Secret Garden Cafe

Secret Garden Cafe! Finally, I got to go here. Previous attempts at trying to locate the place have ended up with me beginning to feel like the fox that didn't get the grapes. Trying to get directions to this place was like trying to get the nuclear secrets out of the Army! No one would give you proper directions - like they wanted to keep this place a secret. I finally went there for lunch along with the food group (previously to Hae Kum Gang and Millers 46). This will be a pictorial review with just a few lines in between.

The menu

The salads were nice, and although there weren't any particular stand outs, we liked all 3 that we had.

Ham, mozzarella, fig, almond salad

Pear, cacciota cheese, fennel, walnut salad

Prawn + avocado cocktail salad

The main course: Although many people loved the Sri Lankan creamy curry with iddiappams, I liked the baked crab meat dish, as it's not easy to get crab meat cooked right. The lamb lasagna and canneloni with mushrooms and chicken were pretty good too. The chicken fillet was the least favourite - not because it tasted bad or anything (some found it too salty), but because compared to the other dishes, this looked blah!

Canneloni with chicken and mushroom

Minced lamb lasagna

Baked crab meat

Chicken fillet with sun-dried tomato pesto

Fish fillet with basil pesto

The menu, redux

Fish fillet with wine + dill sauce

Fettucine with prawns and bacon

Thai red curry

Sri Lankan creamy curry with bitter gourd salad and iddiappam

Desserts: A majority wanted the maple + butter crunch thingy (I must say it did sound fascinating, especially the fact that it was home-made ice cream), and it did taste good actually (even though I'm not a big fan o butterscotch-type flavours). I liked the Hedwig's cake with ice cream while all of us agreed the honey cake + cream was, well, flat and boring.

Hedwig's chocolate cake + ice cream

Brazilian nut (?) + honey cake + cream

Home made maple + nut butter crunch ice cream

After that we went to Fresco's for coffee, and along with the coffee they give you a stick with dark chocolate at the end. We weren't sure if we were to just eat it, or stir the coffee with it. Here, I've got a shot of the chocolate just dropping off the stick into my coffee. Coffee didn't taste all that great with the dark chocolate in it, but I like the snap below.



Food: Quite good
$$$: Slightly on the higher side (approx. 500 per head at the very least).
Service:Decent.
Verdict: Go there for the food and the ambiance, especially the ambiance.
Extra Info: It's on the road parallel to Cunningham road (see map link). There is NO turning from Cunningham road, so come on Queen's road and take the last right turn before the Indian Express signal.

Secret Garden Cafe, 7/1, Edward Road, Bangalore. Phone: 41131365

Millers 46 for a birthday

Mr P called us out for lunch on Monday for his birthday. He had taken the day off and called Mr VP, and also Ms BakeAcake. Luckily, I didn't have a lot of work to do at office, and so could slip out for almost, gulp, 4 hours for lunch! Millers 46 it was again, and so good food was guaranteed.

It's been a while since I'd met Ms BakeAcake, and it wasn't just me. None of us (P & VP included) had had a lot of meetings with BakeAcake since she got married. Yeah, we have a married girlie in our group, although I'm sure if Mr P or Mr VP read this, they'd protest saying she's not a 100% part of the group now that she's married (they're a little millitant that way). We started off with a round of lime sodas and soups, and we pretty much covered the soup menu of Millers. I had a combo stew, which had shrimps, mixed veggies and ladies fingers (okra) in it.
Ms BakeAcake had a chicken creme soup with mushrooms,
Mr VP ordered a chicken Minestrone soup,
and the birthday boy Mr P had a veg creme soup with mixed vegetables.

After the soups (actually while we were having the soups), BakeAcake told us she would need to hurry things up because of an irritating colleague of hers who usually tried to sabotage her work if she realises BakeAcake isn't at work. So we wuickly ordered a plate of chicken tenders for ourselves (the meat eaters)

and Mr P ordered a plate of cottage cheese fingers.
While tucking away at the food, we caught up on a lot of things we'd missed over the last several months (almost a year) with BakeAcake. And yeah, in the midst of all that, we also ordered our main course.

Mr P, being the veggie, went for a veg lasagna, and I have to say that every place I've been to that serves lasagna has a unique way of presenting it, and Millers was no different.
Mr VP stuck with chicken and ordered a chicken cheese grill with rice, and that thing looked mean and I was wondering how Mr VP was planning on finishing that alone.
Ms BakeAcake ordered a classic New York steak with cheese and bernaise sauce.

Before we go any further, I'll let you all know that she ate around 20% of the steak and said "I'm too full to continue" and tossed it over to me. All afternoon she kept saying that I've lost so much weight, now I know: she was readying me to eat what she couldn't! Women, you can never get anything straight out of them.

I was a lil busy clicking pictures of others food and engrossed in the taboo topics we were discussing that I forgot to click a picture of the bacon burger I ordered until I was almost half done. It was a classic BLT with some salad by the side for garnish, which I've always found a little funny, coz I've never seen anyone clean that up from their plate while eating.
I've been on this quest to find the perfect burger, and so I've been looking to eat burgers wherever I can. The steak sandwich I had the last time I came to Millers was very good, and although they called it a sandwich, if you're gonna put a steak in the middle of a piece of bread, sorry, it doesn't become a sandwich, it's a burger. I go by the stuffing, and not the outer bread/bun jacket to call it a sandwich or a burger.

I've had crisp bacon before at Fresco's, but this bacon was something totally different.. It was a little think, and had fat on it, and it wasn't chewy at all. Now I know why Americans and Europeans go gaga over bacon, especially when there's a little fat on it. This thing is delicious, truly delicious, and I'm glad I had the pleasure of wolfing it down.

We decided to have desserts outside at the Sweet Chariot on Cunningham Road, but while walking there, BakeAcake got a call from work that required here to go back at the earliest because, no surprises, the sabotage had begun. Mr VP took her, while birthday boy dropped me back to office and headed home. I wonder if BakeAcake owes us dessert now, since it was her work that got dessert taken away from under our noses. I guess we'll never know.

Café Fresco's

After a long Saturday morning and afternoon, and an evening spent with the realisation that my computer wasn't switching on, Mr VP decided that we head to Fresco's for dinner. Fresco's, on Cunningham Road, was a place we'd been to on 3-4 occasions before, but for breakfast, as the breakfast spread was truly amazing for the Rs. 150 we paid. A classic English breakfast buffet, with loads of fruit juices and the quintessential bacon and eggs, hash browns and baked beans and a lot more.

Anyway, we went for dinner, and it was a la carte. I knew a day would come when one of the places we visit would turn out to be a real disappointment, and ta daa! Fresco's it was. Apart from the settings, which are almost perfect with the open settings, and trees all around, we didn't find anything else interesting. The dim lights and a nice(?) candle on the table would make couples happy I guess, but for my buddies and I, we really struggled to read what was on the menu under the dim lights, and what's more, since there was no girl in our midst, we didn't get a candle on the table!!!

The soup we started off with, a veg Grusso was lousy(I was giving Mr P company with some veg food and didn't want him to feel bad that he'd be the only veg eater tonight).

It was thick and gooey, as if the cook dropped an extra quart of flour into the soup while making it. And wait till you hear this: the pepper in the shaker on the table had white pepper, not black! Imagine our surprise when we kept shaking pepper into the soup and tasting it, but didn't have any change in its taste. We also ordered a plate of fried cheese sticks, and these weren't good either. The cheese had an odd taste to it, and the salad with it was nothing great either.

The main course that we ordered was, well, not bad, but I've certainly had way better for the same cost. The lamb pepperoni which Mr VP ordered was well cooked, but bland! I guess they added more white pepper instead of the regular black pepper,

The veg goulash was ok (from what Mr P said),

and the chicken rockers (what I ordered), was, again, bland, and smelt funny, and I didn't care too much for the teddy bear face look with the presentation.


Our glasses weren't filled with water until we asked for it (maybe they were busy, it being a Saturday night, but then again I wasn't having a free meal), and we had to wait for 20 minutes for the bill to arrive! That's it, game, set and match...this place is outta my list for good! We went to the near by Barista for dessert and were quite happy to getting something good to what was otherwise a pretty disappointing meal. On the bright side, we got to see a Yahama R1, which Mr P told me would cost around Rs. 12,00,000 after import duties, etc. Sweet!

Café Fresco's, Hatworks Boulevard, Cunningham Road, Bangalore.

Millers 46

#46, Miller's Road, Bangalore. That's the address, and at that spot you'll find Miller's 46. A steak house where you certainly will not find the most annoying cretins of Bangalore - young college kids in the midst of public displays of affection (something almost synonymous with the Coffee Day outlets) or rich, spoiled school kids blowing away their pop's moolah. Millers 46 has a slightly snazzy yet informal look to it which goes perfectly with the kind of food they serve. With just 3 of us left among the guys from the original group of 5 guys and 2 girls from school, we decided to head out to Millers, which would make it the first visit there for all of us. Thanks goodness Mr. VP's brother reserved seats for us, coz otherwise we'd have had to wait for at least a couple of hours, as we later found out (yes, that's how crowded Millers gets).

Once we got in, we noticed that the place had a very Texas look and feel to it (as it was supposed to). The waiters were all dressed in a nifty uniform and were always smiling, or so I thought. Anyway, we ordered a round of mocktails (since we had to drive back home, alcohol was a no-no). While Mr. P and Mr. VP had a southern ginger, with ginger syrup and lime cordial, it was a toothless shark, consisting of lime juice, orange juice, grenadine and ice, for me. Along with the drinks, we ordered a mixed platter (since Mr. P is a vegetarian) which consisted of chicken lollipops, wings, tender fried chicken, mushroom caps (which Mr.P ate before I could take a picture), fries and a lil salad.
Everything on the platter tasted good, except maybe the tender fried chicken could have been a little spicier, given the fact that Millers 46 has a Texan look and feel and the food served is supposed to be with a Texas touch, but nevertheless, it was good.

On to the main course, and I was craving to have a good burger in a long, long time and immediately decided to start off on the Texan steak sandwich, and apart from the fact that it had a slice of Amul cheese in it (I was hoping for bubbling, hot Mozzarella or something), it was really good. I had asked for the steak to be well done and it was still juicy; definitely a must have if you're going in a group.
Mr.P, the vegetarian, teed off with a Mexican potato spud dish with beans and tomato. I'm not a big fan of eating plain potato, so took a spoon of the baked beans and mixed veggies and cheese, and it was good. A little spicy, but not overly fire-in-your-mouth spicy. I just wish there's a substitute for the potato to account for the carbohydrates, but hey, for those who don't mind potato, it's a nice dish.
Mr.VP, the poorest eater amongst the three of us, ordered a brandied cube steak on a bed of rice. The beef was marinated in brandy (duh) and was done pretty well. Well done as Mr.VP asked for, but still juicy and not dry.
Mr.P and I weren't done :) So on to round two. While Mr.P ordered a Veg a la king,
and I ordered a plate of grilled spicy pork sausages. Personally, I'd have preferred to have had the sausages with something other than a pepper sauce, but what the hell, they're trying to be Texan with everything, and since the sausages were good and so was the everything on the plate with it, no complaints.
All in all, an amazing experience. Some people may say that Millers is a little pricey, but hey, when the food is as good as it is, I really don't mind shelling out a little more.

After the meal, we thought of going to watch a movie at Sigma Mall, and in spite of having a really heavy dinner (especially Mr.P, who had a lot of potato! fries, spud, a bit in the a la king... phew), we actually sprinted a small stretch on Cunningham Rd towards the mall, only to get there and learn that all the tickets for all the movies that night were sold out. Damn! And then Mr.P said he probably was going to throw up, which wasn't very nice, coz I was afraid that would cause a domino effect: he throws up, then watching him throw Mr.VP throws up and then I follow. Luckily, that wasn't to be, and after hanging around the mall for a while, home sweet home for some snooze.

Food: Very good
$$$: Not as expensive as you'd think
Service: Decent, prompt
Verdict: Best place for steaks (and maybe burgers).

#46, Millers Road, Vasanthnagar, Bangalore. Phone: 41148022, 41131746, 41131740