White Potato, Vadodara – Restaurant Review
Author :
NS
Blog :Therefore I travel
Date: 7/25/2012 11:02:28 AM
Every time I came to Galleria mall for some quiet time at CCD, I looked at White Potato on the opposite side of the road with curiosity. I liked the name and the portico in white and black. I hadn’t heard any reviews of the place nor had any invitations for a meal here. So I never got to try it. Last weekend, when we friends decided to catch up after a month long interlude, White Potato popped up in my mind immediately.
White Potato is a pure vegetarian restaurant. The Ground Floor is a fast food sort of a place where you get chat, juices and shakes along with a fixed meal menu. This place is normally frequented by collegians. First Floor is the air conditioned ‘family restaurant’ (as called commonly in India).
I chose a table by the large glass windows that face the main road outside. I was told that the interiors look lovely at night with the pretty wall decorations and lanterns. They have a cosy private dining place in the corner – 2 large round tables under 2 huge chandeliers that can separated from the rest of the crowd using curtains. Perfect for candlelights.
White Potato has a fixed meal for Rs. 125 as well as a la carte option. I wasn’t impressed with the fixed menu because it contained only Indian cuisine dishes. I went through their large menu card and was quite fascinated with the long lists of Mexican, Continental, Chinese and Oriental dishes apart from Indian. One can choose from a whole array of pastas, pizzas, wraps, soups and fried items. Apart from the customary dishes, they have some distinctive dishes to offer in each cuisine. This is perhaps what makes them different. One entire page is also dedicated to potato dishes.
We placed our order for mocktails after a lot of deliberation as it wasn’t easy to select just one out of the whole list. They had unique mocktails like Kiwi Colada, Muddy Water which I haven’t come across any time before, modestly priced at Rs. 80. We ultimately go in for Kiwi Colada, Mochachilo, Fruit Tango & Muddy Water. Fried Wontons & Honey Chilli Cottage Cheese would accompany the mocktails.
More and more Gujju groups flocked in as we waited for our orders to arrive. The place is quite spacious and was able to accommodate everyone who walked in. We were too busy catching up on each other’s stories and having fun to notice that the orders were taking time. Our mocktails arrived with the starters and we attacked everything messily; we were so damn hungry!
While everything tasted just fine, I felt they did not quite touch or influence my taste buds. Something was lacking. I would have loved to have more flavour.
The Honey Chilli Cottage Cheese was a huge disappointment. There was no trace of sweetness of honey or pungency of chillies. It was as plain as a lame Paneer Manchurian. Lack of beans or cut green chillies made it duller.
For main course, we went in for 2 types of pastas – Fussily in Tomato and Cheese sauce & Penne Pasta with Exotic vegetables in Fresh Basil Sauce, Ginger Chilli Noodles and yet another starters that caught my eye, Cheese Potato Poppers. This time, everything was delightful. The fussily required some pepping up with oregano and chilli flakes whereas the noodles was too hot to handle. I did approve of the pastas and would like to try more varieties and hope that each would be different than the other.
We were stuffed by the end and had to parcel the left over noodles. The bill for all these ___ items came to Rs. 1,310 which I believe is quite modest looking at the number of dishes we ordered. The quantity of each dish was sufficient to provide for 4 normal (or 3 hungry) individuals.
I usually avoid pure vegetarian joints because I believe there is not much exciting variety that can be conjured up using only vegetables and grains. And I do admire food joints that are able to offer a wide variety of vegetarian items. For that, I would give White Potato its due credit. I would like to come here again after a brief time gap and give the other dishes on the fat menu a chance.
