My disappointing first time at Athamaa Palace restaurant

It’s in my neighborhood. And there isn’t a time in my life when I don’t remember the guesthouse been not there. But due to the design of the place and its restaurant, I never considered eating there. But sometime during this week, while I was returning home after shopping, it was noon and I was hungry and I decided to have tandoori chicken with naan for lunch.

The interior décor had a pleasant ambience. The staff were very helpful and friendly. So I don’t  know what really went wrong with regard to my order for a tandoori quarter chicken with lasha (Indian) paratha. 

Before long, I was served. But I was suspicious when the chicken didn’t look like a tandoori chicken. At other places, tandoori chicken looked pinkish in color. The one at Athama looked brownish.

I dug in and broke a piece of the chicken and put it into my mouth. It was definitely not a tandoori chicken. In fact, it was an ordinary piece of fried chicken. Yes, FRIED chicken, not TANDOORI chicken. I can tell that much difference. 

And it’s not just the supposedly tandoori chicken that was the problem: the staff who took my order told me - without my asking - that they offered lemonade, one of my favorite drinks, and which I am chasing even now, to see whether the lemonade at Hulhumale’s The Keyolhu could be beaten, but then at Athamaa I was brought just a normal lime/lemon juice.

Greatly disappointed but seeing no point in arguing with the friendly staff, I finished up, paid the check, and went home.

Just to be fair, I know that ever since I tasted tandoori chicken for the first time in 1999 while doing my first degree in Malaysia, when I would walk 20 minutes from Desa Kiara condominium to Damansara Uptown open air food court every night to eat tandoori chicken at a Tamil outlet, I had considered their tandoori chicken as my yardstick to measure the dish offered at other places. In Maldives I have been to Moti Mahal, Nagas, West Kitchen, Grill Hut, and King’s Corner among them and still I only crave for the Damansara Uptown tandoori chicken on offer at the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur. Perhaps one day I will get to taste one such tandoori chicken.