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Thea : A journey that should have had a different destination

Thea bar and restaurant was one of the very few restaurants in Hyderabad serving European cuisine including French.

For whatever it was worth, it was doing pretty well but suddenly it got sold and a new management had taken over it.

Not wanting to rest on its past laurels, the new team went ahead and over hauled everything that was once good at the place.

Thea earlier Thea would never serve or was rather not known for its Indian but the new Thea has Indian written all over its forehead.

All its listings need to change as we speak but i guess till it ushers in the new menu it will only rest on its past laurels.

Since the new management was taking stock of the situation, it introduced a lot of Indian dishes to the cuisine and we were invited to taste a few items of the probable menu.

The following was the menu for the day which was hinting towards it also including combos on the menu

Veg: Rs.249/- AI
Non-Veg: Rs.299/- AI

Menu 
World Cuisine

Choose any one Pasta and club it with a Salad or Soup

PASTA
• Creamy Alfredo
• Basil Pesto Italiano
• Creamy Chicken Alfredo
• Sicilian Meat Ball
• Lamb Bolognese
Choice of Pasta – Penne/Farfelle/Fusili/Spaghetti

SALAD
Panzanella Salad
Garden Fresh Salad
Chicken and Herb Salad

SOUP
Cream of Broccoli
Veg Clear Soup
Lee Kum Onion and Chicken Soup

Taste of India………!!!

VEGETARIAN SELECTION
Deewan-e-khas
Paneer Do Pyaaza
Siya Mirch Aloo

NON-VEGETARIAN SELECTION
Murgh Khorma
Begamati Do Pyaaza
Ambada Gosht

Accompaniments / Sides
Served with a choice of Jalebi Paratha / Dakhni Paratha / Pita Bread / Khaboos / Long Grain Rice
Signature Dal Makhani / Yellow Dal Tadka

Any 1 beverage of your choice as a part of the combo

SIMPLY SOBER
Coke / Diet Coke
Fresh Lime Soda / Water
Virgin Mojito
Banarasi Thandai
Creamy Cold Coffee
Cappuccino

SINFULLY SASSY
Carlsberg
Breezer
Classic Mojito
Green Apple Martini

The choice was 1 main course, 1 soup/salad , 2 drinks and 1 dessert for the price mentioned above.

My wife had chosen the following
Creamy alfredo veg
cream of brocolli soup
panzanella salad
malai kulfi
cold coffee

I had chosen
green apple virgin mojito
begamati do pyaza
jalebi paratha with dal makhni
almond kulfi

There were others who had ordered some other items from the menu but more or less it was a repeat the dishes with a different pasta/paratha

It was a meet and greet so the meet was taking a lot of time. I was carrying a toddler but she was having a ball.

The service being slow was not a major concern but the change in the cuisine of the restaurant was always at the back of my mind all the while i was having dinner

The penne in my wife's pasta was under cooked. It was rather a little raw , the sauce lacked a creamy texture and obviously a little low on vegetables. This dish needs a major over haul.



The cream of broccoli soup was similar to broccoli+spinach soup . The soup was like what my wife makes at home. There was not much of differentiation in this.

The panzanella salad was decent nothing wow. The variety of fruits in this salad should be increased for it to get a depth of flavor.

I had to keep insisting for my main course to be served as my kid was getting restless as time progressed.

I had chosen the begamati do pyaza which is a lashkari type of a dish ( meant for troops ) but from what i know is  that troops need to be fed rich food. But for a dish to be lashkari, it was very very pedestrian. While the dish was  prepared in a curd marination, the curry was very liquidy. I would have liked it to be a little more rich and with a thicker gravy.



The dal makhani was good, atleast i liked it. Others were of the opinion that the tea flavor in the dal was a little too prominent. But i am always a sucker for a good dal makhani and i personally liked it although others weren't too impressed.

The jalebi paratha served as a side is another name for a laccha paratha. The paratha was good and would go well with a dal makhani and enhanced begamati do pyaza.

The last item was the kulfi. Its been a long time i've had a good kulfi. The first time i had kulfi in Trident, it was a milk powder + water based kulfi and the moment you cut it, you can find the water crystallizing inside the kulfi and the pasty nature of the kulfi becomes even more evident.

This thankfully wasn't the case with Thea. The kulfi was decent, but for a fine dine, there was no grace or elegance in the presentation of the kulfi. A kulfi sliced  in to 2 and served. The malai kulfi was good but the almond kulfi bore no indication of almonds. Not in the kulfi nor in the presentation.






While the enter meal was at subsidized rates, it doesnt go down well with me that one of the iconic indian desserts is shown very little respect in a fine dine that is headed by a erstwhile executive Chef of a top hotel chain.

I might not be present in Hyderabad to go visit it again, but the new Thea management needs to pull up their socks big time or be part of a huge list of restaurants that went belly up..


While the food in itself was nothing extremely wow, it was pretty homely and i dont think i would want to end up spending 2500-3000 INR for food that tastes like home food....

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