Ohri's Jiva Restaurant, Somajiguda, Hyderabad

Just like Rajdhani and Taj Tristar, this Hyderabad restaurant also provides a sumptuous buffet lunch that has everything from starters to desserts – and loads of it. The best part about eating here is that the food is sumptuous, the service is quick, the sweets are plentiful and most importantly, there are no limits to how much you eat. Ohri’s Jiva is located near the Somajiguda flyover. It is on the right side of the Rajbhavan road after you take a left from under the Somajiguda flyover.

Ohri’s is one of the biggest chain of restaurants in Hyderabad. They have a wonderful Ohri’s restaurant at Banjara Hills which specializes in providing some of the best Punjabi food I have eaten in Hyderabad. But Jiva’s Kitchen, as the Somajiguda outlet is called, is clearly the more famous of its restaurants. Ohri’s Jiva kitchen is famous for its unlimited buffet lunch and I did feel that it really was a wonderful experience eating there.

Jiva’s kitchen has a small counter in the front where they serve fast food and also different variety of dishes and plates that need to be ordered. That area has space enough of 20-30 people. In this space, you can have your fill of various combos like Chhole Puri, Pastas, Biryani and other fast food items. In the back, though there is a huge space where they serve buffet and you can load yourselves up on all the sinful delicacies on offer there.

The starter is served with the soup and then there will be a variety of rotis to choose from. They serve the phulka roti – which I felt was the best part about the restaurant. Serving the phulka is tough because making them is tough. For one, they are small sized, next they need to be turned over and over again – unlike the tandoori roti or kulcha. They take a fair bit of time and you need to cook a lot of these in order to be able to serve them to your customers continuously. At Ohri’s they had a guy who was constantly engaged with only the phulka rotis. Other than phulka, there are the usual butter roti, puris etc available.

The next course was the longest for me. The sweets were Rasgullas, Rasamalai, Gulab Jamuns, Cake, ice cream with toppings and some fruits. I experimented with having a Gulab Jamun topped over an ice cream and it tasted delicious. Recommended recipe from Chef Loony.

Finally, there was the trademark Biryani and a few other types of rice, a few dals too. There were atleast 3-4 different subzis. Different variety of pickles, Raita, Dahi, salads etc. was all available. All in all, Jiva had a huge variety of food available and I made the most of it all.

The food was delicious, not very high in oil, well cooked and with enough sweets for me to call it a sure fire paisa vasool.

Ratings:
Ambience : 8/10
Food : 8/10
Price : 8/10
Quantity : 10/10 - Cant complain here ..... right ;-)