Caesar's

Friday night saw P, VP and I make a sudden decision to go watch the new Bruce Willis movie Surrogates @ Fame Lido. After the movie, we were wondering where to head for dinner and started walking along M G Road, coming up with and scratching off options. We came up with Caesar's, and since none of us had been there, we decided to walk it down.

Entering Caesar's was like stepping into a era of Bangalore that existed when I was growing up as a kid. The paint, the setup inside, even the smell for that matter seemed to be screaming 'old Bangalore'.

We settled in and ordered a round of jaljeera. Three big glasses arrived, and along with it we also ordered a round of simple onion rings. The rings were oily (well, duh!) and the two clowns with me made me eat most of them - I tell you, these guys won't let me reap the benefits of all the exercising I'm doing (I run for 30 minutes every evening).

Jaljeera

P is a big fan of soups, and one of the soups caught his eye - tomato egg drop soup. Sounded interesting, and he asked me if I was willing to split a soup with me, which I was, so a split soup it was. The soup was actually nice, and although watery (P for some reason thought it would be creamy), he liked it too.

Tomato egg drop soup

Onion rings

While downing the rings and our soup, we were engaged in an prolonged discussion about the pros and cons of arranged marriage versus a love marriage, and everything that most of today's about-to-be-married folks seem to have taken for granted, especially stuff about the expectations from marriage - it's not the same as it was when our parents got married, that's for sure.

Garlic bread

After a wait for nearly half an hour, our mains arrived. VP ordered a Chicken ala Kiev, a crumb fried chicken dish that was filled with butter, served on a bed of mashed potatoes. And typical of VP, he never finishes a meal, and invariably it's me who mops up what he's left, but my steak was a little too filling, and so I wasn't able to finish his meal.

Chicken ala Kiev

My steak ala Caesar's was a superb combo of beef and chicken, and although I try to avoid beef nowadays, what with the global warming and stuff (in case you're wondering what's eating beef got to do with global warming, well, the cows that are in farms where they are raised for their meat are the no.1 source of methane, and I've verified it as well). In this case I made an exception, and now I can't think of why I chose to do so. In any case, my steak was good. Nice cut of beef, and the chicken was good as well.

Steak ala Caesar's

P didn't seem to have any complaints about his shashlik, and as usual, mopped it up quietly.

Veg shashlik

I was too full to eat dessert, and so the guys ordered a hot chocolate fudge from which I had a couple of spoons before paying the bill.

Hot chocolate fudge

Next weekend is deepavali, or diwali, as it's known in the north. I'm off to Mangalore, and hopefully I'll be able to indulge in some culinary adventures there. But before that, there's a whole week in Bangalore, so hopefully there's something more to come.

Food: Good
$$$: Slightly expensive; the bill came to about 1680 with tax.
Service: Good, but also a little slow. Also, they don't rush you & give you all the time you need.
Verdict: Worth a visit once in a while just to get the good, clean 'smell' of old Bangalore. Oh, and like I said, the food's not too bad :)

Caesar's, 9/2, Mahalakshmi Chambers, M G Road, Bangalore. Phone: 25584144

BM Review: Pizzeria Romano

Last Saturday, over the long weekend, I visited Pizzeria Romano (the place I'd visited a week before with P and VP) to review the place for Bangalore Mirror. The review can be read here. My guests for the review were Ruth D'Souza Prabhu, husband Sudhakar Prabhu., and their almost-3 year old daughter Anoushka. Ruth, apart from free lancing as a journalist now, also runs a blog about places to eat in Bangalore, and is one of a very few who actually blogs about restaurants in Bangalore. Sudhakar is a 3-D graphics visualiser at an architecture firm. He's also a drummer with two bands, Bourbon Street and Quasar, formed during his college days in Manipal.

Nice & Naughty (Litchi based drink)

Bruschetta

Splendido (Green apple based drink)

Garlic bread with cheese

The story behind the Margherita pizza is pretty interesting. In 1899, Queen Marghereta visited Naples to escape the dreaded plague, and Chef Rafaelle Esposito created a pizza for the queen with tomatoes (red), Mozzarella (white), and basil (green), the colours of the Italian flag. The queen loved the pizza, and the chef named it after her, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Margherita

Shitake mushroom pizza

Veggie Supreme

Spaghetti Arrabiatta, ordered for Anoushka, who wanted to eat 'noodles'. It turned out to be a little spicier than what an Arrabiatta should be - a case of being a little too liberal with the chilly flakes.

Spaghetti Arrabiatta

Wood fire Pizzeria Romano special

Chocolate Mousse

Banana dessert pizza

Portuguese rice pudding

Pizzeria Romano, #55, 5^th Cross, 6^th Block, Koramangala, Bangalore. Phone: 25525104

Spiga

Spiga is back! Almost opposite the older location, above the Giovanni showroom at the corner of St Mark's Road and Vittal Mallya Road, Spiga seems to be drawing all its old faithful back into its realm, and also seems to be pulling in new recruits.

VP and I reached Spiga around 1:15 and had to wait until 1:55 to get a table. P called and said he'd join us a little late. Once we were seated, our waiter got a basket of 3 slices of garlic bread, and here's the kicker - all three were of varying sizes, like the three bears in the Goldilocks story. There was a papa garlic bread (long), a mama garlic bread (medium), and a baby garlic bread (short). We waited for a few minutes, hoping that we'd be given plates, but that didn't seem to be the case. Hungry, we dug into the bread. Finally, we motioned to the waiter to get us some plates, and he got us plates.

When the starter arrived, it did seem a little disappointing, given the standards we'd come to expect form Spiga. The oregano chicken skewers didn't come with the skewers (OK, I may be getting a little ahead of myself, but I thought at least wooden skewers!). Instead, although you could make out the holes in the chicken where the skewers passed through, they came with tooth-picks! Now that, for some reason, was very putting off.

Oregano Chicken Skewers

And what's the deal with the naan-like bread by the side? They sure as hell don't seem to be the kind you can scoop the chicken pieces with (the pieces are way too large, and there isn't any gravy to mop up). The chicken tasted nice, like any other malai kabab that I've had at any of the numerous tandoori food places in the city.

For the main course (by which time Mr P had joined us), I ordered a classic steak sandwich. My previous visit to Spiga at the old location saw me having something very common - some kind of pasta, while the persons seated at the table next to ours were having a very beautiful looking sandwich, so I was craving for something like that. My sandwich tasted good, with just the right amount of mayo added to it and although the lettuce was whole, cutting the sandwich helped combat the difficulty in eating a large leaf of lettuce. However, when they say steak sandwich and serve you a filling of shredded chicken slivers, to say it's kinda disappointing would be the understatement of the century.

Classic Steak Sandwich

VP ordered a bacon-wrapped fish, served with penne. He had a severe headache, and so that gave him an excellent excuse to eat slowly, but I guess he liked the dish coz he almost ate the entire thing on his own.

Bacon wrapped Fish with Penne

P ordered a simple Thai red curry (vegetarian) and all too quickly polished it off as neatly as the rice seemed to be polished.

Thai Red Curry

We were pretty full (VP and I had visited Egg Factory for a snack while waiting to get seats in Spiga, so we were full), and so settled for one blueberry cheesecake. The cake was nice, and was different from most other cheesecakes you get elsewhere (which are almost like a slightly more hardened mousse).

Blueberry Cheese Cake

I don't think I'm heading towards Spiga again in a hurry. The music was way too loud, and it being a Sunday, so were the people. the service was eh, and the only silver lining was that the food didn't disappoint. Thankfully, with me, that's the most important criteria, you know, kinda like why men go to watch an Anna Kournikova match...not for her tennis, or like when women go to watch a John Abraham movie...for his looks of course, not his acting skills (in his defense, have you ever seen a mannequin 'act' anywhere?), but the fact that there was this charm and aura around Spiga made me expect a lot more from it.

Food: Good
$$$: Around 400-500 per head; may reduce if group size is bigger
Service: Eh!
Verdict: I liked the old Spiga better - in terms of food, service, ambiance, and best of all, it didn't have mind-numbingly loud music playing all the time.
Extra Info: The music is very loud, and people speak at the top of their lungs and act as if they own the place, so if it's a pleasant environ you're looking for, certainly not on weekends.

Spiga, above Giovanni, Corner of St Mark's Road & Vittal Mallya Road, St Mark's Road, Bangalore. Phone: 42110469 , 42110470

Café Thulp

My guest at Dakhani Degh shall henceforth be referred to as WickedWitch - no, I"m not turning into a bad boy and neither are my senses leaving the small confines of my head, but that's precisely the name she used to describe herself - wicked witch of the feast, although it couldn't be any more diametrically opposite in description. Well, whatever.

So during lunch at DD, I tell her about my quest to find the city's best burgers, and she tells me that there is this new place about to open near her house in Koramangala called Café Thulp, and it's run by Gautham Krishnankutty of Tai Tai and Asia in a Box fame. And the bait she tossed at me was "You can't finish the burger that he serves". Me, not going to be able to finish a burger? Are you kidding me lady? Well, according to her, her healthy appetite prevented her from eating anything else.

So we make plans to visit the place as soon as it opens, and she calls me and we head to the place, me all geared up to tackle this beast of a burger, this upstart that claims it can beat me down. Once we got there, I immediately liked the aura exuded by the place - in a way, I'm a sucker for nice, bright colours, so I guess it helped in a way that the restaurant was brightly coloured, but that apart, it seemed nice.

A look at the menu actually didn't do me any good 'coz my eyes automatically homed in on the burger section as soon as the menu was placed before my eyes, and all I saw was 'Moos'. If you wondering what's that, well, that's the way the burgers are named... and I saw the biggest of them all, Moos your daddy, a beast containing a 12 ounce beef patty, and Gautham asked me "Would you like some bacon with that?". Do ants like sugar? Do women marry for money? I thought of a gazillion questions that had a one word answer, which matched mine in this case. I specifically asked not to be served the French fries along with the burger but asked them to retain the slaw served with the burger. I know now that I'll be able to finish the fries as well.

Moos your daddy

Another angle of moos your daddy

Ms WickedWitch had a sub, it's name I don't know. You can read a detailed post about Thulp here. We also ordered a Chef's special salad, which had a very nice dressing. To make up for the missing fries, I 'thulped' quite a bit of the salad, which is what gave me the confidence that the fries wouldn't prove to be an obstacle now.

We finished with dessert. I had a Picasso, and no points for guessing why the name. WickedWitch had a rum tart or something like that. And as I mentioned to her, I liked my Picasso better...which isn't saying that the dessert she had was bad - no, it was good, but mine was better!

Picasso

The burger I had here at Thulp will definetly make it to the best burgers list I'm compiling. The reasons I liked it were simple:

• Bun large enough to enclose the meat and 'stuff'
  
• Nicely toasted bun
• Bottom half of bun not too thin making it crumble
  
• Lettuce wasn't a large leaf making me feel like a cow (esp. while eating cow!)
• Onions in it weren't raw - they were caramelised
• Burger patty placed on the lower half of the bun without anything between it and the lower half of the bun

What's so special of the last point you may wonder? Well, a good burger has all the other stuff on top of the patty, and the patty shouldn't have anything between it and the lower half of the bun because if the burger had been made right, the juices from the meat need to be absorbed by the lower half of the bun. So full points for construction!

I guess a detailed review is in order, so I won't go into giving the usual gyaan about a place. Stay tuned!

Café Thulp, #998, 1^st Main, 1^st Block, Koramangala, Bangalore. Phone: 25487788

Richies

Mr VP and I decided to head towards Frazer Town, specifically to Richies to try their biryani, which is supposed to be fabulous. And it being Ramazan, we expected them to get it right at least on this special day. And we weren't disappointed. We also ordered a half plate of mutton chops, which sadly were a little chewy, and nowhere near the melt-in-your-mouth tenderness of the mutton in the biryani.

Mutton Biryani

Mutton Chops

The biryani lived up to its reputation, and both VP and I left extremely content.

Richies, #82 MM Road, After Alibaba Cafe, Opposite Bata Showroom, Bangalore. Phone: 25486696

BM Review: Dakhani Degh

This past week I'd been to a small restaurant called Dakhani Degh, situated well into south Bangalore (Jayanagar T block). This was part of a review for Bangalore Mirror, and the review can be read here. My guests were Suman Bolar, and her two sons Amol and Gaurav. Suman runs a popular blog called Food Travel Bangalore, also known as FTB. I've already learnt a lot from this foodie, and for one, I've actually met a food writer, and a brilliant one at that, so totally worth it.

The food was fabulous - especially the mutton main course dish and the dessert. The rest of the food was very good. Below are the pictures of what we ate.

Salarjung Kabab

Dakhani Sheekh Kabab

Mutton Bharra Kabab

Chicken Biryani

Shahi Dum Murgh

Mutton Mamoos

Khubani Ka Meetha

Food: Very good; although there was a butter chicken dish, stick to the Hyderabadi fare
$$$:Can't get better than this - the bill, for all this, including lemon sodas and lassi came to 1100 only!!!
Service: They take your order promptly, clear the plates promptly. If you expect more at these prices, you're crazy!
Verdict: Must visit, at least for the Khubani Ka Meetha and the mutton dishes
Extra Info: Take a right at Sagar hospital from Bannerghatta road (while coming from Dairy circle). It's after Sagar hospital, on the same road, just before the next traffic signal junction. Take a left at this signal and drive up ahead to find a place to park.

Dakhani Degh, 29/1, 30^th Cross, Tilak Nagar Main Road, Jayanagar T block, Bangalore. Phone: 32913033

Pizzeria Romano

P, VP and I had some time to kill last weekend. P and VP were at P's place 'packaging' a few chocolates that P wanted to 'gift' to a select few employees (read to a select few girls). I'd heard of this new pizza place that'd opened up in Koramangala, claiming to serve wood oven pizzas. Sounded good, so off we went for dinner.

We started off with mushroom soups, and mushroom in a garlic sauce, along with a plate of chimichanga rolls. The chimichanga, while being slightly different from what I'd eaten at Zoe's, weren't too bad themselves, while the mushroom in the garlic sauce was good, especially if you're the kind who likes garlic - for whatever reasons, including keeping Dracula away!

This place is all veggie for the time being. They plan to start the non-veg section shortly, and also a cafe below, and since this is a unit of Sprocket, the cafe will be called... that's right, Cafe Sprocket.

Chimichanga rolls

Mushroom in garlic sauce

For pizzas, although I was in a mood to devour as many as possible, my fellow partners in crime had filled their stomachs with biscuits ar Mr P's place before coming, and so we settled for two - a 12" wood fire pizza, called Veggie Supreme (recommended by the waiter) with Thousand Island dressing, and we later had a smaller, 7" or 10" (don't remember) Hawaiian (the pineapple in it drawing our attention toward it).

Undoubtedly, the Veggie Supreme came out top...the thin crust baked to perfection, the dressings, the toppings, the cheese... all in just the right amounts and

Veggie Supreme with Thousand Island dressing

Hawaiian

Food: Very good; they do serve a few pastas as well, but come on, stick to the pizzas - they're divine
$$$: Not expensive - way cheaper than a Dominos, or a Pizza Hut, or Papa Johns, or Little Italy. In my view, the best Pizzas in Bangalore.
Service: Very good
Verdict: If you don't visit this place, you're missing out on good pizzas.
Extra Info: Parking could be an issue if you're in a vehicle that has more that 2 wheels, so either park on the main road i.e. the road before you turn onto 5^th cross, or try one of the small lanes on 5^th cross.

Pizzeria Romano, #55, 5^th Cross, 6^th Block Koramangala, Bangalore. Phone: 25525104