Edo

After Harima, I've been wanting to have sushi and sashimi for the longest time. With ITC Gardenia opening in the city, and with it an authentic Japanese restaurant Edo, it was high on my 'to-do' list, and eventually I got to go there. The image to the right is quintessentially Japanese, representing the most well-known dishes.

Edo is about as authentic as it gets when it comes to Japaense cuisine (at least in India). The restaurant, one among 6 at Gardenia, is quite truly spectacular. Soft, mellow (and yellow) lighting, along with a display of some of the seafood, well spaced-out tables, a spic-n-span appearance, and comfortable ambiance makes Edo a wonderful location for a celebratory meal of sorts. Or if you've got the money and enjoy Japanese food, you could just go there to enjoy some good Japanese food. I was there to celebrate the birthday of an extremely close friend, and we were quite excited about the evenings meal. We had opted for the Kyoto fixed meal (the other two being the Tokyo meal and the Nara meal).

While the Nara meal was a vegetarian meal, the Kyoto and Tokyo fixed meals were non vegetarian. The fixed meals consist of 7 courses, so it's quite elaborate and you'd do well to go to Edo to spend some time there and get pampered. The Kyoto meal costs Rs 3200 + taxes, Tokyo Rs 5000 + taxes, and the Nara (vegetarian) will set you back by Rs 2500 + by taxes.

The 7 course meal can be broken down into the following categories: zensai (appetisers), sashimi, yakimono (grilled items), nimono (steamed), agemono (deep fried tempura), sushi, shokuji (staples - rice or noodles), and mizugashi (desserts, numbering 3). The zensai served to us consisted of crab, fish, and egg.


While the fish and egg were pretty decent - the fish nice and soft and the egg, almost like a cake, thick yet fluffy.

Sea bass
Egg
The crab seemed to be the 'just like crab' meat available at Spar and other supermarkets. It tasted good, but no different from what's available frozen.

Crab, or just-like-crab meat?
The second course, sashimi, consisted of salmon and tuna, was quite simply fabulous. The fish were fresh, plump, and fleshy, and the staff also come up to your table and grate fresh wasabi (horse radish) at the table. Also, the wasabi is grated using a paddle that has shark skin - apparently the authentic tool for grating wasabi for sushi and sashimi.

Salmon (orange), and tuna with seaweed and wasabi
Shark skin paddle to grate wasabi, with wasabi root
The third course, yakimono, had grilled chicken and sea bass, and was quite tender and wonderfully flavoured in a teriyaki sauce and was served with a spice mixture of 7 spices that went wonderfully well with soy sauce.


Full view
Ginger, in the form of a fish tail
The next course, nimono, which was a steamed dish, again, had sea bass along with the broth of 4 other steamed vegetables, separately steamed to maintain their individual properties in taste and flavour. Carrot, lady's finger (okra), pumpkin, and brinjal (egg plant/aubergine). The reason for steaming the vegetables separately and then adding everything together is so that the flavours are retained intact. The sea bass itself was quite fabulous - thick, juicy, fresh. I'm guessing so many dishes consisted of sea bass 'coz they must've bought sea bass fresh that morning, which is an excellent plan of action - using the best fish you've got for the meals for the day.

Sea bass
The fifth course was the tempura, and it was perhaps the only disappointment - not because it was bad, but compared to the rest of the food, it was extraordinarily insipid.


The sixth course was a dish that has become synonymous with Japanese cuisine - sushi. Little maki rolls with salmon roe, and then of course, there was salmon itself, along with red snapper. The quality of the fish, in all the dishes thus far, was quite simply superb. And they weren't miserly with the portions that they served either...well, they'd better not have been. After all, we were paying a small fortune for them.


The seventh course (and at this point I realised that desserts would make it an 8 course meal) was shokuji, or the staples. You can select either rice or noodles mixed with chicken. This comes with a bowl of miso soup. Boy, do I love a miso or what! Thin, light, packed with flavour, what more can you ask for in a soup. Needless to say, it's comforting. Check out the steam coming out from the bowl in the snap to the left. There are some scallions that are chopped and sprinkled on the top. Normally, I'm not a big fan of too much of green flotilla in my soups, but in this case, since the greens were very easy to chew and send into the labyrinth that was my stomach, I was OK.

We ordered noodles as we were both fans of noodles. The noodles were glazed in a teriyaki-like sauce and the chicken in it actually had falvour, as opposed to the chicken pieces one normally finds in fried rice or noodles, which are usually flavourless and dry. I was busy picking the chicken pieces with my chop sticks.



Finally, the dessert, or mizugashi, that consisted of three things: sesame flavoured ice cream, a Japanese yuzu lime cheesecake (thanks to Gautam John [@gkjohn] for helping me with the name), and green tea tiramisu.


Sesame ice cream
Japanese yuzu lime cheesecake
Green tea tiramisu
While the ice cream most certainly had an acquired taste to it (in my opinion, it was way too strong), the cheesecake was more subdued (or subtle) in flavour, and actually felt quite light as opposed to ones with heavy cream cheese in them. The tiramisu, we felt, should have been sweeter, or at least, we'd have liked it sweeter because among the trio, there wasn't a single dessert that was 'sweet'... I mean, desserts, come on! There needs to be something a little sweet, especially when you're having three. Playing with various levels of sweetness among the three would have made the perfect end to the meal. Overall, an excellent meal, one worthy to be eaten on special occasions.

Food: Excellent.
$$$: Expensive; 5 star rates. The Kyoto meal is Rs 3200 + taxes, Tokyo meal is Rs 5000 + taxes, and the Nara (veg) meal is Rs 2500 + taxes.
Service: Very good, and they explain the dishes really well.
Verdict: Must visit if you like Japanese food.

Edo, ITC Gardenia, #1 Residency Road (Field Marshall Cariappa Road), Bangalore. Phone: 22119898

Brahmin's Coffee Bar

Brahmin's Coffee Bar is a small self-service fast food joint deep into south Bangalore (Google map), near Shakar matt, between Basavanagudi and Chamarajapet. Operating since 1965, this little place has been, and still is, the best joint for idlis and vadas in town. They've even won the competition for the best idlis conducted by Times of India.

Here's another angle of the idlis and vada, taking a holy dip in the chutney.


The idlis are soft and fluffy, and for an extra 4 bucks, you'll also get a small dollop of white butter - butter made from buffalo milk. Brahmin's is one of the few places that doesn't offer you sambar, but only chutney. At most times, you would see an old gentleman, Radhakrishna Adiga, the owner, sitting at the entrance, pouring chutney to those walking out with the idlis and/or vadas.

Photo credit: Upasana Nath

The kesari bath (left), made from rava (that wonderful substitute for rice that came up trumps during world war 2), contains a lot of pineapple. I have heard some people complain that there is perhaps a little too much pineapple for their liking, but I didn't have any complaints - I love my kesari bath sweet, with a slight oily glaze brought about by the ghee.

The khara bath (right), the spicier complement for the kesari bath, is just as good. An ideal way to eat it is by filling half the spoon with kesari bath and the other half with the khara bath. The combination of sweet and spicy will continue to dance on your palate long after you've downed the dishes.



Stacked up and ready to be downed.


Tea and coffee are the only beverages available here - quite nice.

Photo credit: Upasana Nath

Photo credit: Upasana Nath
Nice trick to make sure you don't burn your fingers - I learnt it the hard way!

The place before the renovation and 'upgrade' of the board.











After the restoration or renovation, however you look at it. Photo credit: Upasana Nath











Food: Very good
$$$: Rs 150 for two
Service: Self service
Verdict: Must visit

Barhmin's Coffee Bar, Ranga Rao Road, near Shakara matt, Shankarapuram, Bangalore.

Swensen's (Koramangala)

Swensen's is the latest ice cream brand to hit Bangalore, and going by the look of things, they mean business. For a Bangalorean like me, who's grown up eating ice creams at Lake View on MG Road, and later at the new upstart called Corner House, Swensen's (along with a host of other joints) is a welcome change. Now the common ice cream eater has been presented with a multitude of choices - almost like how the ushering of capitalism did by replacing communism. With San Francisco-based Swensen's making a foray into the markets, the competition just got hotter...or colder. Three outlets that I know of are at Mantri mall, Meenakshi mall, and Koramangala (near the Sony signal).


Although Swensen's internationally is known for its gourmet burgers and grilled sandwiches, right now they've just opened up for ice creams, including some 'India-centric' flavours. While there are several sundaes to select from, you can also select from any one of several individual falvours. And for those of you who love cake/brownies/fudge in your ice creams, there are combinations with those as well.

The sweet princess (above) was a sweet mix of strawberry, vanilla, and whipped cream. The fondue for 2 (served with 4 scoops of ice cream - you can select the 4 flavours) comes with sliced bananas and cantaloupe and a bowl of molten chocolate. Quite heavenly this is. The other fondue is the fondue for 4, which includes 9 scoops of ice cream.



The nutty crispy tower comes filled with fruits and nuts and ice cream with chocolate sauce mixed in and some wafers thrown in for good measure (crispy...how else?).


The glasses in which water was served was also very funky - it seemed as if they had almost all the names of the sundaes on the glasses. By far the most innovative use of water glasses I've seen - in fact, I think these are the funkiest glasses I've seen in restaurants and eat outs.


The waffle ice cream was just that - a waffle topped with a couple of scoops of ice cream with some whipped cream. And really, personally, although I'm up to trying any weird combo, I'm more of a 'waffles-for-breakfast' kind of a guy.


I don't know the name of this last one we had, but you've got to hand it to Swensen's for getting creative. Apart from the ice creams, there are also some sorbets. The sundaes are colourful and vibrant. They're big. And they're pretty darn good.



Food: Very good
$$$: Approx. Rs 200 - 250 for two.
Service: Harried when the crowd picks up.
Verdict: Must visit.

Swensen's ice creams, 80 Ft Road, Opp. Barista, near Sony Signal, Koramangala, Bangalore. Phone: 41613524

Baking eggs

It's been a while since I cooked something at home, and this morning, after my morning run, I was in the mood for something sinfully heavy. Looking around the house, the only thing(s) that could qualify as heavy were egg and cheese, so I got to work with it. I was soon reminded of a post by Ms BakeAnything and Ms Quiche about mixing stuff with an egg and baking it. And so I got to work on the same.

Now even while making simple omelettes, to make things a little exciting, we add a host of things - onions, tomatoes, spinach, bacon, ham, cheese - to name a few, so I thought of doing the same. I had a little pork pickle left (purchased at Thulp a while ago), a new bottle of Tom Yum soup paste (that Ms Quiche had bought for me recently), and so I decided to toss in these two along with some cheese, onions and garlic. For seasoning and flavour, I used paprika, salt and pepper. Although I started out with 1 egg, I soon realised two was the optimum number.

So I cracked two eggs into a mug, beat them with a fork, chopped up a quarter of an onion, bashed the daylights out of one clove of garlic, added some salt and pepper, and then went on to add a teaspoon of the Tom Yum paste and the remainder of the pork pickle in the jar (about a table spoon). Feel free to substitute the pork with ham, bacon, mushrooms, bell peppers or whatever you love to go into you eggs. No real substitute can be suggested for vegetarians for the the Tom Yum paste, so just add whatever flavouring you desire. Top it up with cheese - as much as your heart desires. I also added some paprika for flavour.

Preheat the oven at 200C and cook at 200C for 18 minutes (Ms BakeAnything had suggested cooking time of 20 minutes at 180C). The end result was quite fabulous and a wonderful meal for brunch.





Ingredients
2 eggs
1 tsp paprika (optional; use chilli powder if you want it spicy)
1 clove garlic, crushed and make a paste
1/4 onion, chopped
1 tsp Tom Yum paste
1 tbsp pork pickle (use ham/bacon/chicken/ground beef/musgrooms/bell peppers)
Cheese, as much as your heart can handle
Salt & pepper to taste

Method
Chop the onion fine, make a paste out of the garlic, whisk the eggs and add the onions, garlic, salt, pepper, paprika, Tom Yum paste, and pork pickle. Add all these into a ramekin (I don't have one, so I used a ceramic mug). Preheat the oven at 200C. Once preheated, place the ramekin/mug into the oven and bake at 200C for 18 minutes. Alternately, preheat at 180C and bake at 180C for 20 minutes. Ensure that ehatever dish you use for baking is evenly shaped so that the heat is distributed evenly and cooking happens evenly.

Of wings and lollipops

This post isn't about a review of any restaurant to give you insights about the food at a particular joint, but rather to give y'all a few details about a very popular dish. In case I haven't mentioned it here before (don't think I have), my favourite cuisine is... what, tell me? Go on, take a guess... I dare ya! Honestly, there isn't any one particular cuisine that I'd prefer on a whole over any other cuisine, but comfort food for me is anything that can be fitted between two slices of slightly toasted bread/bun. Yup, the sandwich, and its cousin the burger top the imaginary list of what can be called my favourite food. If someone holds a gun to my head and asks for a cuisine, I guess I'll have to say 'pub food'.

To some extent (quite a large extent actually), sandwiches and burgers can also be categorised under pub food, and I guess because I like to multi-task, sandwiches are probably the one food item that I can eat and work with at the same time. Also, stating pub food has another reason - for one, it involves pork :) and another universal favourite, chicken wings or Buffalo wings. This post is dedicated towards shedding some light chicken wings.

Photo credit Hub Pages
There are a lot of places now in Bangalore that serve wings with varying degrees of heat. Plan B even has a 'Wings Tuesday' event where you can get a dozen wings for Rs:120 (and also buy a beer and get one free before 6 P.M), Toit has a heavenly bowl of wings for those interested, while that new upstart, Nando's, also has a plate of scary looking wings (scary coz the entire wing is served - drummette, wingette and tip, without being cut) with their famous peri-peri sauce. Of course, there could be several other joints serving wings, I just stuck to the more popular ones.

For those of you who love to dig into a bowl of juicy, succulent wings slathered with enough sauce to make it slide between your fingers without any resistance, dipping it into a tartar sauce of mayo or just eating them the way they are, I'm sure you'd have encountered the same problems I have. Inconsistency. Perhaps not in taste, but most certainly in terms of size. Yup, when it comes to food, size does matter.

I've had my fair share of disappointments, mostly noticing that some of the peices are almost devoid of meat, while some are so full of meat you wonder whether it actually is a wing or something else. And then there's this mysterious dish called a chicken lollipop, that sort of resembles a chicken drumstick (leg) but is smaller, and you never quite know what or where it came from. Well, this post aims to give you some gyaan about that as well.

The chicken wing consists of three sections, much like the human arm (evolution).

Image from Just Bento
Most places in the west, notably the US, where wings, or Buffalo wings (since they're supposed to have originated in Buffalo, NY) are a rage, make use of the first part of the wing, the drummette, for their wings. The drummette resembles a drumstick (chicken leg) and quite often I've seen a mildly perplexed look on the faces of people eating this when they'd ordered for wings. Also, being a more meatier portion of the wing (just like how we have our biceps in the top section of the arm, the wing packs a lot of meat in the drummette). In India (I'll speak for Bangalore alone now), most places that serve wings give you a mixture of drummettes and wingettes and more often than not there would be more wingettes than drummettes. So the next time you order that bowl of wings, make a mental note of how many wingettes and drummettes came in your order of wings. Although there's no 'rule' as such as to what ought to be served, common sense would suggest that the drummette would be a piece that the folks dining would prefer, since the wingette, apart from having less meat, also as twice the number of bones (2) in it when compared to a drummette.

The next topic is the chicken lollipop (alias Drums of Heaven). What part of the chicken does this mysterious piece come from? The answer is ... you guessed it (didn't you?), the chicken wing again! If you recall my second post while I was in Hyderabad, a waiter had served us chicken lollipop when we had ordered wings and tried to pass it off as 'wings' by claiming "...lollipop will be more yellow colour, Sir." To be fair (now), they did serve us wings, just not in the way we expected them to. That's like asking for mashed potatoes with your steak but being served French fries instead!

Here's a link where you can see the entire process of how a lollipop is made. The drummette is taken and the meat from one end of the bone is separated off from the bone while leaving the meat at the other end attached to the bone. This 'dangling' meat is then pulled over the other end of the bone (like removing a sweater, getting it inside out and leaving it to cover your head). After that, all that remains is the simple task of seasoning the meat, and coating it with batter and frying it. However, places that want to act cheap and make an extra buck at the cost of the customer would use the wingette section, remove one of the two bones in it (the thinner bone), and then follow the process of making the lollipop. So in case you find a difference in the amount of meat on top of the lollipop, check the size of the bones, and if you notice a difference, it could well be a lollipop made from a wingette and not from a drummette.

So now that you know what 'actually' a chicken wings dish ought to consist of, and what a chicken lollipop is, I'll leave you to go figure out where the best of each can be found in the city you live in, and it's for you as a customer to make a list of those places that are trying to pull a fast one on you.

Spaghetti Kitchen

I don't seem to understand where the space comes up from for new(er) places in Indiranagar. I've now noticed that Little Italy has opened up again on 100 Feet road, a couple of hundred meters from their previous location (their earlier premises saw another Italian place called Italia come up). Spaghetti Kitchen and Copper chimney are what seem to be the new kids on the block. Having visited Copper Chimney at Bangalore Central (MG Road) and not in the mind for north Indian cuisine, we decided to visit Spaghetti Kitchen for lunch.

The decor at Spaghetti is quite tasteful. The restaurant is nicely lit with natural light from the facade and then there are enough lights that ensure you aren't shrouded in darkness. Since it was a working day and we didn't have the luxury of spending a lot of time, we had to (sadly) opt for the fixed meal (Rs 399). The starters arrived at the table and almost immediately vanished into the mouths of my colleagues before I could take a picture. I'm guessing that's why I don't have pics of the non-veg starters... or were there non-veg starters? Can't remember. Anyway, the veg starters were a little insipid, except for probably those cheese balls in the background. Also, as part of the meal, we could have a glass of wine or beer. While some opted for beer, some had wine.

Veg starters
Red wine
A complimentary bread basket with a very nice dip was actually one of the highlights of the meal. Imagine that - free stuff that tastes good! The pizzas (both veg and non veg) come only in thin crust, and were decent, although from a taste point of view, it wasn't anything to rave about. The spaghetti was just plain boring - not too much of flavour, and if someone has to add oregano/chilli flakes for flavour, then something is seriously lacking in the dish.

The fish was nicely done, with a slight crust on the outer surface and the body soft inside. The tofu dish too wasn't too bad although my colleagues who had it claimed it was a piece of rubber that was coloured white-ish and served :) I didn't think so though.

Garlic bread & dip
Pizza
Spaghetti
Fish something
Tofu something
I thought that desserts would be saving grace, and in terms of taste they were. However, from a service stand point, I think I found something seriously lacking. We were a group of 6. Now take a look at the photo below and tell what's wrong.

Dessert platter
Couldn't figure it out? Well, we were 6, but there were only 4 of each! I dunno if this is because that plate on which they're served can have only 4 per type, but I don't care. Why are things so rigid? And no, they didn't get another plate with 2 more of each little cake. I guess it pretty much summed up the entire experience.

I won't be giving my usual report card because I only had the fixed meal, and would love to try the a la carte once. But if the standards set by the fixed meal are anything to go by, then this would be another case of a big brand hoping to survive only by reputation and by catering to only those who aren't very discerning (sadly that number is still quite large).

# 2006, 1^st Floor, 100 Feet Road, Adjacent to Vodafone, Indiranagar, Bangalore. Phone: 41113500