Zomato Restaurant Guide 2012 - A Book Review

I was excited to see Bloggers adda offering the Zomato Restaurant Guide 2012 for review. I immediately showed interest for review and received a copy of the book for review.  

About the book:

 Zomato Restuarant Guide provides detailed information about various restaurants in the city. It provides a list of must-visit restaurants of a city. These recommendations are based on a wide range of categories (15 to 20) such as romantic dinners, girls night out, dining with kids, nightlife & clubbing, best wine list, and more! This guide has a unique QR code for each restaurant. Using this code, you can view menus, photos & other information related to each restaurant.

The guide helps you find the most suitable restaurant for a variety of occasions. It also provides names of restaurants where you can enjoy savings on Citibank Cards.

Even though I would recommend searching for restaurants online, this book serves as an additional reference point as it has information organized and bifurcated into various categories (around 22). Additionally, the compact size of the book makes it very easy to carry around. This book is especially useful for foodies (like me J) who like to experiment and try out a variety of cuisines.

However, I would like to point out that the book misses out on some notable restaurants in the city like Barbeque Nation, Grillopolis, Saffron Spice, Flags etc. 

Some pluses:

• The book has an appealing cover page with excellent printing quality, has glossy and well-designed pages and has excellent photography for each section.
• The book has been meticulously categorized based on cuisines like Asian, Italian, European, North Indian, South Indian etc. and also on occasions and moods like street food, girls night out, late Nighters, Dining with kids, and so on. 
• Apart from standard information about address and contact numbers of restaurants, information about home delivery, acceptance of credit and so on has been given in each listing.
• The restaurant listing also carries a QR code. By scanning the QR code, smartphone users can instantly access the menus of the restaurants on the Zomato portal.
• Another highlight in the listing is the inclusion of the ‘Don’t miss’ information that gives recommendation about specialty dishes of that restaurant
• Each restaurant included in the book has information on the user rating along with information about the number of users who have reviewed the book.
• Most of the information about the restaurant has been included in a crisp way. User does not have to read through lot of pages
• An index has been maintained at the end of the book that lists all the restaurants appearing in the guide.

Some Minuses:

• In my opinion, the biggest minus point is that many of the popular restaurants have not been included in the guide. For example, Barbeque Nation, Flags, Kobes, Yoko Sizzlers, Grillopolis and so on. 
• The book can include location-wise distribution of restaurants. 

Some more expectations :

• For the benefit of vegetarians, the book can include categories for Gujarati Thali. This can include restaurants like Golden Star (at Charni Road), Rajdhani and so on.
• The guide should also cover niche yet popular segments. For example, it can include information on Maharashtrian-speciality restaurants like Prakash (famous for Sabudana Wada & Piyush), Vinay Health Home (for Misal). 
• Also some of the restaurants like Samarpan (South Indian Cuisine), Govindas (pure vegetarian food), Sukhsagar (Pav-bhaji, Idli and Pizza), Sadar (Famous for Pav-bhaji) should find place in this guide.
• The guide should give information about availability of parking space including Valet parking.
• It may also include additional information about acceptance of various food coupons like Ticket Restaurant coupons and so on.
• It can also include information about hall facility for family functions.

This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com. Participate now to get free books!