At The BAY !

The place in photograph is Bay Treasure in Mahabalipuram, a nice resort on the ECR Road opposite CCD. I have visited the place twice for Dinner.

I found it interesting in the first visit and wanted to know more about it so I started talking to the customers, some of whom were regulars there. I observed that it is a newly constructed resort, the ambiance is nice, and the place is spacious and mostly not crowded. Bay Treasure has different sections, the cottages are separated from the main restaurant and lounge. There were very few guests and as per my conversation with them, they liked the place and the food. They were particularly impressed by the barbecue in the restaurant on Sunday. The lounge and the restaurant are accompanied by a swimming pool in the same section. Bay Treasure serves food and liquor on poolside as well. The terrace above the restaurant and the poolside is available for parties and functions.

However the place did not live up to my expectations. The food was good both Veg and Non-Veg, the service was too slow. They took more than 1.5 hours to serve dinner, I could make out that they were short of staff and lacked owner’s control. Even though the person managing the place was good to talk to, he was not taking a lot of effort to ensure swift delivery. The service staff forgot to collect bill from a few tables and I had to help them to contact these people in Great Lakes, reason being that the staff was overloaded with work.

After having dinner I had a chat with a member of the service staff and the temporary Chinese/Thai Chef. They told me that Bay Treasure has opened just 14 months back and as I had observed the place was actually suffering from lack of staff issues. There were just 5 people to serve the lounge, restaurant and the poolside when actually they require about 12. He also told me as they had never had so many people together on a weekday so such issue never came up. The crowd usually was highest on weekends and that too they were the people who would actually stay in the resort. The resort has 24 cottages, and 6 people to manage them. Which is sufficient as it’s seldom that all the rooms are booked even on a weekend. 

The kitchen staff was also less, there were only 6 people in the kitchen including a temporary chef from Radisson, when actually the place requires near about 10 people for the same. They buy sea-food and poultry from Mahabalipuram itself however have to get vegetables from Chennai, which is bought once in 3 days.

All things said so far, the place is actually doing good business with the new batch of Great Lakes joining in. It can do much better if they hire more staff as the place is very well located on the highway. It has good food and is very well constructed. The cottages are spacious, neat and nicely packed with trees around them. The owner and the staff are friendly and nice to talk too.

One of the other good points is that the place serves you everything that is on the food menu, unlike certain places where some things are out of stock. However as usual in Mahabalipuram availability of good liquor is an issue which the place can work upon. As most restaurants in the area nearby even don’t have liquor on par with Bay Treasure, improving this department will boost their business many a times.

In order to attract customers, Bay treasure started serving hukka. This seems to me as an impressive strategy as it is among very few places in Mahablipuram which serves Hukka in their lounge. They had bought Hukkas from Chennai a year back and have been using the same vessels. The flavor and coal is periodically ordered from Mumbai according to the stock. Hukka is especially profitable for the resort as not much investment goes into same.

Also the barbeque on Sunday and poolside are an added advantage.