Curious dip in hotel dining standards: Good service can't make up for plain calories dressed up as cuisine

When it comes to hotel food experiences, menu planning is an art precisely because it requires restraint as much as abundance. (Image credit: Vlad Deep via Pexels)

The art of menu planning — the quiet craft of creating an impeccable food experience — seems to be dying a slow, silent death. At least, that is the uncomfortable conclusion I found myself drawing after a recent stay at one of Goa’s most reputed luxury hotels, part of an Indian chain long celebrated for excellence and consistency.

Let me begin with what the hotel still does remarkably well. The property itself remains delightful, almost effortlessly so. It carries that familiar polish of a brand that is a maestro in hospitality — the architecture, the ambience, the attentiveness. The staff across the hotel are genuinely warm, friendly, and eager to help. Service, in the traditional sense, is alive and well. If you measure luxury by smiles, speed, and courteous escalation, this hotel would score perfectly.

But luxury is not built on smiles alone. In a country like India, where cuisine is not merely sustenance but memory, culture, and comfort, the dining experience is central to what makes a stay meaningful. And here is where something felt fundamentally broken.

Spreads where Indian cuisine sits awkwardly beside Chinese, Lebanese, Mexican and Portuguese influences, can feel confusing rather than inviting. (Image credit: Enginakyurt via Pexels)

In one of the hotel’s speciality restaurants, we tried a few items with the expectation one naturally carries into such spaces — that flavours will be thoughtful, aromas inviting, textures deliberate, and taste energising. Instead, what arrived was baffling in its absence. The dishes were almost tasteless, devoid of fragrance, character, or depth. No smell that draws you in, no texture that lingers, no flavour that tells a story. What remained, quite bluntly, were plain calories dressed up as cuisine.

We did what guests rarely enjoy doing on vacation: we complained. To the chef, directly. And here, to the hotel’s credit, the response was swift and exemplary. The concern was escalated internally, and soon we received a warm, courteous call from another chef — one from in-room dining — who promptly sent replacement food through room service.

That interaction revealed something important. The training, the escalation matrix, the culture of responsiveness in this brand is phenomenally strong. The machinery of hospitality works. But machinery cannot substitute for mastery. Efficient complaint handling does not mean the food itself is right. It only means the hotel knows how to apologise gracefully.

The next morning offered hope. Breakfast at the buffet was genuinely excellent — vibrant options, attentive staff, a sense of care in execution. It reminded you of what this brand is capable of when it wants to be. For a moment, the earlier disappointment seemed like an exception.

But that optimism did not survive lunch.

A buffet is not meant to be a random inventory of dishes. It is meant to be curated, balanced, coherent. (Image credit: Fu Zhichao via Pexels)

The lunch buffet was a study in confusion. One would assume that being a vegetarian at a renowned Indian hotel, in India, would still mean thoughtful choices. Yet there wasn’t even a single simple dry sabji on offer — the kind of basic comfort food that anchors a meal. Instead, the spread was dominated by an endless parade of gravies and dals, each one hidden under a clear pool of oil floating on top, as if excess were being mistaken for richness.

The menu seemed unsure of what it wanted to be. Indian cuisine sat awkwardly beside Chinese, Lebanese, and Goan influences, not blended with creativity but placed together like mismatched furniture in an expensive room.

A buffet is not meant to be a random inventory of dishes. It is meant to be curated, balanced, coherent. Menu planning is an art precisely because it requires restraint as much as abundance.

This is perhaps one of the few times in my life that I finished a buffet lunch in under 15 minutes. Simply because I was lost — spending more time wondering what to eat than actually eating. And then, walking out not satisfied but starved, trying to figure out where to find a real lunch afterwards.

That is a strange feeling to carry out of a luxury hotel dining hall: hunger.

It also forces uncomfortable questions. Should one dare vacation with family in a place where food becomes a trigger for disappointment? Because bad food does not remain confined to the plate — it becomes part of the memory of the holiday itself. Or should one do what tourists often do in Goa: stay at a good hotel for comfort, but go to beach shacks for food? The shack food may be oily, imperfect, and hardly healthy cuisine, but at least it delivers what it promises — flavour, honesty, and a sense of value beyond price.

Good food does not require complicated reinvention. Often, it just requires a return to the basics: seasoning, restraint, freshness. (Image credit: Sebastian Coman via Pexels)

And then comes the most unsettling question of all: is it just me?

Have my expectations become too high? Is this simply a case of personal taste? Or have we collectively lowered the bar so much that substandard food is acceptable as long as there are many disparate items laid out in abundance? Are guests today satisfied by quantity over quality, by visual spread over culinary soul?

We do live in an age where “experience” is measured in excess — more counters, more cuisines, more items labelled exotic — even if none of them taste of anything at all. The modern buffet has become a metaphor for modern consumption: abundance mistaken for excellence, variety replacing vision. Guests photograph spreads they barely eat, hotels chase scale over craft, and somewhere along the way we have normalised mediocrity as long as it arrives dressed in luxury.

When standards slip quietly, the tragedy is not that food disappoints, but that no one seems surprised anymore. Perhaps this is the real crisis in modern luxury hospitality. Somewhere along the way, food has become operational rather than emotional. The obsession is with scale, variety, and efficiency, not with flavour, fragrance, and first principles.

Great cuisine does not require complicated reinvention. Often, it requires returning to basics: seasoning, restraint, freshness, coherence. A well-made dal can be extraordinary. A simple dry sabji can be memorable. A thoughtfully planned menu can do more for a guest experience than a hundred confused dishes drowning in oil.

And perhaps that is the real absence one feels — not of dishes, but of direction. It is hard not to suspect that this chain is missing something it once had: a culinary vision shaped by legends like Chef Hemant Oberoi, whose presence represented not just cooking, but culture. At least as a guest, one does.