My husband visited Dhoom recently with some friends and gave me his impression of the place.
If you ever went to the current location of Dhoom when it was still a Pizza Hut, you will not recognize the place. They have divided it down the middle, with a lounge on one side (complete with VLTs), and a restaurant on the other. The restaurant was tasteful and quiet, though I can’t vouch for the noise levels later in the evening when the lounge fills up.
All three of us ordered the lunch buffet, which includes complementary fresh, hot naan bread served at your table. Other restaurants have larger buffets, but this one covered all of the basic dishes; rice salad, assorted hot pickles, rice, navratram korma, aloo gobi, beef curry, lentil dhal, goat curry, butter chicken, tandoori chicken, and chilli-lime chicken wings all made an appearance.
Once we were seated after our first trip to the buffet, one of the chefs emerged from the kitchen with complimentary hot naan bread for our table. As we were getting ready to head up for seconds, another chef and one of the serving girls made the rounds from table to table offering complimentary pizza. Apparently they kept the oven in place when they remodeled. It was a vegetarian pizza, and I think that it was the highlight of the meal. The crust was darn near perfect, and it had a rich blend of vegetables, with just enough peppers to give it a pleasant little bite. I am normally not a fan of vegetarian pizzas, considering the anemic ones you get from most pizza chains, but this place showed that it can be very very good if done right.
Desserts included coconut burfi, kheer and gulab jamun. The kheer was a bit light on the cardamom, and the gulab jamun was (as expected) cloyingly sweet. The burfi was a pleasant surprise, being nowhere near as rich and sweet as I was expecting.
The plates available at the buffet are a slightly arty, square shape with edges that rise and fall in a shallow sine wave. It looks neat, but it’s a trap for sauces on the plate. I nearly wore a rivulet of butter chicken sauce before I realized it was spilling and managed to stop it with my thumb before it left too large a spill on the carpet. Also due to their shape, the plates hold deceptively little, which is good and bad. Since it’s a buffet you can go back as many times as you like, but there is the annoyance of getting caught behind some schmuck on his cell phone who is more interested in conversing with his mouth-breathing cousin than actually loading food onto his plate. On the other hand, forcing one to take smaller portions also helps one to avoid overeating, which can often be a problem for me at one of these places.
The food was all good (especially for the price), the atmosphere was pleasant, and the service was prompt and attentive. I plan to go back, though the next time in I am tempted to skip the buffet and just try their pizza.
First Impressions is just that – my first impressions of a restaurant. I adhere to the Food Blog Code of Ethics, and prefer to only do a full review of a restaurant after I’ve visited it at least twice, whenever possible. If I write a full review of this restaurant at a later date, I will add the link to this post.
































