10.2.2012

It wasn’t planned, and the sudden craving for something other than Plain Dosa and Coffee from Aryas for dinner was impulsive. Ok, that salary got credited the day before might have got something to do with it. I felt the craving the day before  too,  but then it was coupled with an urge to hit the road for a nice drive along the highway on my bike, so ZamZam was a natural choice and I had the customary Half Shawaya, Porotta and Chilled Lime Juice. But no desserts. I did venture a bit out of the shell by trying their new offering, the Wheat Porotta.  As sad as this makes me, I have to admit that the usual, harmful-for-health Maida Porotta wins hands down.
So that day, earlier at office I had planned a visit to the newly discovered Gamers’ Lounge-cum- Cafeteria, Café 1337, and had actually googled the directions. Upon reaching home, there was a change in plans, partly out of the fear that they might actually close down by the time I reach there. So that’s how I ended up heading off to the Zinc n Rock’s new outlet at Karyavattom, which wasn’t too far either and hadn’t been checked yet.

That leads to
Restaurant Review: Zinc n Rock, Karyavattom 


How to Reach : This shouldn’t be difficult at all since its very conspicuous, located bang on the roadside at Karyavattom – to your right if you’re coming from Kazhakkoottam.

Now, I had been to the real Zinc n Rock, at Vanross Junction for more than a couple of times, and had even tried their Burger Fest once with Bibin. And I am afraid because of that experience my reviews on this one shall be slightly comparative, but then its their sister franchise only. So, if anything, it had a classy ambience, with tastefully done interiors, sticking to a particular color theme and with real instruments placed randomly as an attempt to do some justice to the Rock in their name. But the choice of songs they played each time, I should say, had very little to do with rock. I am yet to try out eating from there on Wednesdays (or was it Thursdays?) when it is said that they play live music along – as in, real musicians come and perform.  

Their new outlet at Karyavattom, fails flatly on the ambience front, to start with. Firstly, it was too congested to the extent of being described, without too much exaggeration, as dingy.  It was far from cosy, which is the word one could say about the one at Vanross Junction. 
 

I don’t know if it was a part of the routine, but the day I chose to check it out was a No Air Conditioning Day for them, and seriously, being subjected to zero air conditioning in a glass room for a dinner for which one comes with fairly high hopes is such a turn off, even for a person who sleeps with his fan speed set to zero.  (May be that’s just me.) 

Adding another random fact: I was the only customer during the whole time I arrived there, had my food and left.  May be it was just an off day, but low customer turnout may mean they could be giving me old stocked food, but I went on with the dare. Though to their credit, I must say, the food didn’t cause any upset of magnitude to be mentioned in my post-mortem of the experience.

No music was played, there was nothing in the room that was at least an attempt to do some justice to their name save for some almost invisibly small wooden guitars perched on the higher side of the wall. Now I am certainly not suggesting they should have blared Highway To Hell at an obscenely high volume just for the heck of it. To the contrary, all music that ZamZam, one of my favorite restaurants in Trivandrum has got is the perpetual noise of waiters shouting, plates clanking and people asking to give some way. Way too congested, but in a cute sort of way. I’m drifting off.  My point is, I am not trying to get too pedantic here, but they clearly have a concept running for them along with that name of Zinc n Rock. Which is clearly not given much of a heed while opening this new franchise. 

So I settled down at the table the farthest from the Reception Desk, near the entrance. By the looks of it, I didn’t have to be on the lookout for any intruders (read other customers). The menu arrived, and thankfully, they kept the same menu as their parent restaurant. It was fairly good because there was variety and a lot to choose from, and with a not-so-exorbitant rate range. Now for connoisseurs, there are quite some options, from Burgers (having all plausible names you can think of for a burger), local dishes to even Mexican. Strangely, the times I had been to their Vanross Junction outlet, I always used to spend more time on deciding the mocktail than the food. Now, I didn’t know this meaning at first, but a mocktail is simply the non-alcoholic version of cocktail. Mock Cocktail, you see. I love this page of their menu the most. 

The person who designed and named the mocktails on that menu, I doff my bug infested hat off to you. Guess they took the list of all available fruits, did all possible permutations and came up with a drink for each combination, with names as much as fitting. Names and descriptions that make you imagine the combination in your mouth, which most probably you haven’t tried out yet, and make you crave for them. The more the better.  After the first sip, when the liquid is poking your taste buds, one tries to discern each flavor, slowly. A fulfilling experience. The first one I tried ever in that list was, I still remember, The Three Bassoons – "Melon teaming with orange and pinapple". Trust me, it did taste like Melon teaming with Orange and Pineapple. So this time when I was at this new franchise of theirs my the orders from the Craving Centre, Brain was to go easy and go for just good old lemon, so I settled for Green Tinkles – "Twang of lime and a fresh hint of mint." This means that the much postponed trying out of the Seven String Guitar – "Concoction of the seven best fruits" will have to wait.

After deciding on that, I perused the Menu for my dinner, and settled on Citrus Fire Chicken which according to the Menu, was “Chicken Breast marinated with special sauce and grilled to perfection, served with rolls, wedges and coleslaw". And looked like this :

To give them credit, I found it quite okay. Only that the chicken could have been cooked a bit more to make it a bit more softer. Green Tinkles did go well with it too. By the way, dont ask me what the word citrus is doing there in the name.

 Now regarding the service, well, it was nice but hard to take that for a word when I was their only customer. They had no choice but to treat me nicely. And feed your wallet before you step in, since they don’t accept any cards. Bad. Very.

Now, how would I rate that experience?

2.5/5