The very positive buzz created online by glorifying reviews and recommendations by folks whose palates I have come to trust {you know who you are} meant that Tsaai Shen Yeh {TSY} was on my wish-list for long but remained unvisited largely due to distance constraints. I finally took an impromptu decision to brave the insane Sunday evening traffic and head to Baner to check-out this place. Great move!
The two and a half people who follow my reviews would know that this is exactly the kind of place I adulate - it's charming and unpretentious, serves stunning food and offers great bang for your buck. Talking of food, the one aspect that we all noticed was the high quality of ingredients used and the sophistication reflecting in the food preparations here. If you've been to similar sized restaurants you'll know what I mean.
I must admit that, for the good or bad, based on the reviews I'd read beforehand, I already knew what I was going to eat there. So first-up, we ordered the Burmese soup, hot & sour soup and chicken crackling spinach and butter garlic prawns as starters. The first spoonful of the beautifully flavoured Burmese soup dispelled my fears of this soup being a watered down version of khow-suey. The portions of the soups here, and basically everything else, is quite generous and so despite sharing {2 by 3, I wonder if this is a typical Indian phenomena} we still ended up with a more than sufficient serving containing heaps of chicken, broccoli, fried onions and rice noodles. Being a fan of subtle flavours, I've never really taken to the spicy and tangy flavour profile of hot & sour soup but it's my brother's favourite and he declared the one at TSY to be one of the best he's ever had. This lead me to try it as well and I thought it was well flavoured and just like the Burmese soup, very rich.
Most places serve crackling spinach chicken as thin {often over-fried} strips of chicken tossed in schezwan sauce, heaped over a bed of crispy spinach, a dish you're sure to like especially if you're a relative of popeye's. Jokes aside, I prefered TSY's version of soft chunks of chicken tossed with a mildly hot sauce and just the right amount of spinach to give it the required flavour. Now i'm not sure if butter garlic prawns is authentically chinese but who really cares when you've got crunchy garlic complementing well-cooked sweet prawns tossed in butter?
For the mains, we tried the Chef's special, schezwan noodles and burnt garlic and spinach fried rice. The Chef's special is a dish of chicken tossed in a sweet and spicy sauce spiked with spices like star anise and it went rather well with the fried rice. Another PHEW! moment was not having my senses bulldozed with an overkill of garlic in the burnt garlic fried fried. It was spiked rightly so and mercifully without the obligatory red colour which some sidey restaurants add to differentiate it from regular fried rice. Schezwan noodles is another dish i'm never likely to order because it's over-powering heat destroys flavours of most accompanying dishes. But TSY's version is pretty dang, being only mildly hot and thus allowing you the joy of enjoying other dishes as well.
For all of this and a couple of cokes, the bill was roughly 1600 bucks, which works up to Rs.320 / head for 5 adults, not too bad considering we were really stuffed by the end of the meal. Again, the quality and quantity of the food is exceptionally good and really does feel more expensive that it actually is.
Along with the bill they serve peanut dark chocolates sprinkled with sesame seeds. A truly sweet end to a wondrous meal. Highly recommended!
The two and a half people who follow my reviews would know that this is exactly the kind of place I adulate - it's charming and unpretentious, serves stunning food and offers great bang for your buck. Talking of food, the one aspect that we all noticed was the high quality of ingredients used and the sophistication reflecting in the food preparations here. If you've been to similar sized restaurants you'll know what I mean.
I must admit that, for the good or bad, based on the reviews I'd read beforehand, I already knew what I was going to eat there. So first-up, we ordered the Burmese soup, hot & sour soup and chicken crackling spinach and butter garlic prawns as starters. The first spoonful of the beautifully flavoured Burmese soup dispelled my fears of this soup being a watered down version of khow-suey. The portions of the soups here, and basically everything else, is quite generous and so despite sharing {2 by 3, I wonder if this is a typical Indian phenomena} we still ended up with a more than sufficient serving containing heaps of chicken, broccoli, fried onions and rice noodles. Being a fan of subtle flavours, I've never really taken to the spicy and tangy flavour profile of hot & sour soup but it's my brother's favourite and he declared the one at TSY to be one of the best he's ever had. This lead me to try it as well and I thought it was well flavoured and just like the Burmese soup, very rich.
Most places serve crackling spinach chicken as thin {often over-fried} strips of chicken tossed in schezwan sauce, heaped over a bed of crispy spinach, a dish you're sure to like especially if you're a relative of popeye's. Jokes aside, I prefered TSY's version of soft chunks of chicken tossed with a mildly hot sauce and just the right amount of spinach to give it the required flavour. Now i'm not sure if butter garlic prawns is authentically chinese but who really cares when you've got crunchy garlic complementing well-cooked sweet prawns tossed in butter?
For the mains, we tried the Chef's special, schezwan noodles and burnt garlic and spinach fried rice. The Chef's special is a dish of chicken tossed in a sweet and spicy sauce spiked with spices like star anise and it went rather well with the fried rice. Another PHEW! moment was not having my senses bulldozed with an overkill of garlic in the burnt garlic fried fried. It was spiked rightly so and mercifully without the obligatory red colour which some sidey restaurants add to differentiate it from regular fried rice. Schezwan noodles is another dish i'm never likely to order because it's over-powering heat destroys flavours of most accompanying dishes. But TSY's version is pretty dang, being only mildly hot and thus allowing you the joy of enjoying other dishes as well.
For all of this and a couple of cokes, the bill was roughly 1600 bucks, which works up to Rs.320 / head for 5 adults, not too bad considering we were really stuffed by the end of the meal. Again, the quality and quantity of the food is exceptionally good and really does feel more expensive that it actually is.
Along with the bill they serve peanut dark chocolates sprinkled with sesame seeds. A truly sweet end to a wondrous meal. Highly recommended!
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