Emgee's

Saturday night, after a good spell of rains in the evening, saw the P, VP, and I heading out for a 'light' meal - by light, I mean there would be no animals or birds or sea creatures involved in this holy ritual. We decided to meet up late, at 9:30, so that we could avoid all the mind-bogglingly crazy Saturday evening traffic, and at 9:30, met outside Emgee's (of course silly, it's on M G Road, why d'you think it's called Emgee's otherwise?). The restaurant is located in the same building as Gangaram's book store (one of the 'veterans' on M G Road).

Once we were seated, P asked if I was willing to split a soup with him, and "bring it on" was my reply, to which he put up a smile of pure delight and said:
P: "Shetty's at a vegetarian place!"
me: "Eh? I'm not the one who discriminates when it comes to food, remember?"
P: "Yeah, but you almost always have only non-veg, or make it a point to."
me: "Bull, I only eat non-veg, or leave out the veg option(s), if it is named after some actual non-veg dish and found it's way onto the menu only because the owner wanted to draw in a few veg eaters as well...so basically economics dictated it's inclusion, not merit."
P: "Hmm, ok, you're right, point taken."

For those of you clowns who are still skeptical, you can even check out some of the reviews that I've been on where I ate the veg dish (most notably at Medici, where I could have gorged on all the non-veg I wanted but ended up ordering a veg tortellini, which was superb).

So P and I eventually settled for a sweet corn mushroom soup (I've heard sweet corn soup, and cream of mushroom, but this was a first). It was nice, as it had been a long time since I had a decent sweet corn soup, but I wasn't sure what the mushrooms were doing in this soup. The soup, as it is, was very tasting sweet, and adding mushrooms into it didn't really complement the sweetness, but I guess it works for some people. The other starter we had was one of the most expensive one on the menu - at Rs. 135/-, the mushroom rangeela made us curious, and although we even spotted a veg shaslik under the starters, we decided to skip it and go for the mushrooms. 7 large button mushrooms came, and on biting into them, we realised they were stuffed with paneer, and the dish tasted good. Stuffing mushrooms is a common practice, with cheese as well, and so we weren't disappointed.

Sweet corn mushroom soup

Mushroom rangeela (stuffed with paneer)

With our initial orders out of the way (actually, into our stomachs), we decided to have some dosas. P and I settled for the paper masala dosas, while VP had a tomato uthappa (yes, I say uttappa and not uttappam because I'm from Karnataka, and we say uttappa, while folks from Andhra, Kerala and Tamil Nadu say uttappam, and the rest of India says uttapam because most of them think that south of the Vindhya's, it's what the Tams call things that rule).

That aside, the dosas were nice.

Paper masala dosa

Tomato uttappa

And finally, there was peas pulav and some dal makhani to go along with it. P thought the pulav was a little too oily, and VP was only too glad to agree with him (he needs to have an excuse to waste food, but surprisingly this time he actually finished eating everything).

Peas pulav with dal makhani

After dinner, we walked up to St. Mark's road where there's a Natural's ice cream parlour. Just as we neared Natural's, we saw hoards of regular cops and traffic policemen in front of Bishop Cotton's girls school checking for drunk driving, and saw several people caught. We rushed into Natural's, bought our ice creams, and rushed back out to watch a lot of crack-brained idiots get caught by the cops. I tell, I'm not a sadist, but there's something about watching those who break the don't-drink-and-drive law get caught, and more importantly, watch them come up with all kinds of excuses, half of them blabbering something in Hindi while our cops not giving a damn about their frantic pleas and nonsense. Pure ecstasy. Sadly, some manage to pull out phones and make calls and get away, which is an inherent flaw in the whole country.

Food: Nice
$$$: Not too expensive... we totaled up around 700 for this meal.
Service: Decent
Verdict: Can visit if in the area and you feel like eating low-key, light Indian fare and go easy on the pockets.

Emgee's, #73, Below Gangaram's book shop, M G Road, Bangalore. Phone: 40430000