Dabbawalla - Mini Review

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Author Message   magmasystems Citizen Username: Magmasystems Post Number: 369 Registered: 1-2002 Posted on Saturday, July 29, 2006 - 7:41 am:        Dabbawalla opened up in Summit last week, and we went last night for our first time. It's located on Springfield Ave in Summit, one block west (and the same side of the street) as Monster Sushi. Here are the main points outlined: 1) Nice, big space, with colorful decor and the waitstaff dressed in bright colors. 2) Cafeteria-style seating, albeit with cushioned "booth-like" benches. No individual tables or booths. Very possible that strangers could be sitting at your left and right elbows. 3) Waitstaff was enthusiastic, but our server was very overwhelmed. Waited a long time for food, and she neglected to check on us for water, etc. At the end, I actually had to get the owner to wrap up our leftovers and get us our check. 4) The Prices.... VERY expensive. Average price is $20 for an entree, even for the most generic entrees. One small plus is that they do not charge for the side of very good herbed basmati rice. 5) My wife (who is from India) rated the food about a 2 out of 5. The Ramala Roti, which is supposed to be very soft, was hard, and the other bread was a bit underdone. I had the beef and pumpkin Lonvas, and although the sauce was good, the meat was a bit fatty. The Goan Shrimp was good. My wife said that, if you cannot make Ramala Roti correctly, then nothing else good can follow. 6) Quite a crowd there. Maybe just because it's new and the anticipation factor was high. Will be interesting to see if the crowd thins after a few weeks. Thoughts : We may go back in a few months, after all of the growing pains have been taken care of. However, the sticker shock of seeing a $21 entree will never wear off. I would like to compare it to Sona when it opened. Sona has the right idea of charging $13 per entree.   Hamandeggs Citizen Username: Hamandeggs Post Number: 352 Registered: 8-2005 Posted on Saturday, July 29, 2006 - 1:01 pm:        Thanks for the input. I have been waiting eagerly for it to open. Does the menu seem to represent a particular region?   Joe Citizen Username: Gonets Post Number: 1313 Registered: 2-2004 Posted on Saturday, July 29, 2006 - 1:35 pm:        Funny. My wife and I (with our neice) went there last night, after the place had thinned out. First off I hated the decor. It reminded me of the IKEA cafeteria, just take the pictures of Scandinavian people off the wall and put up pictures of Indian people. The open cafeteria set up also made things noisier than they need to be. Of course, if the food was great I wouldn't care so much. Upon looking at the menu the first thing I noticed was that Chicken Tika Masala was $18. That's too high in my book, but if it was great I'd accept it. I don't know, because they ran out of it, and many other menu items by the time I got there (9:30). I'm not going to complain about the fact that they ran out of stuff, growing pains and in many respects it's a good sign, indicating that they use fresh ingredients. However, when a waiter hands you a menu, he/she should let you know the items that aren't available right off the bat. Instead we spent about 10 minutes looking over the menu, the waiter comes back, 2 of the 3 items we initially asked for we were told weren't available. So, we ask for something else, "Not available," another try, "not available." Eventually the waiter saw the wisdom in telling us all the things that weren't available. Anyway, the food wasn't good. Chicken Saagawalla the sauce was alright, but the chicken was dry. By the way, they also have a number of Chinese dishes. One of which we got, Chilli Chicken I believe. I thought that this was a pretty limited menu anyway, and they're wasting time making Chinese food. I understand the business reason for this. It's a way to pander to people who don't want try something unfamiliar, but I think it's a disservice that restaurants offering an exotic cuisine do to themselves as well as their patrons. Unless I hear that there have been drastic changes, it's highly unlikely that we'll return.