many times and they brought 1 chicken biryani after one hour. We had a 5 yo with us. We were frustrated and requested for the bill. They had added the starter which was never served to us to the bill. They brought it to us saying they had forgotten to serve it. We refused to eat it and they were forcing us to take it as take away which we refused again. Overall it took 2.5 hours during which we hardly ate anything. We left feeling hungry, frustrated and deeply disrespected as customers. Our Sunday was wasted. Such a waste of money, energy, time and peace. I would have felt satisfied if I had had biryani from a nice food cart on the street. If they don’t have enough staff, why do they have this big building with too many tables??!

They can openly tell customers about the crowd instead of getting everyone inside and then not being able to serve properly. Never going to go to this branch again. While leaving we gave feedback to the manager but for them we are just one in thousands of their customers. They hardly cared about the feedback. Absolutely...

TL;DR. food quality is definitely lacking.

I have been to Zaitoons in Adyar, Vellachery, Navallur (also Bangalore) and the newest one in ECR injambakkam. First take out we ordered after returning from America was Zaitoon.

ECR zaitoon has the best setup and great service from the people but somehow the food department seems lacking. We have already been there 3 times. I am writing about the food from the latest visit.

We ordered-- clope makali samak (fish and chips), Chicken Aftabi (chicken gravy item) Crab pepper fry Kozi Rubian (prawn) 2 naans

Chicken Aftabi was ok.

The fish and chips has 7-8 small pieces of basa (no complaints there) but literally 5 pieces of cold fries. Question is if it's not a fish and chips item why pay Rs 500 for just pieces of fried Basa?

The crab pepper fry was just a slop of onions garlic chilly -- there were some crab shells don't know where the crab was this was rs 420, why call it crab pepper fry-- call it fried onion salad with crab shells.

Kozi Rubian literally had 5-6 piece of small prawns over a plate of scented rice. Not sure if they were pranking us if this is priced at Rs 375.

If this is the trend of quality of food ... the people incharge of the kitchens need to really sit up and judge the portions and what is actually going to the customers plates. Very disappointed if my bill is about Rs 2000 but the quality of...