Rajasthan Rifles

Rajasthan Rifles

Friday 11 October

Customer Care: 8.8

Service: 8.3

Value: 5.3

Quality: 7.0

Atmosphere: 5.7

Overall: 7.0

Rajasthan Rifles is OCC recommended (just)

As an establishment that is looking to cement itself amongst the culinary elite of Hong Kong, Rajasthan Rifles has some way to go before it can be considered a true contender.

As the scores reflect, the customer care and service that we were shown during our visit was excellent. Our waiter was ready and willing to deliver us an evening to remember, starting and finishing with copious shots of rum. We had opted to have the reasonably priced free flow package priced at $258 per person for 2 hours. When you compare this with the prices of individual drinks this is a good option if you are going to be having more than a couple of drinks with your meal. In reality we were treated to a full evening of free flow and the drinks were flowing! Unlike some other restaurants, where free flow can mean that your glass must be drier than the Sahara Desert before you’re offered another one, drinks were delivered at a rapid rate. When one member of the party disliked the wine another option was hastily delivered, a nice touch.

Now to the food, we had selected the Colonel Sahib set menu for the evening. While the food was plentiful, the overall quality was not what you would expect for the amount that we paid. There were some highlights, priding ourselves on searching out crispy poppadoms, we can confirm that they were indeed crispy and came with an excellent selection of pickles and sauces. The Keema Anda Pau was a crowd favourite as always and the Soola Salmon Sizzle cooked in the tandoor was well received.

After this though the remainder of the meal really felt like standard fare. There was nothing from any of the curries that offered the real punch that we were after. Usually we would expect some discussion around making sure that everybody had tried a particular dish, doing our best not to sway opinion, by the end of the meal there was still a lot of food left on the table. The portions were generous and we were full, but nothing stood out enough to consider whether the buttons on your shirt could handle just one more mouthful. The inclusion of a dessert made for good change away from the norm and the refreshing Lemon Posset rounded off the meal on a positive note. Something that may tell you all you need to know is that we were offered to have our remaining food boxed up and nobody accepted.

Unfortunately, the excellent service did little to add to the atmosphere, which could be described as being akin to a Disneyland Indian themed restaurant on a quiet Wednesday afternoon in the middle of term time. With waiters wandering round in colonial era apparel and army themed memorabilia littering the walls, it was clear that this restaurant is aimed at tourists visiting the peak. This, combined with an alarmingly long walk to use the toilets adjoined to the shopping centre, broke the illusion of fine dining, again reminding you that we were perhaps not this restaurants target audience.

When the bill arrived it came to a punchy $950 a head, a pricey amount to pay. As a group we really wanted to like this restaurant. Something though, was missing, like a boxer with a good jab but no uppercut, it had all the fundamentals but no killer blow. This is a good option for if you’ve got visitors in town who are desperate to see the peak and want to have a meal at the same time. But if it’s a true fine dining experience that you are after, then we recommend you look elsewhere.