Ithaca - The Chancery Pavilion
After some 3 months, me & wife decided to go out for dinner and wanted to try a new place (new for us!!). I had read about this restaurant some months back and decided to land there. When i called them to check whats on the menu.. the manager said we have international food with Mutton Vindaloo, Chicken Tikka and other international food on buffet. I was skeptical...but went on.
We walked in at about 0730PM with about 3 / 4 people in the restaurant.. which again put me off. After a cursory walk across the buffet spread we settled on Al a carte.
We decided to skip the salads & soups.. but they did make for a interesting read. They had a selection of warm & cold soups / salads. We ordered Pita crisps with 3 different type of dips and Kalametta Olives seasoned with balsamic vinegar. They did go down very well with the drinks. Out of the 3 dips.. one was with cucumber (is that a Mediterranean vegetable??) with sour cream and finished with some olive oil & basil. It was fantastic and i asked for a second helping.
oh!! did i forgot to mention that they had a live band and the guy singing was very good albeit a bit loud. But thats fine. And if you choose.. they have a pool side service.. but that was quite noisy with spill over crowd from some parties that were being hosted. The decor inside is quite nice & airy and the tall ceiling adds to the space around you.
Coming back to the food.. we ordered Risotto with mushrooms for myself and Roesti for my wife. The Risotto was good... the consistency just right... starchy without too much sauce. but the mushrooms overwelhmed the taste of the rice and the sauce. But i liked it. But the best was the roesti (could'nt resist digging into my wife's place :-)... the potato / onion pancake just done right and finished with nice pumpkin sauce. The strong taste of the roesti offset by the milder pumpkin sauce.. it was good. They had some vegetables on the side.. but i was disappointed with the quantity of them. And by this time the restaurant filled up.. which is always a good sign that the food is good there. We ordered a Apple & Hazelnut crisp for Dessert.... it was nice. Apple pie and Hazel nut infused crisps on top with vanilla icecream. I would have preferred it warm.
The service was good. The waiters always hovering around without being overbearing and they were all friendly. More inportantly they did not hurry us.
They had otherstuff on the menu like Pizzas, Pastas etc.. but we did not venture into that area. The wallet factor was 2500 bucks for 2 people with Drinks / appetizers / Main course & Dessert.
All in all a good experience. Go there if you feel like splurging some money and have some good time with people close to you.
