I must admit, penning a review for this restaurant is no easy task. Winter Palace situated as part of the Russian Consulate in Alwarpet is Chennai's first ever restaurant serving Russian cuisine. Chennai has touched the borders of different European cuisines but Russian is absolutely a first and quite an audacious choice. With these kind of diverse cuisines, it's just about whether you like it or don't find favour to it and for me it was bordering around a ball park average figure.
I found some of the dishes to be pretty good and some just didn't suit my style as it felt too off for my taste. Russian cuisine is amazingly bland with very less salt and spices and unless you get accustomed to this kind of food, it won't be easy for you to like it. Added factor being vegetarian, it adds to the problem. With these issues being already prevalent, my end experience was kind of decent.
In the vegetarian section, you find majority items being done up with potatoes/mushrooms. They had an aubergine rolls which were really nice stuffed with walnuts and cream. The soup was more like a cold fruit salad and didn't really sparkle my taste buds. The zucchini veg cutlet felt like consuming an omelette and was rather distinct on taste. A momo like dish with steamed potatoes were rather decent nut however I did find it hard to like as there was hardly any spice. The potato cutlets as well as the bread with a mushroom cheesy gravy were quite good.
In the main course side, the pizza called as the 'Khachapuri' felt a little flat for me as it didn't possess the masala element to draw me in. I needed to slather flakes and pepper to get the spice content. The pesto pasta was one of my favourite items. It had very strong hard hitting flavour of pesto and came infused with the right blend of cream.
In the dessert section, I absolutely adored the Napolean cake. Coming with a biscuit texture with buttery cream flowing from all directions and sprayed with chocolate sauce was as drool worthy as it got.
The rates seem par for the course. The service was amiable but the time taken for dishes to reach our tables was a little too longer than expected. Having never tried Russian cuisine before, it would be easy to complain and not fair on my part. I guess you need to have am acquired taste and get used to it before being sure whether you will lap it up. More than anything it was a learning experience and it's always nice to try varied and completely different cuisines. I wouldn't mind coming here again just for the brilliant cake and also to maybe try a wee bit more of their potato based stuff. If you're the one who likes exploring, you should surely check out Winter Palace.
I found some of the dishes to be pretty good and some just didn't suit my style as it felt too off for my taste. Russian cuisine is amazingly bland with very less salt and spices and unless you get accustomed to this kind of food, it won't be easy for you to like it. Added factor being vegetarian, it adds to the problem. With these issues being already prevalent, my end experience was kind of decent.
In the vegetarian section, you find majority items being done up with potatoes/mushrooms. They had an aubergine rolls which were really nice stuffed with walnuts and cream. The soup was more like a cold fruit salad and didn't really sparkle my taste buds. The zucchini veg cutlet felt like consuming an omelette and was rather distinct on taste. A momo like dish with steamed potatoes were rather decent nut however I did find it hard to like as there was hardly any spice. The potato cutlets as well as the bread with a mushroom cheesy gravy were quite good.
In the main course side, the pizza called as the 'Khachapuri' felt a little flat for me as it didn't possess the masala element to draw me in. I needed to slather flakes and pepper to get the spice content. The pesto pasta was one of my favourite items. It had very strong hard hitting flavour of pesto and came infused with the right blend of cream.
In the dessert section, I absolutely adored the Napolean cake. Coming with a biscuit texture with buttery cream flowing from all directions and sprayed with chocolate sauce was as drool worthy as it got.
The rates seem par for the course. The service was amiable but the time taken for dishes to reach our tables was a little too longer than expected. Having never tried Russian cuisine before, it would be easy to complain and not fair on my part. I guess you need to have am acquired taste and get used to it before being sure whether you will lap it up. More than anything it was a learning experience and it's always nice to try varied and completely different cuisines. I wouldn't mind coming here again just for the brilliant cake and also to maybe try a wee bit more of their potato based stuff. If you're the one who likes exploring, you should surely check out Winter Palace.
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