Located within half a km from my house, this used to be the only sweet shop for the entire stretch of the DLF1 IT premises locality until few months ago. They stock an enviable range of delicious sweets, misti doi (sweet curd or yogurt), milk products like chena and cottage cheese. The namkeen range, however is restricted to radhaballabi-dum aloo, nimki and singara(samosa) .
Ambiance – A moderate sized shop, it is nearly crowded most of the times. There are no seating arrangements available. So, if one decides to savor the sweets there, the only way to go about it is stand and eat. Sweets are displayed within the glass countered shelves. It is just like any other regular sweet shop, albeit an air conditioned one.
Food – They have an awesome selection of sweets. However, the quantities of the items are limited. They don’t prepare the sweets within premises but get it from their main shop. Be it the nalen gurer sandesh or the jol bora or the dudh puli, every sweet tastes good and is generally freshly made. Personally I’m quite fond of their misti doi – the sweetness of the doi is just perfect. The namkeens are mostly found out of stock. Since the shop gets it ready made items once a day, the namkeens are kept in a hot pot and served during the day till the stocks lasts. The quantity stored is quite less and gets over quite fast. So getting fresh namkeens is really a difficult task unless one visits the store soon after the items reach the shop which is generally later half of the morning.
Packaging – Sweets are packed in paper boxes while namkeens are packed in paper covers. Misti doi and sweets with sugary syrup solutions like rosogolla and gulab jamun are packed in transparent plastic containers sealed with plastic tapes. And if one needs to carry all this together,a plastic carry bag at an extra charge is the way out.
Service – Since this was the only option available for sweets and my toddler had developed a fascination towards sandesh and doi, one of us ended up visiting the shop regularly to purchase fresh sweets. I don’t remember seeing any staff ever smile here. The attitude is generally rude and indiffferent. While I understand that they only need to pack and hand over the sweets after payment, it wouldn’t hurt being polite to customers.
Price – Hugely overpriced across the entire spectrum of items available, their prices shoot up even higher during festivals. The cheapest sweet of moderate starts from twelve rupees, tiny samosas and nimkis are priced at seven and six rupees respectively, per piece of radhaballabi is kept at fifteen rupees while hundred grams of misti doi costs twenty three rupees. The fact that they didn’t have any competition in the area until now acted as a booster to sky rocketing prices.
Ratings across all the parameters would be –
Ambiance – 3.5
Food – 4
Packaging – 4
Service – 3
Price – 3
Overall – 3.5
Few months back, a new sweet shop has opened their doors at just a km from this shop. The competitive environment already seems to effect a downward revision of prices here. I’m waiting to see if and when the new sweet shop brings about the much needed improvement in pricing and service of Annapurna Sweets.
Link to the review on Zomato is as below.
soniasmusings 