Place to Bee Ooty

Place to Bee Ooty is an eco-sensitive slow food cafe and bees conservatory rolled into one. Its food, concept and service all three together make it one of the best places to eat in Ooty.

Tucked inside the Keystone Foundation’s little bee museum, Place to Bee Ooty serves some delicious pizza, crepes and pasta along with their signature honey focused dishes, made from locally sourced ingredients. One of the very few eco-oriented cafes in Ooty, one of the best restaurants in Ooty and a must have experience. Click here to know about the other must have experiences in Ooty.

This post covers

• Cuisine
• Location and Opening hours
• Our Order
• Service
• Ambience
• Cost for 4
• Rating on Food listing apps and sites(like Zomato)
  

Cusine

Place to Bee Ooty largely offers Italian cuisine in the form of crepes, wood fired pizza, mediterranean dishes, pasta and other dishes involving honey
All the ingredients are locally sourced and fresh. You will know why its one of the best restaurants in Ooty, especially Italian, after having one bite of their pizza.
The cafe believes in the concept of slow food. You can check this site to know more about the Slow Food movement.

Location, Parking and Opening Hours

A little away from the city center, it was about 20 minutes from our resort (Sterling Fern Hill) and would be about 10 minutes driving from city center.
Parking could become a challenge since its located in a very narrow lane, however since the cafe itself accommodates few people (read 25 – 30) at one time it may not be a challenge.
Tuesday is the weekly off and it opens between 12.30-3pm for lunch & 6.30-9.30pm for dinner
Its popularity amongst the local young is on the rise and if you’re headed there for lunch, reaching there by 12:15 to ensure a place might be a good idea.

Our Order
We ordered for the following and we were not disappointed in any of these. Everything was fresh and mouth watering.
Margherita Pizza: you will find this a very common order wherever we go since its a favourite of our children and people can usually not go too wrong in a margherita pizza. Their pizza crust was appropriately thin with generous serving of cheese on the pizza

Veggie pizza: If you like mushrooms, it had mushrooms in abundant quantity and we felt quite sad about it as they had to go waste considering both me and Saurabh do not like it much. Saying pizza was delicious would be an understatement. The fresh ingredients can really make a difference

Cold Coffee: Absolutely lip smacking
Watermelon Juice: Fresh and very refreshing
Being true to their focus on nature, they do not serve any straws with the drinks.

Service:
Despite the full restaurant and people jostling for place, the people running the restaurant were patient and catering to every requirement within minutes. They tried their best to accommodate more people and make shift arrangements were provided if requested
Food did not take much time and the soaking in the fresh air and a positive ambience was rejuvenating
This place also scores full points for a clean restroom on the ground floor – a much needed amenity with kids in tow.

Ambience
Place to Bee Ooty was one of the few eco friendly cafes in Ooty, while we found Kodaikanal to be a much bigger hub of the ecological movement. Check out this post to know more about the cafes in Kodaikanal.
Coming back to Place to Bee, the restaurant is located on the upper floor of the building that houses a bee museum and an local arts souvenir shop on the ground floor. Going by the ground floor, one can never guess that one of the best places to eat in Ooty is also located here.
There is an inside seating area which can accommodate about 20 people and an outside gallery/ balcony which has 3 tables seating 3 people each
Every table has table runners which are an art work by Toda people (the pastoral tribe of Nilgiris).
Everything about this place just makes one feel close to nature and an immediate need to preserve what we have.
The walls inside the cafe are adorned with information about the Bees of India, history of honey harvesting, tools used etc.
A lovely place, and one of the best restaurants in Ooty, I highly recommend to come with kids both because of the food they serve and the information they offer for young minds to know more about nature and India.
There is also a small garden outside the Bee museum, with small plants, flowers and rocks which makes for a nice site for children to move around

Cost for 4
For something like what we ordered it would be in the range of INR 700 – 800.

Rating on Food Listing apps and Travel sites
Ranked as #2 out of 148 restaurants in Ooty on Tripadvisor. This has to be one of the best places to eat in Ooty.
Rated at 4.5 with 206 reviews on Tripadvisor as of writing this post