A restaurant that serves one or two dishes from almost every country around the world? There’s a very good reason it’s called Flags. Marketed at the higher end of the restaurant market, walking into Flags brings you into a very nice dining experience filled with plush red lounges opposite comfortably large chairs and twirled dining napkins at each settting. The bar at the back underscores the entire dining experience without being overbearing and just enough attendants float around without feeling like they’re all staring at you.
As a foreigner, expect to be asked if you want Evian water – politely decline and go with the mineral water that is at least a quarter of the price. The next question in line will be the push for a bottle of wine – apparently they have a really great bottle and of course, it’s the most expensive on the menu. Settling for a couple of glasses of local wine isn’t such a bad experience.
Now on to the food. When it comes to restaurants that serve this wide variety of food, either they’ll do some dishes very well and will only have a subset of the menu actually available, or they’ll do everything but most of them will end up pretty substandard. This restaurant falls into the latter category and that means you really have to order the right sort of food to actually enjoy your meal. I went for the Boston Clam Chowder followed by the New Orleans Grilled Fish and actually both meals for me was just about right. The clam chowder was a huge portion though the sourdough bread sitting in the midst of it was pretty awful (for sourdough bread at least) whilst the fish, perfectly grilled and well seasoned satiated my appetite perfectly. The other people in our dining experience probably had a much less successful night -the fajitas could have well fed two people but its tasteless mass barely satisfying the single person who couldn’t bear to eat it all. The burrito and a number of other dishes looked just as bad.
Details: Flag’s (Pune)
Found at: INOX Multiplex, Bund Garden Rd, Camp
Highlights: Huge offering of foods from all around the world with a very nice ambient atmosphere.
Room for improvement: Obviously pushy with the higher end products and would be okay if their food matched the quality of the wines on offer.
The Kua Rating: 6.5 out of 10
Weren’t you a little worried to see that there was no-one else dining in the restaurant? 🙂
Normally I would be though in upmarket places in India, you’ll often find it not very busy. (There were plenty of people in the restaurant – I just didn’t take pictures of them!)