Aureate, Ahmedabad

Aureate - El Dorado
Opposite Shree Krishna Centre,
Across Crossword,
Mithakali Six Roads,
Navrangpura, Ahmedabad
+91 7820096332

The location is a little difficult to find, because no matter how long you stare opposite the Shree Krishna Centre , across Crossword, all you will see is a very fancy white building that looks like a modern furniture shop.

This restaurant is actually located inside that very building and the building is a relatively new hotel called "El Dorado"

They have a very good lunch offer. For 350 bucks + tax, you get a single drink and dessert of the day, but unlimited soup, an Oriental and an Indian starter (both non veg), green salad, papad (our lime pickles and buttermilk that were also on the menu, never materialised), a mutton and a chicken gravy, non veg biryani and roti/naan/paratha. The Vegetarian option is for 250/-.

They have too many cuisines on the menu (20 pages of food items and multiple cuisines) and hence have ended up a bit confused along the way.

The Indian food was actually quite tasty, but the oriental and other cuisines were below average. I ordered a la carte for myself : the Mexican tortilla chicken nachos (325/-) wondering how they would combine tortillas & nachos in the same dish - turned out to be just nachos with some chicken, beans, onion + tomato salsa and cheese sauce on it - it wasn't bad, but the name was completely misleading and they weren't a patch on the nachos of "That Place"

The other starter I had ordered was thod man pla (315/-) - Thai fish cakes which they promised to spice up with an extra flavouring of Thai red curry on the inside. What arrived was 2 slices of basa fish with some yellow paste sandwiched in the center, then battered and deep fried and tossed in an indeterminate red colored sauce. I had also ordered the poh pia je (240/-) which was supposed to be a fresh spring roll with glass noodle stuffing, what I got was a vegetable cutlet rolled in vermicelli/noodles and deep fried!

So instead of 2 light starters with a bit of protein, what arrived was deep fried, battered starters that were the complete opposite of what I had expected and was in the mood to eat.

The names of the non-Indian foods are all wrong. They have just generally used names that sound Thai /Asian / Mexican, but the actual end products are very different from what the names actually mean. A local who understands the language or anyone who knows the cuisine would be nonplussed to see what actually arrives and how different it is from the name it was ordered by.

The taste of these Thai dishes wasn't very great either. And this is what has brought their rating down.

Also, while I had ordered these 3 dishes a la carte, mum had ordered the unlimited lunch and I was tasting some of the stuff that had come to the table. One of the staff came up to me and said "Madam, I'm sorry, but you cannot share anything that is unlimited!" Yeah right! like 1/2 a tsp of soup is going to cause you a loss. He was reasonably polite when he said it, but the general norm in India among the better hotels is that if one person has ordered a buffet and the other hasn't, but has ordered a proper meal or food of the same value, a little tasting from each others plates is nothing to worry about.

At Taj Surat last week, I had ordered the buffet at Flow and my husband and his parents just ordered a khichdi and a special mixed veg dish. The staff there actually brought a couple of tiny tasting plates of appetisers and desserts from the buffet for them to try, even though my husband sent more than half of them back as the 3 of them wanted to eat a very light dinner.

And THAT is the difference between good service and great service.

The rating of 3 is for their Indian food, if not, the rating would have dropped to 1.5-2, for promising one dish on the menu and presenting something totally different.

Rating : 3 / 5