Average TexMex and interior Mex. I liked the enchilada plate: but I felt nickel-and-dimed to death. Then again, we're in Westlake: what do you expect?
Close to the office, and still not compelling enough to make me go back.
While this is an adequate neighborhood TexMex place, with a nice interior, decent service (though it would have been nice if they had asked us "Mariachi or non-Mariachi?"), and a wider variety of seafood dishes than usual, it wasn't a terribly good value for the money (my lemon butter fish dish, while tasty, was notably undersized for the price). I was also bugged by the nickle-and-dime approach. I mean, charging for any chip refills beyond one is bad enough, but having to pay a charge for jalapenos on your nachos? In Texas, that sort of approach makes me say "get a rope."
I was pretty excited about Freda's. Hey, a new seafood place, and the menu posted onlinelooked pretty good.
Unfortunately, that menu's out of date: the new one is missing some of the more interesting dishes (such as the "Cajun Oysters Rockefeller"). I ended up with my usual benchmark dish, the fried seafood platter, which was okay, but I still felt slightly disappointed.
At one point, the (apparent) manager came over to our table, which was nice: but I thought she was just a little too agressive in pushing us for our opinions of the food. There's a tactful way to do that: this wasn't it.
I'll drive for good seafood, even against traffic on 183. Freda's, well, I'd eat there if I was at the mall and wanted seafood (and it is prefereable to Red Lobster in that area), but I wouldn't make an expedition to it.
Freda's was quite a mixed bag. The service was good, but there was that UNACCEPTABLE 20% automatic gratuity. The appetizers were tasty, but my bowl of seafood gumbo was all but devoid of seafood. I liked my seafood dish just fine, but the previous menu I looked at on the web seemed to have a lot more interesting choices for blackened fish with various sauces. They also serve a very good creme brulee.
Were it not for the 20% gratuity, I'd be willing to make a return visit, but there's nothing about Freda's nearly compelling enough to make me overlook it.
Once you say, "The service is better! The service is better!", there's not a lot left to say about Sarovar that we haven't already said. Saying "The service is better!", though, is plenty significant: I hope this marks the end of the "whose leg do I have to hump to get a damn tea refill" days.
We stopped going to Sarovar for many reasons, not least of which being the food at The Clay Pit was so much better. But Sarovar's real downfall used to be the service, which ranged from a high of "almost competent" all the way down to "how did you like your one hour wait for the check?"
Well, after several years of complaints about the service, someone finally seemed to take a clue-by-four to the waitstaff, as this time around the service was excellent, and a quantum leap beyond any we had there before. Drink refills before we asked for them rather than 30 minutes after? Who are you and what have you done with the regular Sarovar waitsaff?
Given the radical service upgrade, now we can actually talk about some of Sarovar's virtues. For example, they have is a much broader range of dishes than The Clay Pit or Taj Palace. Second, the food still seems to be quite good. I enjoyed both my tandori mixed grill and the various nanns (garlic, onion, kheema), though I do want to try the non-fried spicy appetizer the next time I'm there.
One drawback: Unlike The Clay Pit, they don't seem to offer pappadaums as a free snack. Other than that, I really have nothing to complain about for this visit to Sarovar. I still think The Clay Pit is better, but they finally seem to have some competition.