The Castle at Sandesh The Prince

The Castle is the main restaurant of the supposedly 4 star hotel Sandesh The Prince in central Mysore. On the ground floor, the room had quite closely packed tables and a tiled floor, with red upholstery and a low ceiling. The room was partitioned with glass panels reminiscent of a Victorian pub and, this being India, a large flat screen TV showing the cricket. There were no Indian diners when we went, just tourists.

The menu was rather bizarre in offering, as well as Indian food, European dishes and even a wide range of Chinese food. This is rarely a good sign in a restaurant. We went for lunch while sightseeing in Mysore and just tried a couple of dishes. Chicken tikka was reasonable though very salty, even to my taste, the chicken not of good quality but the marinade managing to make the meat reasonably tender (just about 11/20). Paneer was disappointing, the texture of the paneer soft enough but the tomato sauce one-dimensional and tasting vaguely hot rather than bringing out the taste of individual spices (10/20). 

Romali roti was adequate, rolled out quite thin but having very little taste (11/20). Steamed rice was lumpy (10/20). Service was fine, with a friendly if slightly pushy manager, who was anxious to sell us more dishes and drinks.  The toilets were of a surprisingly low standard for what is supposed to be a smart hotel, not being well maintained; surely a hotel in 2012 should be able to manage proper flush toilets throughout, and to clean them regularly and properly?

Overall I can just about score this between 10/20 and 11/20 on the cooking, but it felt like a place aimed mainly at tourists (I dread to think who they were aiming the toilets at), and was not somewhere I could recommend. The bill came to just £5 a head, though it would of course be more if you had three courses and drinks. We just had one course and water.