Nestled right in the midst of the hustle and bustle on the Calangute – Aguada road is the rather
young hotel, Le Méridien. A little over 2 years old, Le Méridien, Calangute
keeps dishing out new experiences for its guests, the latest being ‘Dinner by
the pool’ every Friday and Saturday. The concept is rather simple: to serve you
great food and great drinks along with foot-tapping live music right by the
poolside.
We decided to drive up north and
experience this for ourselves. The first impression is quite nice, with the
setup being very natural and not too fussy; simple tables and chairs set by the
poolside with dim lighting to set the mood. This accompanied with the live
music makes you want to stick around and sip on your favourite drink. We came
for the food though, so we jumped straight into the menu.
It’s not the largest menu; just one page
to be precise, but that’s a good thing. For starters you can choose between,
‘New Age India’, European or Goan. We decided to start with something out of
the first category because it sounded interesting. The Beetroot Peanut Butter
Tikki is what we had and it was delicious. A very earthy flavour, probably
because of the beetroot accompanied with the flavour of the peanut butter. This
set us right on for our main course but before that, we decided to have
something local and opted for a Rawa Fried Lepo. This was spicier than expected
but my plus one for the night loved it, and trust me, she knows her lepo.
For our main course, we had the Rosemary
Garlic Tenderloin Fillet, which was, without a doubt, the highlight of our
meal. Grilled perfectly, the meat was juicy and full of flavour. I know that
many would say the sauce it is served with is an integral part of the dish, but
for us, the meat alone, with its seasoning, was just spot on. Another plus was
the crushed potato on the side, which is an accompaniment of many a dish here.
We also ordered the Tandoori Marinated Chicken Breast, which was
as moist as chicken can get with the beautiful and familiar taste of Indian
tandoori bursting onto your taste buds.
Although there isn’t a dessert menu, the kind folks at Le
Méridien will happily get you any dessert from the other three restaurants
within the hotel. Since there wasn’t a menu to refer to we asked Chef Abhinav
to surprise us. We were presented with Le Meridien’s signature dessert, Mango
Eclairs; this is something that can be found at all Le Meridien Hotels across
the world; how cool is that? I must admit I have quite the sweet tooth and this
was something that I really enjoyed. The taste of the mango sauce was fresh and
made the whole dessert feel light as a feather, the same can be said about the
cream filling, and by the end of it, we were completely satisfied. However,
since we asked the chef to surprise us, he placed another dessert on our table,
which looked too good to resist. It’s called Caramel Mille Fuelli; I have never
seen anything like it before. Essentially, it’s a form of buttery puff pastry
oozing with salted caramel, one of my favourite flavours. The chef admitted to
adding sea salt to the caramel cremeux just to twist the taste. Honestly,
choosing between this and the Mango Eclairs would have been a very tough
decision.
Overall,
the light meals, excellent drinks and live music make dinner by the pool at Le
Méridien Calangute a great idea if you want to go on a casual date night over
the weekend and I can definitely see myself visiting again.
