Happy Hour ... and Me

I spent a good part of my childhood being allergic to one food ingredient that is considered as ‘the food of Gods’ and sinful love of millions of lives. Thankfully, I outgrew the allergy as I entered my teens and since then attacked the world of chocolates with vengeance!! So, Chocolate room was like living a dream, where everything around me was chocolate and only chocolate. I visited this place just once, as I discovered this when I was at the fag end of my Chennai stint & landed up having a 3 course chocolate meal!!!!. That’s true; everything from starters to main course to desert was a chocolate by-product. Imagine having Pizzas, wraps, sandwiches all with chocolate in it. It’s like attaining a chocolate nirvana!! However too much of something is really bad enough. As a foodie,I strongly believe that a good meal should leave you satisfied,wanting for more and not so over-whelmed that you don’t want to see nor have more of that meal for a while. So my recommendation with Chocola...

As a foodie, it’s your birthright to binge on roadside food. Yes, I stand by this even post Delli Belly!! Now imagine a road-side joint, plonked along a junction, serving you not just the usual pav-bhaji, sandwiches & juices but also pastas, sizzlers and much more. So that’s Blossoms for you in a nut-shell. But hold-on; variety is not this joint’s USP, it’s the creative & appetizing food offerings which are!! Someone has actually experimented with the food, innovated and improvised on various ingredients and put them together. Trust me most of them are scrumptious & with hardly any disappointments. Blossoms started off as a humble juice center while gradually building on its menu. Even today, it retains its juice center flavor, by having an interesting spread of juices, falooda and milkshake menu with some funny and filmy names. They have mixed and matched fruits, like once I remember having tried some strange combination of kiwi with some fruits and it was lip-smacking. I ...

During my stay in Chennai, my friend Sandhya took me to this Thai joint one evening post work. I was skeptical about trying Thai food at Chennai, and therefore kept my expectations under check. However, I was proved completely wrong as here is where I landed up having the best 'Indian' Thai food. Well, I have yet to visit Thailand, to taste the authentic Thai food, as I believe that the taste is customized to the countries local taste, but amongst the Indian joints, this one is one of the best I have had. A simple and extremely classy place, with wood that decor renders a very warm and cozy feeling. For the crowd mostly you’ll see a lot of corporates and few families as I doubt if Chennai folks have still awakened to this amazing place. The main attraction I found in this place is the complementary starter called Mein Khum, hopefully have got the name right. They serve you a leaf, which I am not so sure what it is, but its shaped like a beetle leaf, on that need to put little h...

A while ago I finished reading Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s “The Palace Of Illusions” which I had stumbled upon when casually browsing a bookstore at the airport. The book presents a women’s perspective of the Mahabharata, by narrating the epic by none other than Draupadi, who was hugely held responsible for the war taking place. Personally for me, Mahabharata has always evoked a deep level of excitement. If I were to simply put it, it’s a lethal combination of drama, upscale levels of politics, games played in pursuit of power & love, with the oomph added by brawny men. However, predominantly Mahabharata is more about the men, their aspirations, lives & ambitions that sometimes scale beyond power. It has etched out some great heroes like Bheesma, Drona, Krishna, Arjun, Karna and the list goes on. So unless the author consciously chooses, the women in this epic will not be presented as central protagonist. So in that aspect, I liked the book and a refreshing narr...

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...