BM Review: Coastal Junction

Last Friday, the 31^st of July, saw me visiting Bangalore latest sea food restaurant, Coastal junction, on 80 feet road, in Indiranagar. Again, this was an official review for The Bangalore Mirror, and the review can be read here, titled 'At the crossroads'. The snaps of what we ate are below.

Squid masala

The squid masala (there was a specific Mallu name which I can't remember now) was the best among the appetisers.

Kane fry

Too thin, almost dry, and not marinated long enough, 'coz the marinade hadn't 'seeped' in deep enough (and since there was hardly any flesh, you can guess how 'well' it was marinated).

Chicken ghee roast

Tasted nice, but there didn't seem to be any ghee!!! I mean ghee roast and no ghee - are you kidding' me? They could have called it chicken masala or something, but not ghee roast.

Karwar prawns

Nice, but could have been seasoned a little more. Seemed to be lacking in salt, but the prawns were very fresh.

Baby corn something

This was ok.

Goan prawn curry

Tasted good. Again, prawns were fresh, and the spices in it were good and the dish on the whole seemed pretty authentic.

Chicken xacuti

Tasted good, but again, this isn't how a xacuti (pronounced sha-ku-tee) looks. It's supposed to be dark, like a shade of grey due to the roasted coconut nad peppercorns in it. Also, it's supposed to be 'knock-your-pants-off' spicy. This wasn't - it tasted good, but wasn't the 'real' xacuti.

Appam

Nice.

Neer dosa

Good.

Payasams

Heavenly. Probably the best dish of the night. All three payasams were heavenly, our own ambrosia.


Food: Nice, but I expected something better for the prices charged
$$$: On the higher side. Meal for two could cost anywhere from close to Rs. 1000 to Rs. 1500 without drinks.
Service: Like any other place, nothing special for a 'fine-dining' place and for the prices charged.
Verdict: Can visit once for the Malabar cuisine, other cuisines are OK but may lack authenticity.

Coastal Junction, #623, 5^th floor, Above Roseby's, 11^th Main, 80 feet road, Indiranagar, Bangalore

The full review is here:

When I hear the words fine dining clubbed with coastal cuisine in India, and when the coastal cuisine in question is from the west coast, there’s a sense of cautious uneasiness in me. One usually associates fine dining with, among several other things, dining with a fork, knife and a spoon. See where I’m going? So either we dine with knives and forks, in which case it’s a little difficult to enjoy the Malabar and Konkan cuisine without food literally flying off the plate, or the food would be made suitable to be eaten with knives and forks, in which case the chefs would need to be really innovative to preserve the authenticity of the dishes.

Coastal Junction is Bangalore’s latest coastal cuisine restaurant, dishing out Konkan and Malabar dishes. Owner Clifford Mascarenhas, who also runs the store Roseby’s in Indiranagar (Coastal Junction is located above Roseby’s), says he started a coastal cuisine restaurant partly because of his origin (he’s a Mangalorean, so opening a coastal cuisine restaurant made sense), and also because there aren’t any restaurants in the vicinity dishing out coastal food. Fair enough. On a night that saw a steady drizzle after a long time, I visited the place along with my guests Ra-Ben Almeida (Goan), his cousin Mavis Smith (Mangalorean) and her sister-in-law Milly Smith (again, Goan). And of course, yours truly was there to chip in with his Mangalorean-in-exile expertise.

The bar looked swanky, but the furniture didn’t scream ‘fine dining’ to us. A look at the menu projected a tilt in favour of Malabar cuisine. The squid appetiser we had, one of the Kerala dishes, was fabulous — right from the way it was cooked to the masalas used in it, it was lip-smacking. The chicken ghee roast was nice, but strangely, was lacking the ghee! If I can’t even smell the ghee, let alone watch it drip from the chicken, it’s not a ghee roast. Had it been called by a different name, there would have been no complaints. The Karwar prawns were very fresh and nice, but should have been seasoned a little better. Sadly, the kane (lady fish) fry lacked any real substance (read flesh), and wasn’t marinated long enough with the marinade.

For our main course, again, we tried to sample dishes from across the coast, and so a round of appams and neer dosas along with a bowl of red rice was to be polished off with a Goan prawn curry and a chicken xacuti. The appams were good — crispy and not sticky, and the neer dosas were the best I’ve had in Bangalore restaurants in a long time. Although they didn’t look exactly like neer dosas (they’re supposed to be more porous and white), they tasted great.

The prawns in the Goan curry were fresh, and the curry had everything, right from the concoction of spices to the coconut milk. The xacuti, however, was a different story. Purely going by the sense of taste, it was great. But with its introduction to the sense of sight, especially with prior knowledge as to what a xacuti is supposed to look like, you would be a little flummoxed. A traditional xacuti, according to Mavis and Milly, is supposed to be dark, like a shade of dark grey because of the deep roasted coconut and peppercorns in it. Also, a traditional xacuti is supposed to be so spicy it will exorcise all the sniffles and blocked/running noses and coughs associated with the rainy weather. In our case, the xacuti presented to us was almost reddish-brown in colour, and although it tasted good, wasn’t anywhere close to the legendary spiciness. Our tryst with the desserts saw us order the trio of payasams — one tender coconut based, one banana and jaggery based, and the third one based on rice flour and cashew nuts. All three were heavenly — India’s very own ambrosia!

At any restaurant, the ‘cost-to-quantity and quality’ ratio is something to look for the most. For the prices charged here, you certainly expect more on your plate in terms of quality and certainly shouldn’t cut any slack for loss in authenticity. What’s more, you’d expect to see something that you normally wouldn’t find in other sea food restaurants. As for Coastal Junction, it’s seems to be at the crossroads from where it needs to chart its own course towards the promised land.

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