Bangalore

Another Italian restaurant. The city is crowded with lots of them. They are located in the central / swank / upmarket UB City. But like any other restaurant inside the UB city their prices seem to be comparable to others.

They have the usual standard Italian menu that looked vaguely familiar.

What did we order

Drinks
- Belgian beer for me and a mocktail for my wife. This was the first time that my wife did not complain.. otherwise she normally cribs that she gets a sugary concoction

Starters
- Bruschetta : 3 pieces.. with tomato, mushrooms and veggies. The mushroom and the veggie ones very average

Pasta
- Flat pasta with sun dried tomato, olives. Very good and i wished the quantity was more

Pizza
- Rustica : Thin crust wood oven pizza (onion, spinach and olives). Amazing!!! I will leave it at this.

Cribs
- Seating is too close. I could see what the other table is upto.
- Service is a little inefficient. They got the starters without the drinks that came almost 10minutes late and it took them 15mins to give me some ice for my water despite asking repeatedly.

In all it costed us 1500 bucks. Will we go back? Definitely yes to try their other pizzas.

This is a online / telephone take away / home delivery only place. They are based out of Koramangala / HSR Layout / Frazer town and generally deliver across the city.

We decided to order about few days back for Dinner and we live within 5kms of this joint.

What did we order

Starters
Sesame Corn toast (i threw it away) and Vietnamese spring roll

Maincourse
Phad Thai (i make better ones) and some fried noodles (we had to throw away).

Largely the experience was bad because 1) It took them 90minutes to deliver 2) The food was cold and spring roll by then had turned into a soft roll.

In all not a good experience and it costed us 500bucks.

Hi Foodies,
I thought this should be my first post.
http://picasaweb.google.com/jagansayshi/Food/photo#5237327791276963106

Cheers,
Jagan

yum yum yum yum!!!! i dont care if its authentic or not.. but i love it....

i mean i love everything bout it.. from the design to the logo to the interiors to the bamboo ash tray to the bamboo napkin holder to the menu card to the waiter to the black bricky wall to the forks and yes the food is ****************************************** great!!!

been there twice and its just so inviting... i mean you just dont want to leave....

so you enter the place and you spot this very very cute sketch of a Chinese man digging into his bowl...so cute that if he was not a sketch but a real person then he'd be my best friend!! wish i had a camera then.

the interior is awesome.. it has such an earthly feel to it..
bamboos everywhere... and if i were a panda id be eating it..

well ok food.... great food... went for lunch with a friend.. we ordered for some butter garlic noodles, loads of steamed momos, rice, veg balls in hot garlic sauce and some beverages...

hmmm...you know like a good hair day or a good skin day.... this was one good food day!!!

we actually went there to have a talk over lunch... but hey once we started digging into, it was like ... who cares bout the talk i wanna eat!!

very astonishing to see such fast and swift service...youre done wit one dish and your next dish is served immediately... so yeah.. youre just eating nonstop...definitely worth the appreciation...

and even more astonishing was the pricing on the food...the lunch was 250 bucs.. i mean its good news people..!!!

one can smoke.. so thats good.. the ash trays are made outta bamboo... i wish i flicked it... (well its not like am never going back there).

the waiters are smiling, the people are smiling,.. its a happy place. absolutely no complaints.

cheers!!

Been here few times...but for some reason writing the review only now. I went there today and i got a feeling that they are getting jaded. All their items in the menu seems to be a concoction of veggies, olive oil and different types of cheeses. So you need to be careful about what you want if you dont want your food to be killed with overdose of Cheese. By the way they also have some mexican on the menu.

We had a Crostini Platter and Avocado salad for starters. The platter was good and the salad could do with less tomato on it.

Wife decided to skip the main course and i ordered myself a Risotto with some Porcini mushrooms. I asked the steward to customize the dish but without checking with the Chef he said no and started explaining why the dish cannot be cooked like what i wanted. After i insisted he went and checked and the Chef was more than ready to do that.

One thing that i noted is lot of people around us had the look on their face that said "the dish doesnt look like what i had visualized based on what i read". May be the waiters can start becoming knowledgeable about the dishes and explain to the customers. If i want to rank the Italian restaurants in the city.. i would rank it 3rd behind Italia, Fiorano (in the order). But the place is quite popular. They have 3 sections...1) Enclosed non - smoking area 2) Lounge - smoking 3) Al Fresco

Wallet Factor : Approx 800 to 900 bucks per person including drinks for a 3 course meal.

man!! every time i think of this place theres some kinda rush that goes through me....

trust me.. this place is a must go for anybody within or outside the city....

well.. i ve been going to this place like even before dinosaurs existed( for the ones who dint get... well its a joke)... but seriously its the best in the business.

this place is basically a small shady shop... but it has the most brilliant steaming idilis i have ever eaten...

no tables no chairs no nothing... but who cares when food tastes that gooood!!!

the perfect time to go is early morning...ask for idilis, vada and a kuppa filter coffee and its more than heaven...

the best part bout the place is that eating at this place gives a typical Bangalore feel to it... its priceless i tell ya.. and the name is quite funky too..

well on a Sunday morning at veena stores you'll find yourself in the midst this huge crowd eating only idilis and to be a part of that is definitely something..

cheers!!

ok now this would be the kind of place that i would go to on a lazy evening..am talking bout the kind of evening when i am in no mood of dressing up and i want to spend it in tracks and a T.

nothing exotic bout it.. its like a next door food cum beer place.

this place mainly has italian and indian food.. and a lil chinese too...

the pastas are pretty good..a variety of pastas available... ranging from real spicy ones to just plain white sauce mushroom pastas.. its quite interesting actually...

well indian food... the place is known for biryani.. its gotta be a lil more spicy though to suit my typical indian papillae. roti and sabzi is good too.

fries wit mayonnaise is brilliant

good music..lot of classic rock in particular.. doors , clapton and the typical ones....

theres beer!!!! yay!i guess this takes the icing..this is the main reason reason that i would go there for dinner..good chilled draught beer.

well... for the ones staying in and around koramangala this is a good place to have dinner on a week day.. not necessarily my choice for the weekend.

food costs around 50-120
beer cost around 50 something
cheers!!

I dont know how i missed writing about this place since i have been going here quite regularly. Was originally introduced to me by a colleague of mine from Dharwad.

I have always gone there for lunch of Jowar Rotis. What do they serve

- Kalu (legumes), Badnekai (Baingan) curry, Soppu Saru (greens), Raitha : All fantastic
- Unlimited Jowar rotis...hot off the tawa with butter... the focus of the meal
- Red chilly chutney...yum
- Ground nut chutney dry.. .have it with Jowar Rotis. I like to mix this with Curd
- Rice / Sambar / Rasam / Curd : Average
- End it with Banana / Pan

Wallet factor : 60 bucks for the lunch.

This is part of the chain of restaurants by BJN Group (Samarkhand, Hypnos, Sahib Sind Sultan etc).

First the ambience

- The lighting is too bright for my taste
- Music is too loud
- Too many staff hovering around. On top it they have open kitchens.. so the staff inside the kitchen add to the crowd.
- Staff has a very funny green colored uniform

Now coming to food

- I had a cocktail made out of Vodka. I hate white sugar in cocktails. The best is cane sugar.
- Ordered Jalapeno bites... too hard & the Jalapeno tasted like Capsicum.
- I ordered Pasta in tomato sauce. Too much Garlic & on the salty side. These days i am very low on salt and prefer to get the natural taste of the food. Pizza hut's Pasta tastes better.
- Wife ordered Pudina roti (Where was the Pudina???) and Veg Jalfreizi. Strictly Ok.

Overall was disappointed as i had started having high expectations of any BJN group venture as their restaurants are always of high quality when it comes to food. I gave the feedback & the manager was sincere in telling me that they are looking for feedbacks to improve. They are new.. so my sincere hope is that they improve.

Till then i would advocate this place only if you have a crowd with mixed preferences to eat. If you are focussed on a particular type of cuisine then there are speciality & better options out there in the city.

cheers
Anand

After some 3 months, me & wife decided to go out for dinner and wanted to try a new place (new for us!!). I had read about this restaurant some months back and decided to land there. When i called them to check whats on the menu.. the manager said we have international food with Mutton Vindaloo, Chicken Tikka and other international food on buffet. I was skeptical...but went on.

We walked in at about 0730PM with about 3 / 4 people in the restaurant.. which again put me off. After a cursory walk across the buffet spread we settled on Al a carte.

We decided to skip the salads & soups.. but they did make for a interesting read. They had a selection of warm & cold soups / salads. We ordered Pita crisps with 3 different type of dips and Kalametta Olives seasoned with balsamic vinegar. They did go down very well with the drinks. Out of the 3 dips.. one was with cucumber (is that a Mediterranean vegetable??) with sour cream and finished with some olive oil & basil. It was fantastic and i asked for a second helping.

oh!! did i forgot to mention that they had a live band and the guy singing was very good albeit a bit loud. But thats fine. And if you choose.. they have a pool side service.. but that was quite noisy with spill over crowd from some parties that were being hosted. The decor inside is quite nice & airy and the tall ceiling adds to the space around you.

Coming back to the food.. we ordered Risotto with mushrooms for myself and Roesti for my wife. The Risotto was good... the consistency just right... starchy without too much sauce. but the mushrooms overwelhmed the taste of the rice and the sauce. But i liked it. But the best was the roesti (could'nt resist digging into my wife's place :-)... the potato / onion pancake just done right and finished with nice pumpkin sauce. The strong taste of the roesti offset by the milder pumpkin sauce.. it was good. They had some vegetables on the side.. but i was disappointed with the quantity of them. And by this time the restaurant filled up.. which is always a good sign that the food is good there. We ordered a Apple & Hazelnut crisp for Dessert.... it was nice. Apple pie and Hazel nut infused crisps on top with vanilla icecream. I would have preferred it warm.

The service was good. The waiters always hovering around without being overbearing and they were all friendly. More inportantly they did not hurry us.

They had otherstuff on the menu like Pizzas, Pastas etc.. but we did not venture into that area. The wallet factor was 2500 bucks for 2 people with Drinks / appetizers / Main course & Dessert.

All in all a good experience. Go there if you feel like splurging some money and have some good time with people close to you.