Monday, July 27, 2009

Suburbia

Suburbia, as the name suggests, is on the suburbs of the city. Located on the outer ring road, between K R Puram and Rammurthynagar Underpass. And so, the usual suspects and I decided to go there since they had to leave work late. I got there ahead of them, and so started reading a book while I waited. I usually don't drink when I have to drive back, but they had a breezer flavour that I'd never had before - Jamaican Passion (passion fruit), so that's what I had, since the alcohol content is only 5% (I think that's less than what's there in beer as well).
This thing was good (well, I've always liked passion fruit, so I guess that helped).

When I began to feel hungry, I ordered a beef pepper fry until the guys came (luckily they came when I was half way through the appetiser).
The beef was extremely well cooked and soft, and when VP came and tasted it, said it had a lamb like texture. I agreed, but the taste wasn't that of lamb, so I'm a bit surprised (pleasantly) about the whole thing.

Mr P had a Jamaican Passion as well, while VP went in style and had a Jetski, a fancy lime soda with mint (he ended up having two of those).
There wasn't anything special about it, and I liked my JP better :)

As is his habit, Mr P wanted to have a soup and asked me if I wanted to split one with him, but after going through the menu, I knew if I wanted to sample the Goan dishes, there's no way I could have a soup as well. So he went ahead and had a spinach soup called cream of highway.

VP and I decided to go all out on the various Goan dishes available. Although there was no pork available here (I heard the chef is a Muslim, couldn't confirm that though), we hoped that wouldn't hurt the experience of Goan food here. So we ordered a chicken sausage masala.
The sausage was nicely marinated and although I can't comment on the authenticity of the masala used (not sure if it's actually the way Goans cook the stuff), it tasted bloody good, and so didn't really care.

Apart from the sausages, we also ordered an egg vindaloo. A vindaloo is a Portuguese dish and the name is derived from the Portuguese term vinha d'Alhos, which basically means wine and garlic, so no points for guessing what the prime ingredients here are.
The fried eggs with the masala are probably the perfect dish when your drinking, with the spices in the egg making up for the flat beer that people usually guzzle.

The day's special, chicken ghee roast, was also ordered, at which point we began wondering if we were going to eat our main course or not. The ghee roast was good, but I've had better.

Mr P meanwhile made do with a paneer peri-peri. Again, the peri-peri is a Portuguese term used to describe a particular type of chilly (which apparently looks like a bird's eye). This thing was a little spicy.
The paneer also had a strange, mildly sweet taste to eat - we weren't able to pinpoint if this was because it was made from milk that wasn't fresh or if something was added to the dish.

For our main course, again, we went traditional. We ordered appams,
sannas, and red rice. Sannas are little rice cakes, the same as idlis, with the prime difference being that sannas have toddy added to the batter during preparation.

We ordered a prawn balchao

and a vegetable stew to eat the rice, appams, and the sannas.
I'm not sure how a balchao is supposed to taste, but the fact that it did have a sweet and sour taste to it confirmed that at least they had tried to make it the right way. A balchao is supposed to have cumin seeds and red chilly paste mixed with sugar, along with a ginger-garlic paste and vinegar.

After all that, we managed to make a little room for a classic Goan dessert called bebinca, which didn't quite taste like the one I had eaten at a place called 3 Stories.
Overall, we liked the food (going by just the taste), and the fact that after binging on the food here, the bill came to a trickle over 1600 (considering the fact that we had 4 drinks, and really went all out on the appetisers), which we thought was very reasonable. Under normal circumstances, we'd have had at the most 3 starters and not 5 like we did this time.

Service: Pretty decent
$$$: Around 400-500 per head, if you're gonna have drinks along with the food
Food: Very good
Verdict: Certainly worth a visit
Extra info: While approaching the area from KR Puram, get onto the service road near Kasturi Nagar itself. Oh, and before I forget, their menu has a major misprint:they've used the word entrée where they should have used appetiser (or appetizer, if they wanted the American spelling)

Suburbia, 407, 3rd Floor, East NGEF Layout, Opposite SAIL Factory, Kasturi Nagar, Outer Ring Road Bangalore. Phone: 41499329

2 comments:

Me! In words said...

The food looks yummy... but when it comes to goan sausages there is nothing like the tangy pork version. Traditional balchaos have a thicker consistency than the gravyish one you had. The veg stew though looks awesome. Is that ice cream with the bebinca?

Karthik Shetty said...

Well, I'm in agreement with you that the pork ones are the best. The balchao we had was nice, but since you say it needs to be a little more thick (I'm guessing more pasty), I guess this is the way stuff will be in a resto-bar :) And yes, the veg stew was yummy, and yes, that's ice-cream with the bebinca :)

 

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