Rohit Nair’s Blog

It’s been a long time since i posted here, and a longer time since i posted a restaurant review. I’ve been caught up with work lately, and hence the lack of time. I have been to quite a few restaurants in the past few weeks though and i thought I’ll just summarize my views here. Ratings in brackets next to the restaurant name

Giancarlo’s Place (3.5/5)
Went here with my team as it’s just across our office. The place looks very upscale and has nice ambience. As for the food, it was good at best.The garlic bread they served us was not too good, the crust was just too hard. I had lasagna for my main course and it was decent and very filling. The selection of desserts is quite limited and falls well short compared to the choice at Sunny’s next door. Service was ordinary, and i remember we had to wait at least 15 minutes for the bill.

Toscanos (4/5)
One of the new joints that have opened up in the UB City food court. They bread they serve at the start is awesome. Our starter(smoked salmon) was quite disappointing, the portion especially small. The main course(i had some Toscano’s special chicken) though was heavenly. Didn’t have the appetite that day to try out their desserts but i’ve heard they are pretty good as well. The food is served aesthetically and you might find it hard to dig your fork in!

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This post is long overdue.Anyways,here goes.

I had won a Taj gift voucher thanks to a Deutsche Bank slogan contest. And when the time came to decide a place for Amma’s birthday treat, it was an obvious choice. Selecting a restaurant from the three Taj Hotels in the city was not that obvious though, and we finally decided to try out Mynt at the Taj West End. The place servers Italian, Mediterranean, Lebanese and Indian cuisines. A good thing was that they had this brunch buffet on Sundays so we didn’t exactly have to go through the entire menu and order the cheapest/cheaper items. We had booked a table in advance, and I think that was a good idea considering the place was close to full. Although its called the Sunday Brunch, its open till the afternoon and you can easily go there for your lunch (as we did). Frankly, doing a review on the food is tough. But in one word,it would be “Variety”! The number of items on the buffet is just mind boggling,you could make a full meal out of just the starters,or the desserts or one of the specialized cuisine counters.

Started off with a chicken soup,which was pretty good. The starters section literally had an endless selection, Indian chats, Salads, kababs, it had it all. It was tough to chose from, in the end I went with some safe bets like the Hawaiian salad and tried out a few never-heard-of-it-before stuff as well. There’s a section where you can make your own salad as well, they keep ingredients that you can mix and match to your tastes. We didn’t even venture that side, not worth wasting time and precious appetite for.
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Dining out on the first weekend is a nice way to start the new year. Great way in fact, especially when it happens in one of Bangalore’s top restaurants. Deciding on Bombay Post wasn’t tough, it was close enough and most of us hadn’t been there before. Its right next to the Airport Road – 100 Feet Road fly over and on the same building as TGIF, Indi Joe and Corner House. And yes, its another BJN group restaurant(one of many) . Surprisingly, we didn’t have to wait for a table even though it was Saturday night.  The place and the cuisine,as the name suggests is inspired by Bombay and Bollywood in the 60s and 70s. Our table was overlooked by the villains of that generation, larger than life black and white potraits of Danny Denzongpa, Pran and Prem Chopra. Loud music, old fashioned ceiling fans, the feel of the place was quite authentic.

Now to the food.The menu looks quite similar to the other BJN restaurants serving Indian food but has an inclination towards sea food. We started off with some lamb shorba(trust me to forget those weird names) and Tandoori Pomfret, and tomato shorba and paneer rolls for the vegetarians.There was also a good selection of mocktails and coolers, and we ordered a fruit punch (called Churchgate something) and a mint cooler(it was a combination of mint,lime and Sprite if I’m not mistaken,it was great) The shorba was probably the low point of the meal, it was decent but nothing great. The starters on the other hand were heavenly, the Pomfrets were spicy,well marinated and grilled to perfection. The paneer rolls were pretty good as well. For the main course, we again decided to try some seafood and ordered Hariyali Jhinga(prawns). We also ordered some nans,kulchas and Makhani Murgh Post Special (which the waiter nonchalantly degraded to Butter chicken) The vegetarians went for some mixed vegetable curry(which i sadly didn’t try out) and yellow dal. The food was great and we had no complains whatsoever to lick those plates clean. The nans, as with all BJN restaurants were more roti like, but as long as its not hard like rotis, its fine. We finished off with some Shehenshahi Pulao which was as good as any other dish. The place is relatively expensive though, and the total bill came to around Rs 500+ per head. We decided to have dessert from nearby corner house although we did try out the caramel custard which was pretty decent. The service is great too and our orders hardly took any time. One of my best dining experiences in Bangalore yet.

Good food is probably the biggest love of my life.I thought I’d dedicate some posts to that love and review some of the restaurants I’ve been to.

Yesterday was my brother in law’s birthday and we were searching for a place for the birthday treat. It had to be a place we hadn’t been to and had to be moderately expensive as we had to meet a budget of at least Rs.2000(yes,not at most but at least). After some searching and filtering, we decided to go to this place called Oye Amritsar on Church Street. Its a rooftop dhaba and is relatively easy to spot. Its on the same building as Saigon and Ruby Tuesday. The decor as expected was true dhaba style with brightly painted wooden windows, milk cans etc.  The tables and chairs were simple and comfortable and the place was covered with funny  one-liners and name boards. And they serve in steel tumblers and steel plates,for the added effect(and an easy way to save costs i presume). Each table had mint chutney and the typical set of chopped onions, green chillies and pickles as well.

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