Leela Bangalore Zen

The Zen restaurant at the Leela is on the ground floor and overlooks the attractive hotel gardens; there is an outdoor terrace as well as an indoor, air-conditioned, dining room. It offers a range of Asian cuisines: Chinese, Thai, Japanese, even Korean. Since the head chef was Chinese we tried the dim sum one lunch time.

Scallop and prawn dumplings were garnished with flying fish roe, and had nicely cooked shellfish inside a rather heavy dumpling (12/20). Chinese cabbage dumplings with mushrooms were rather disappointing due to the stodgy texture of the dumplings (10/20). Char sui buns were also less than airy in texture, but did at least have nicely cooked barbecued pork inside (12/20). Mushroom cakes seemed a little overcooked to me, but were edible (11/20). Prawn dumplings were about the best dish we tried, again with somewhat clumsy dumplings but with nicely cooked prawns (12/20). Pan-fried dumplings had a hard texture that was not particularly enjoyable (10/20). The dim sum dishes were mostly INR 320 (about £4.50 each).

Overall, this was decent enough, but there is little reason to eat here when you can eat at the Jamavar in the same hotel.