Arbor Brewing Company - Bangalore

Wow! Life at Zomato ensures one thing - you have a lot of awesome work, you never get bored of the work you do, and well, you also don't seem to be able to make time for some of the other things you love - at least, I'm unable to, and I wouldn't want to straight away chalk it down to bad planning. It's not impossible, but I guess I've just chosen to use whatever free time I have to rest and recuperate.

A while back, I was invited over to Arbor Brewing Company to try out the range of brewed beers and some of the food they serve. The owner, Gaurav Sikka, was an excellent host, and extremely passionate about the beer brewing job. I know there's been a lot that's been spoke about Arbor on various social media platforms about the 'quality' of what it has to offer, but I think the saying 'to each his/her own' couldn't hold more true here. Sure, like at most places, there are a few things that are amiss, and there are few that'll blow your mind.

The interiors of Arbor are what you'd what a pub to look like. It's got an all wood look, and there's a long bar counter...like, really, really long! There's a section where you can see the huge vats in which the beer is brewed, and it lends a little bit of mystic charm to the whole place. I loved the wooden benches - classic! But then there were some couches and cushion-y seating arrangements that I didn't think went well with the whole look. It would have been great had everything been old school.

Ales and lagers

 Now, on to the beers. At the outset, I'm a fan of wheat beers. I used to like dark ales until I was introduced to the paler, slightly less fruity tasting Hoegaarden. And from then on, I've been hooked. The darker ales almost taste bad now :p So anyway, we were introduced to a whole different set of lagers and ales that Arbor brews - 7 to be precise on that night. Except for the Irish Stout, I didn't mind all other lagers and ales. The stout, with its pitch black coffee-like appearance and smoky flavour isn't something I can handle, and hence can't really comment on how good it was. The honey lavender ale was one of the best I had. While it didn't actually taste like honey, it did have a nice 'feel' on the palate. Apart from these, I also liked the Bangalore Bliss (wheat beer) and the Brasserie Blonde (spiced ale).

Moving on to the food, here there were some hits and quite a few misses. Now, I normally prefer a pub to have pub food, and so far, barring one or two places, I haven't come across too many places that stick to their guns and serve only pub food. Invariably, they do go down the road of having India food, especially when it comes to the main courses, and to my mind, that's just an attempt to please a small segment of the masses, who, quite honestly, wouldn't mind if dal makhani and rice weren't available. But what do I know - I'm a bloody Anglophile who loves food and don't care about others, right? Right?

Non veg platter

A non veg platter, with the usual suspects, was presented. The chicken tikka and the prawns were quite decent, not over cooked, and the brown dip given, with a sweet & sour taste to it. The wings were good - the sauce was sticky and nice, while a sprinkling of coriander gave it just a little additional flavour burst while ripping the meat off the bone. What wasn't so great were the chops and the calamari. With the chops, the flavour wasn't the best, the meat was a little tough, and overall, while I like the fact that chops are available, this one wasn't kosher. With the calamari, the pepper coating was way too inconsistent, and the calamari itself wasn't the best.

Hummus with olive tapenade and sun-dried tomatoes

Then came the hummus with some sun-dried tomatoes and olive tapenades. Nice, but not the creamiest hummus I've had. And I'm not even comparing it with the ones I've eaten in the Middle East.

Veg platter

Next came a platter of ghaas poos food. Needless to say, I wasn't too thrilled, but of course, I needed to stay neutral. There was a surprise in store though. The onion rings that you see in the snap above - well, those are by far the best onion rings Ive had. Ever. The least expected dish of the lot brought the biggest smile to my face. My fellow food blogger Swapna of FoodPornDiaries and FoodForSwaps had also joined me with her hubby Arvind, and together, the opinion was unanimous. The rest of the stuff on the platter were mediocre to poor. The paneer and pineapple combo just didn't work because there wasn't enough of acid from the pineapple, and not a strong enough flavour in the marinade on the paneer. The gobi manchurian was, well, an oily glob of soy sauce and cauliflower, and I've far better gobi manchurian from street vendors. The baby corn was decent, but then again, ghaas poos, so nothing great :)

Fish tacos with salsa

We were then presented with fish tacos, something that was being worked on. Well, it needed to be worked on alright! Here's the thing people need to realise with seafood, especially fish. There needs to be some form of acid or the other. Lime/lemon juice, tamarind, even kokum. And chilli. Of course, with the regular seasoning (duh!). When you're going to wrap that seafood in a pocket of dough (tacos, in this case), you need to make sure of two things: (1) any accompanying bits and pieces of anything shouldn't cover the taste of the seafood, and (2) remember all the acid + chilli? You need a little more of it.

Finally, to have something with the last round of beers, we decided to try something else, and this time, we decided to take a pick from the menu. We zeroed in on the Turkish kebabs, or so it said. Don't know how Turkish this was, but one thing was certain - this was the best dish of the night! By a long shot. The herb flavouring used, along with the seasoning, was perfect. I didn't care too much about what the dip/sauce was, because I didn't even want to try it. The meat was grilled very nicely, it wasn't allowed to become dry, the flavours blended in perfectly with the lamb, and it went really well with the beer! Game, set, match!

Overall, I think Arbor has some fantastic beer, some selective snacks that are good, and some that require quite some work to be done before they come out of the kitchen. Also, given that it seemed evident that the kitchen has  its fair share of inconsistent 'behaviour', I think it'd be best to work on a slightly smaller menu, get those dishes right, and then gradually ease more dishes into the menu. Cheers to that day!

Kund

Kund is a small north India/Punjabi restaurant in Indiranagar, adjacent to Domino's Pizza, and virtually a stone's throw away from my office. Given this, it's a little strange that in the past 5 years I've worked at the current company, I've visited Kund only twice before (and both times were before I started this blog). Kund is owned by the father of Chef Manjeet Singh (the owner of Herbs n Spices in Indiranagar 80 feet road). It's a tiny joint, with 5-6 six-seater tables and an equal number of 2 seater tables.

The menu has several options for vegetarians (the usual gobi and mushroom and half a zillion paneer options), but for non-vegetarians, it's almost like hitting pay dirt. What's heartening to see is that they have several lamb dishes on the menu. Since this was one of the few and rare occasions where the number of vegetarians outnumbered the non-vegetarians (I went with some freinds from office) comprehensively (in a group with whom I've dined), the non-veg dishes are minimal.

The vegetarians started off with usual - paneer tikkas with green mint chutney. Along with this, they also ordered a veg seekh kabab, which all the vegans seemed to like a lot, but left a lot to be desired with my palate. Also, a good number of these guys are poor eaters really, and one of 'em is allergic to mushrooms - talk about narrowing your options - vegetarian and allergic some of the veg stuff!

Us non-PETA folk settled for tangdi kababs and gosht mazedar kabab. I got a real kick out of the name. The tangdi kababs were drumsticks marinated in a chili, ginger & garlic paste, cumin, and fenugreek. These were nice and hot and the meat just slipped off the bone. The lamb kababs were marinated in cashew nut paste amongst other spices, making it rich and creamy. The lamb itself was boneless and was extremely tender. We ordered seconds of this.

Tangadi kabab

Paneer tikka

Gosht mazedar kabab

For our main coin course, my fellow non-veggie and I ordered a gosht lababdar. I didn't read what exactly this had, and really didn't care as long as there was gravy, no bones, and tender meat. And this was exactly that. Hurray! We also ordered a mutton biryani, which came in a copper pot and was nicely cooked. I've had better biryanis elsewhere, but this was not bad, and the quantity was more than enough for the two of us after having 2 kulchas each.

The PETA folk had some paneer dish and a dal along with kulchas, and to mop up the excess dal, they had a jeera rice. I guess it was good since they didn't complain and everything was polished off - the hallmark of hungry diners and/or tasty food.

Paneer something and Dal something

My plate with my food

Mutton biryani

Food: Good
$$$: Not too expensive. 8 of us (6 veg, 2 non-veg) ate and the bill was a touch under 2000, which was around 250 per head...well worth it!
Service: Decent
Verdict: Must visit if in the area and if you want to have north Indian/Punjabi food.

Kund, #303, Ashok Terrace, Next to Domino's Pizza, 100 Feet Road, Indiranagar, Bangalore. Phone: 25281416

Fusilli with ... a lot of things

Saturday night...what a night to cook. P's busy at work, VP's ... sleeping I guess, I don't know, and the party I was supposed to go to at another friend's (from school) house just got canceled, and so while on my way back after doing a restaurant review (coming up soon), I stopped to purchase a few things to go with a packet of fusilli that's there at home.


Whenever I cook chicken, especially with pasta, I'm usually big on using a lot of veggies, especially colourful ones. I guess I missed out on something green in colour :)


I surprised myself this time by using olive oil to fry stuff - usually I reserve my olive oil only for drizzling on meats for marinate or on pizzas.

I found this pack of chicken sausages that looked good, and so that was what I used to keep the brother happy (he's a big chicken fan - not too big on any other meats).










One potential area of improvement - think before cooking. I should have added the chicken into the pan (first), and then followed it up with the veggies. That way they'd have remained a little crisp, like an actual stir fry. I made the same mistake with the next dish (next post).

The end product was very good. No specific name - tomato puree was the primary 'sauce', with the rest of the veggies making up the rest of the matter.

Barbeque @ VP's house

Saturday night fever! That's what it was all about. VP celebrated his 25th birthday (yeah, although he's my batchmate, he's a year younger than I am...one of those 84 kids and not an 83 adult) on the 25th (coincidence!) of Feb and decided to have a barbeque party for the Army School gang on the weekend. As usual, I was supposed to do the cooking, and with VP's skills in the kitchen (he didn't even know where the salt is kept), I knew it was going to be an interesting evening to say the least.

So Saturday afternoon I go to his house (he's already purchased most of the stuff we need) and we start - I with the marinade, and he handing over the ingredients I ask for (as and when he finds them). So we decide to make two kinds of marinades for the chicken - a coriander-mint-green chilly-curd marinade for one, and a soya sauce-sugar-white-wine vinegar-spring onioin-chilly powder marinade for the steaks. This second one was a typical Korean way of marinating and barbecuing/grilling chicken in the open.

For Mr P, the vegetarian, there was the ever faithful paneer, and Mr VP had bought 1 kg of paneer, and so we knew there was going to be enough. Although we had some mushrooms, we weren't able to do anything with them coz of the lack of time, in spite of starting at 3 in afternoon. So for the paneer, one marinade was the same coriander-mint-curd, while for the second one I kept wondering what a good friend of mine, with whom I had an unfortunate fallout a couple of days prior to this party, would have liked being a paneer lover. Peeved at myself for the fallout, I tried to think what could be done to make a paneer lover enjoy the dish. A moment of inspiration from VP's mom and we had it - lemon juice, with curd, a little chilly powder, turmeric, a little garam masala and chat masala, and some salt.

After leaving the food to marinate in the refridgerator for a few hours, we killed time by shopping for some charcoal! Boy, it's tough to find what you want when you want it. We, however, got lucky as we found a place. However, finding charcoal is one thing, getting it to burn is quite another, as we soon found out! Luckily, VP's dad was an old hand at this - I guess his days in the air force had made him a pro at such things.

VP and his dad starting the barbeque

Pretty soon, that darn black thing was all ablaze and we were all set for the grilling - or actually, the food of all set for the grilling, we were just plain hungry!

And then there was fire!

Food, glor-e-ous food :)

Paneer with the coriander-mint-curd marinade (L) and chicken with the same marinade (R)

A different view

Miss BakeACake also joined us, and although I had initially started the blog with no pictures of people, to heck with it! That's Ms BakeACake, who left her husband (no, no, I mean left him at home) and came skewered a quite a few (I tried to make it sound like as if this was a hunting expedition and she came and shot a few, but I know I'm falling woefully short of the mark).

And that's yours truly on the left, and Mr P on the right - excuse the glitter on my face, but the place was HOT and the only benefit of standing in front of a hot barbeque grill is it will clear your nasal highways, that's all!

The paneer sitting in it's tangy, lemony marinade - oh I so wish that things get back to where they were before the fallout! Sniff, honk.

That's the Korean-styled soya sauce steak - juicy!

The end is nigh! The closing ceremony has the birthday boy putting off the barbeque in style.

So after eating, we drive Ms BakeACake to her house and reunite her with her hubby dear, spend some time there discussing iPhone apps that could be possible hits, and finally head back to VP's place at close to 2 AM. Long day, and for me, a long wait.