Since I save so much money on food by eating local and not drinking alcohol I like to splurge at least once a week. This takes the form of either a special dining experience or some kind of pummeling (or often both!). This blog post is about dining while I'll cover pummeling (by which I mean massage/reflexology - not
kallaripayatu, Kerala martial arts) in a later post.
One of my favourite dining spots in Trivandrum is the Palm Top Restaurant at the
Maurya Rajadhani Hotel. The restaurant has a mostly local food buffet (they do try and approximate some continental and Chinese dishes with varying degrees of success). I think it is good value at 260 Rs (just under $6 Canadian) for lunch. The setting is especially nice on the 5th floor of the hotel and open to the breezes and with spectacular vistas out over Kerala's capital city.
As well as the buffet there is a 'live station' that will cook up Indian breads for you to accompany your meal. At lunch there are just four varieties of bread available (
roti,
naan,
uppam and bull's eye uppam - no idea what the latter is) while at dinner there is a long list including puttu (see
earlier posting),
masala dosas and omelettes. Not sure how much dinner and breakfast buffets cost.
Here are some photos that give you a taste of buffet lunch at the Palm Top.
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| Some not very exciting salads - definitely the weak point of this buffet |
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| Two soups - cream of mushroom and hot and sour chicken |
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| A variety of curries (both veg and non-veg) |
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| looking from the other end of the buffet row |
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| On the left dal (curried lentils) on the right 'sesame vegetables' (which I presume is an attempt at Chinese - quite tasty if not particularly authentic) |
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| Left vegetable biriyani, right plain rice |
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| Dessert - payasam (Kerala rice pudding), caramel custard, orange souffle and ice cream (vanilla) |
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| View looking west toward the ocean |
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| View east toward the Secretariat |
