Restaurant Review: Sankalp

Sankalp is located at Hiranandani, Powai, on Central Avenue, in the Ventura Building. It is opposite the much better known Mainland China. This is a Gujarati owned south Indian restaurant which serves vegetarian and non-veg south Indian fare.

I don't often explore newly opened restaurants. I like to visit the older, salt-of-the-earth places which are more often set up to satisfy more than just a commercial need. If you look at my past reviews, you'll know what I mean. Sarvi, Bademiyan, Anant Ashram, Modern Hindu - these were opened with a view to server a particular need of the community. They will exist as long as the community's need exists.

Which brings me to the review of this miserly excuse of an eating place.

After a hard day's work, I had to take the family out for some necessary shopping and we decided we'd eat out at Gajalee. We stay close to Hiranandani, and a trip to Gajalee at Vile Parle would rob a couple of hours off us, so we thought we'd explore Sankalp. We'd heard pretty bad things, but then experience is the best teacher. We thought the owners of Sankalp would have read the reviews as well, and cleaned up their act. My guess is that they aren't that much into Internet.

The place is glitzy. Glass windows with clean views of the crowd inside. Once inside, nice seating, good air conditioning, pretty decent furniture. Comfy sofa and chairs. Nice table, good crockery - the copper glasses are the highlight of the restaurant. Nothing else matches, unfortunately.

We ordered a Mutton Pepper Dry (Kerala style), Idiappam (stringhoppers), Appams (hoppers), Parotta (paratha mallufied), and Kerala Mutton curry.

The Mutton was just plain inedible. We couldn't eat more than a piece each. They actually served the thick fat chunks we throw away at home. The mutton in the curry was just bones. As uneatable. The iddiyappam wasn't prepared the right way - it was commercial semiyan, boiled, tasteless, served with raw coconut. The appam - it's an insult to call that thing an appam - was dosa batter cooked in an appam wok. The less said about the Parotta the better. I could manage to finish one half of it, which I regretted till the next morning.

Don't go there. Please. Run them out of business. Paying INR 500 for this was sacrilege.

Go to Mainland China. It's a fine restaurant and you will never ever regret paying INR 1k for a hearty, tasty meal.