A Foodie’s Nightmare: Kabura Hyderabad

Being away from our hometown, we hardly have a friend circle to spend our weekends with. So more often than not, we end up at one restaurant or the other. As with restaurants elsewhere, we have mixed feelings; we’ve had stupendous meals at places such as Ohri’s Jeeva, Grill Room, 100 Degrees, Pickles, Our Place etc. In the same breath, we’ve had the grave misfortune of wasting our time, money, and appetites at places such as Havmor, Nanking, Okra, Serengetti, and the one we visited tonight for dinner, Kabura.

Located on the first floor of the Lifestyle building in Begumpet, Kabura is surrounded by joints such as Haveli, Malgudi and Tandoor. In our humble opinion, Kabura is perhaps the worst place we’ve ever been to in Hyderabad, if not in our lives. I’d say we were misled into going their after reading a review posted here. Strangely enough, the author of this particular post has given Kabura 8/10, which I think is rather exaggerated and should be more like 1/10.

We were welcomed into the place with nice big smiles, but soon enough the trauma began. A steward came by and asked us if we wanted to have � la carte or a buffet. Being buffet fans we opted for the latter. First up, the steward brought us a bowl each of mutton and vegetable Shorba, which were pale yellow in color, void of any salt or spices, and was quite cold. Somehow we gulped it down hoping that things would be better once the main course started. In the non-vegetarian section, there were three biryanis- fish, chicken, and keema, which ironically were similar in taste. To go with this, there was some gravy that had chicken pieces floating in it, so I assumed it to be chicken curry.

Tina wasn’t too happy to see the vegetarian offerings either. Vegetable biryani, brinjals floating in bucket full of oil, yellow dal (can you believe it?), and vegetable curry that tasted a lot like the chicken curry I had opted for. Oh almost forgot, there was also a container labeled “Kaju Pulao”, but it was empty all through. Ultimately, poor Tina had to fish out the chicken from the chicken biryani and eat the rest. Thankfully despite being a vegetarian, she is open to having the rice portions of a non-vegetarian biryani, else God only knows what she would have had.

But the icing on the cake was yet to come. I was hoping that at least the deserts would make up for the disaster of a meal we had just had. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. The vanilla ice cream looked more like soap water, aptly stored in a bucket like container. There were two other deserts as well, but I decided not to be more adventurous. Not to mention, the ice cream bowl was no bigger than the bowls used for feeding pet parrots. The catastrophe ended when the steward brought us the finger bowl, which like everything else we sampled, was cold.

I called the manager to give our feedback. He said that we need not pay for our dinner, but not the one to have a free lunch , I insisted that I be presented with the bill and that too without any discount. Obviously, they were trying to make up for the shortcomings by giving a 15% discount.

Recommendation: Are you crazy? Rather than visiting Kabura, go over to the nearest park and feed on the lush grass that grows therein, trust me that will be much more satisfying a meal.