Originally Posted by meester69

Food in the hotel is good, but so is all the food we had outside. The prices - around 1250 rupees for a meat curry might seem high compared with outside but the value is not so bad as this is tax/service included and they also gave us two rice, daal, veg curry, a plate of assorted poppadoms, and Indian bread. Of course it is still much cheaper to eat out and somewhere like Ambrai has a million dollar lakeside view that Udaivilas cannot match (if much cheaper furnishings) there I think we paid around 250 rupees for a curry, 95 rupees for rice, around 35 for plain roti, plus tax on top. The daal at Udaivilas is outstanding but we had a better butter chicken in a random restaurant near the City Palace. Our saag paneer was otoh fantastic and much better than anything I've had in the UK, but then we subsquently had lamb saag in a couple of different restaurants outside and they were all very tasty too.

The food here is curry after all, it's not based on lightness of touch and fresh vegetables but spices and thick sauces. Of course they will sell you Western food - we tried gazpacho (a little sour, needed onion) and a brie & proscuitto sandwich (nice proscuitto, brie predictably unripe) - but it's in my opinion utterly pointless for me to fly from London, home of dozens of fine European restaurants with appropriate seasonal produce and native chefs to provincial India and hope to come close to what I can eat within a few minutes of home.

So yes, stick to curry.

Regarding the hotel food we saw the same chef at dinner and breakfast, I would accordingly recommend that the food in the Udaivilas is very nice but otoh so is all the other food I've eaten - your extra rupees buys you better service and crockery above all else.