Happy Hour ... and Me

Where is it: Powai, Hiranandani, Mumbai After a hectic & long week at work and a particular harrowing day, my hubby and I headed for a cozy dinner,simply catch up with each other. So on a friend’s recommendation, we arrived at Red Olives.My objective to have a good evening with him was successfully met,but I was a little disoriented with the food.Firstly, I couldn't identify what was the exactly was this restaurant’s specialty. Is it Indian or Thai or Chinese or Konkani or Kerala cuisine, as it all seemed to be there.Irrespective of the cuisine type, the menu at a glance, seemed to have more interesting offerings for the non-veggie taste buds.Also this particular day, most of our ordering went all wrong. For starters, we went ahead with a Chinesse recommendation from the staff,whose name I unfortunately don’t recall.Well,it was actually alright in taste but I found it extremely spicy,so stopped after chomping down 1 or 2 pieces of it.However, I observed that Mihir merrily go...

We spent the last Sunday evening at this cozy little restaurant right behind Cafe Basilico at Bandra.We were a group of 5 veggies,who were hungry and also wanted to spend a leisurely evening.Since my friends were already in, so we didn’t need to wait, but I noticed that this place seemed to have the least waiting. The place is actually nice,decor cozy & the food even if not super, but surely very good. So my guess is takers for Thai food gets narrowed down when you sit between one of the best Italian joints in town and another very good Chinese restaurant down the same street. However for a Sunday evening I welcomed the fact that the place was not over crowded,when usually each table’s conversations,culminates into too much noise with a dash of rhythm added by the cutlery clicks. Anyways, so here is what we ordered; for soups with began with a spicy Tom Yum Soup, a strong recommendation only for people who love spicy food. It has a beautifully blended flavor of Thai chillies with v...

Where is it: Shivaji Park, Dadar, Mumbai Eateratti began with Oven Fresh and here is a revisit to it.  I was introduced to this place back in late 90s when I was in school. And since then have been a regular here. Back then, they would sell these yum cheese rolls full of coleslaw fillings which I so loved. So I undoubtedly choose this to be the first Eateratti I wanted to right about. Recently, on a good Sunday, after we opted out of a food joint with a 2 hr waiting time, we landed at our good ole Oven Fresh. Once there, we ate like we were starving for weeks and here is a snippet of what we loved and disliked. So here were hits of the evening, & worth trying  Fresh Herb Fondue Topping the list that evening was the Cheese Fondue. Very creamy, with tangy marinated veggies. The only thing I wished was for little more of the cheese, as the quantity was little less. Hummus with Pita Bread The next item that was very interesting was, Pita Bread. It was so yum so yum that we cal...

Recently, I was watching a documentary on ‘Save the Tiger’ campaign. This campaign has gained a lot of popularity in the recent few months, with hoardings shouting out the number 1,411 and celebrities’ popping up in your television screen urging you to join this campaign. I felt it was effective to gain attention, as I saw many of my friends who usually don’t care too much about things actually join this movement. So kudos to the effort. However, I have my doubts about how my contribution especially the monetary one is going be of any help as poaching business in India is deep rooted, highly corrupt, and widespread, far worse than what we can imagine. So coming back to the documentary, apparently it said that the Government of India had increased the imprisonment duration from 7 years to 10 years if found guilty conducting poaching activities. I found this extremely amusing as its said there hasn’t been a single person who has been booked under this law or suffered any form of imprison...

It’s after a long time that I got back to writing. Not that I wasn’t writing or anything this while, infact I was writing more than ever. However they weren’t any blogs, but lots of infra solutions and RFP responses. Anyways, after a really long time I had the weekend to myself where I didn’t need to take back work with me. So I did what I loved to do on a lazy weekend, watch some movies, snuggle up with a book and endlessly surf through the television channels. When watching TV, I stopped by some of saas-bahu serials that have been on our usual Star,Zee etc. Initially I got a little confused that had the usual Star,Zee etc got changed into some Bhojpuri channels, as all the programs seemed to be based in Bhojpuri. Then I discovered that these channels seem to have the following type of shows, either Bhojpuri background or village based, or based on some child protagonist or child protagonist in a village set up or Bhojpuri village child based. Period. This is what most programs revol...

I have been meaning to write this blog for a while now but somehow got caught into a series of events. Anyways, about a month ago one of my roomies, Swati left for her hometown for good. Over dinner, a common friend of ours who has been struggling to get a transfer out of Chennai, congratulated her and jokingly said “Tere paap dhul gaye aur tu Chennai se ja rahi hai” meaning that your sins have got erased and so you are leaving Chennai. We all laughed at this statement, but I quietly wondered if Chennai is really that bad. I distinctly remember how scandalized my friends were I broke the news that I had got my posting in Chennai. Some of them actually told me that I was out of my mind that I agreed to go to Chennai. Most of their concerns were actually revolved around the fact that after living all my life in a city like Mumbai, it would be exceedingly unimaginable to stay in Chennai and suspected that the place and its culture would be harsh on me. Honestly, in a way it scared me a bi...

When I heard that there was a going to be play on Hamlet in Chennai directed by Rajat Kapoor, I immediately warned my friends against it, stating that it would be super super boring to watch tragedy. It’s not that tragedies and serious plays are bad, but somehow I don’t seem to enjoy that so much. Anyways, coming back, one of my colleagues still went for the play and returned with raving praises for it. He said, it down right funny and hilarious and was something very good we missed. Funny, that’s right. I was equally surprised, as to how can a tragedy be depicted as funny? So next time this group came back to Chennai, we made sure that we didn’t miss it. And am extremely glad about it, as after 2 hrs of Hamlet, I found myself exhausted with all the laughing I did and had a smile on my face as I left the theatre. This definitely was one of the best plays that I had seen so far. The play revolves around 6 clowns who are basically tired of doing comedy and therefore decide to enact trage...