We headed out to Church Street with Oye Amritsar in mind. Reaching the place, the humidity forced us to move a floor below to Oye Shaava.
The ambiance was nothing great and the sofa that we occupied was wet. After moving to one of the centre tables, we came to know from the manager that the kitchen for Oye Amritsar and Oye Shaava was the same. So, we were pretty happy that we would get the same food.
We ordered the regular fare of Daal Makhni, a Paneer dish, mixed-veg and tandoori rotis. The food was way too spicy even after asking the waiter to keep it moderately spicy. The dishes were redone by them and guess what, the paneer pieces were just washed off and gravy made thinner. This, after waiting for a good 25 minutes.
We were done with the food in around 10 minutes without consuming over half of it owing to the weird manner that the food was presented in and the overdose of chillies. Even the non-spicy things on the menu were extremely spicy, and we do know what moderately spicy means.
Unfortunately, this was not the end of the ordeal. The following day, all three of us who had ‘consumed’ the food, had a severe bout of vomiting and diarrhoea. We were left to wonder whether the food was tasted by rats before being served to us.
My friend had to reschedule the evening flight to the next evening because of the trash that they had served us and she was not able to recover even after a day’s rest. The other two fo us were slightly better with digestion coming back very slowly the next afternoon, 36 hours after consuming what we were served.
I would never even think of going to this place again. I’d rather head to a dhaba to have North Indian food as I can rest assured that the food will be fresh. A pathetic experience with horrifying after-effects.