Oriental Odyssey - Day 4 - Hong Kong

In keeping with the theme of 'Better late than never' expounded in one of my previous posts, here is Part 4 of my Oriental Odyssey - undertaken more than 6 months ago....but as I said, its better late than never! :P

As I start typing, I can't believe how moronic I have been in delaying writing about his particular part of the trip - it being THE highlight of the entire trip and very close to my heart as well! It was an amazing day, when I saw, touched, tasted, heard - experienced in entirety - the true soul of Hong Kong City - all thanks to the incredible warmth and generosity of spirit of one HK resident, K.

As I said in Part 3, I had fixed up a "let's meet for coffee" meeting with K during my mandatory-sights-taken city tour of HK. K, who is a "friend's friend" had pinged me on Facebook when she heard I was planning a trip to Hong Kong and had suggested catching up since she'd moved to HK a few months ago. I had literally jumped at the chance, because even a simple coffee date at a local cafe with one of the locals seemed more valuable to me than the Disneyland day-tour our itinerary had included. But what was meant to be a quick-catch-up-session-over-coffee transmogrified into a whole-day city tour, a veritable first-hand-introduction to all the sights, sounds and smells that are the hallmarks of HK......all thanks to K's painstaking research, boundless energy and the most amazing willingness to show a near-stranger around her city. As a result of which, I saw Hong Kong in a way package-tour itineraries just cannot match.

K showed up bright and early AND ON TIME on Sunday morning at our hotel, just as I was finishing breakfast. Twang! went one of my heart strings - punctuality is something I admire and appreciate, often being the one who arrives first and the only one who's on time for group rendezvous! She led me to the nearby mall/shopping centre called SOGO - a Hong Kong landmark. During the short 5-minute walk she told me the history of the store - how it was once the HK branch of a famous Japanese chain, being run according to Japanese principles of store-keeping and business, and how after chain collapsed, the people of HK petitioned for the HK branch to be bought out and continued being run rather than closed down. Sogo was your normal department store with lots of small shops hawking luxury-brand clothes, cosmetics and the like. Shopping - especially branded shopping - not being my game, we did a quick browse-through and headed out.


As we set off from Sogo, K declared that, to "do" Hong Kong, we HAD TO experience all the modes of public transport that HK has to offer - tram (yes, there are quaint old trams in ultra-modern sky-high HK!), bus, ferry and subway. I was all for this suggestion (the point of the day being seeing the city from the eyes of a local) so off we went to the nearest tram stop. As waited for the tram to trundle up, K whipped out her diary. On a page was a neatly-jotted bulleted list of "things to do in HK". On the page overleaf was a hand-drawn map of one of the neighbourhoods on K's agenda.


As she explained her hand-written itinerary, culled from numerous Google searches done the night before, all I could do was look on, astounded by the time, energy and effort she had put into planning this day trip. Truly, K - your generosity is truly remarkable and not oft-seen.


The tram came up, we squeezed (OK, I squeezed, K sailed through!) past the turnstile at the door of the tram and climbed up the steps to the upper deck. The tram took us through the crowded downtown area (crowded with skyscrapers and people walking by on the streets) to Central (or Central district) which is the central business district of HK. We got off the tram at Queensway, took an escalator up into a building which led to a kind of covered walkway between buildings. As we walked through, K pointed out a rising social phenomenon in HK - groups and groups of Filipino women and children out for a day picnic, occupying public spaces like corridors and walkways and parking lots (vacant since it was a Sunday) - complete with picnic blankets, baskets of food and the like. Apparently a lot of Filipinos are hired in HK as maids and domestics. The laws dictate that the employer provides accommodation to such workers, so on days off, these folks who lived with their employers and consequently had no place of their own congregated in public spaces for picnics and get-togethers.

We emerged from the walkway at the Central Mid-Level Escalators, which constitute the longest outdoor covered escalator system in the world.


The entire escalator system covers over 800 metres in distance and elevates over 135 metres from bottom to top. It consists of twenty escalators and three moving side-walks. Hong Kong is dominated by steep, hilly terrain, so a system like the Central Mid-Level Escalators are required to pedestrianise certain hilly districts (straight, like the bird flies) which otherwise would have meant miles of zig-zag road travel up and down the slopes.

The escalator daily runs downhill from 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. and uphill from 10:30am to midnight, since up the slope are the prime residential areas and at the base is the commercial downtown area. So in the morning, people take the escalators downhill to their work and take them back up in the evening. (Kind of like the uni-directional North-South rail/road travel Mumbaikars do every day). For the errant going-against-the-current person, there are normal non-mechanical steps too. :)

The escalators are unlike anything I have ever seen, and remain my most enduring memory of Hong Kong, surpassing even the cinematic HK skyline. Steep and almost unending, they are cut across regularly by narrow roads which traverse East-West (if you assume the escalators go South-North).

These roads are tiny and sloping too and house the most eclectic collection of pubs and ethnic restaurants (Staunton Street in particular, which is the Pub District) and shops and apartment buildings.

K pointed out her sky-high apartment building just off the escalator - just like how some Mumbaikars live conveniently right next door to the railway station! We even passed a mosque - the Jamia Mosque- and hopped off the escalator for a quick look. As we stepped inside the wrought-iron gates of the mosque, the hubbub and hustle-bustle of the escalators fell off us like a garment. The mosque was cool, silent and verdant - almost impossibly juxtaposed with the energy and vibe of the escalators!

As we got off the escalator to explore the lanes and byways, I counted an Irish Pub, a French cafe, several Asian-themed restaurants, a couple of Latina/Spanish/Mexican bistros....the list was long and varied!



And all these eateries/drinking holes had tiny frontage and I am assuming pretty small seating spaces too. All in all, the whole area, with its pokiness and diversity had tons of charm and I loved every bit of it.

After walking through the network of narrow roads off the Escalators, we came to the first pit stop of our day - the Tai Cheung Bakery at Lyndhurst Terrace. "Ta da!" said K with a flourish. Tai Cheung was a more-than-50-years-old famous bakery- which non-locals would never know, since the signboard above the door was written in Chinese (Cantonese, to be precise).

Thanks to her Googling, K had found out that Chris Pattern, former Governor of Hong Kong (when it was under British rule) loved the egg tarts from this bakery. Tai Cheung was completely nondescript - from its plain signboard to its no-frills decor. Trays upon non-fancy aluminium trays chock-full of baked goodies were stacked in the plain glass display counter - no wrought-iron shelves with delicate wicker baskets here!



Even the names of the baked bounty showed the say-it-as-it-is-without-any-window-dressing approach of the bakery. "Coconut Tart" (a glorious golden yellow tart crowned by a red cherry), "Whole Egg Cake" , "Soft Cake with Paper Wrap" (self explanatory, ain't it?), "Pineapple Red Bean Bun", "Beef Curry Bun", "Chicken Pie", "BBQ Pork pie", the intriguingly named "Piglet Pie" - and most prosaic of all - "Eggtart" . Plain and simple. No fuss, no fancy monikers! And all these delights for under HKD 5 each.

We picked up a moon cake and an egg tart each.




K insisted on the Moon Cake because the Mid-Autumn Festival (or Moon Festival) was on and the mooncake was a traditional snack to be partaken during the festival. The mooncake was a thing of wonder - a whole egg yolk baked in concentric layers of lotus seed paste and flaky pastry. The yolk (squidgy) and the lotus seed paste (sticky and very rich) made finishing the cake a struggle.


It was so so rich - AND an alien taste! To wash this down, we bought a bottle of Minute Maid (Coca Cola's everywhere!) - in the White Grape and Aloe Vera flavour, from a tiny corner store under the escalators opposite the bakery.

The store was a hallmark of HK where real estate is worth much more than its weight in gold - tiny place, packed chock-a-block with groceries, making the most of the limited shelf space. I was defeated by the mooncake and could barely finish it. The Minute Maid went down a treat, though. :)

After this snack (poor K had foregone breakfast in order to meet me on time, so she desperately needed to refuel), we walked to the Man Mo temple on Hollywood Road. Hollywood Road runs parallel to Lyndhurst Terrace and is one of the oldest roads in HK. It was built (and named) at least 40 years before the more-famous Hollywood in California came into being. Its known as the art district of HK, and has several art galleries, antique shops and shops selling curios/trinkets.

It also houses the Man Mo temple, dedicated to two Chinese deities -Man Tai (god of literature) and Mo Tai ( martial god).

The two gods were popularly patronized by scholars and students seeking progress in their study, and as a result there are several Man Mo temples in Hong Kong. The largest one is the one on Hollywood Road, which we visited. Inside, it was pretty similar to the A-Ma temple at Macau - splendid silk tapestries on the walls, giant incense sticks burning in enormous brass pots, spiral incense sticks suspended from the ceiling and an abundance of red everywhere.




Right next to the temple is "Ladder Street" - which is made up entirely of stone steps leading up the hill. The whole area is along the slopes of a hill, so its riddled with steep sloping roads, staircases, ramps and the like - giving it a unique identity and a charm of its own.


From the Man Mo temple, we traipsed across the grid of lanes to our lunch-time destination - the Tsui Wah restaurant on Wellington Road.


There are several branches of Tsui Wah across the city, and this one's famous as being open 24 hours and as a refuelling stop to late-night/early-morning club-goers. Inside, Tsui Wah was all crowds and chaos and the waitstaff hardly speak English.


K and I shared a table with 2 others and ordered off the picture menu, thankfully written in both English and Cantonese. With K being off pork, and both of us being off beef, we selected the "Prawn Balls with Stirred(did they mean Stir-Fried?) Noodles in XO sauce". Our lunch came in a large bowl, along with a huge bowl of clear soup - complimentary.


The noodles were thin and deliciously chewy, the sauce was tasty and four fat prawns sat regally atop the nest of noodles, hob-nobbing with a baton of wilted bak choy.


The noise levels and hectic rush around us made lunch a quick eat-and-run affair and soon we set off for one of Hong Kong's premium malls-cum-office-complexes - the International Finance Centre, or IFC as its better known. IFC is a multi-level upscale shopping centre with commercial office spaces above the shopping area.


Its full of designer label shops and yummy mummies wheeling trendy prams with trendier tots. K and I stopped at the Godiva store in IFC for our Golden Moment - the Chocolixir (in Dark Chocolate Decadence flavour) milkshake.



Calling it a plain old milkshake is like calling the Burj Al Arab "just another luxury hotel" or calling the Taj Mahal "just another mausoleum". You get the point don't you? :)

After IFC, it was time for something I'd been looking forward to all day - the ferry ride across Victoria Harbour! I took my extremely-affordable ticket from a ticket vending machine - K didn't need one since she had her Octopus Card. An aside - the Octopus Card is the ultimate in convergence for Hong Kong-ites. Originally created as a single smart card to pay for ferry, metro, bus AND tram tickets (by swiping on an Octopus Card Reader), it is now accepted at supermarkets, petrol pumps, restaurants, vending machines, parking meters - what have you.



Whats more, it can be used to recharge your mobile phone's talktime, and can be recharged (refilled) by cash/ funds transfer from your Bank Account at machines located at the MRT (metro/subway) stations. You can recharge the card at several retail chains as well as by Credit Card. Conversely, you can make your Credit Card payments using the balance on your Octopus Card too! You need not actually carry cash to get by comfortably in HK if you have an Octopus
Card and it is one of the first things you need to get when you move there.

Coming back to the ferry, we climbed aboard the mostly-empty old-fashioned ferry with wooden decks and rows of metal benches. We'd chosen to travel on the cheaper lower deck - but it was no big loss! As the ferry surged over the waves, we got amazing views of the awe-inspiring Hong Kong skyline.


Gleaming under the afternoon sun, the towers of glass and steel filled the gap between blue sky and bluer water, and stretched from left to right without a break in their ranks. I couldn't stop clicking away, much to the exasperated amusement of K.

Hopping off at the opposite shore in the neighbourhood called TST (Tsim Sha Tsui), we spent a goodly hour walking along the Avenue of the Stars. This is a promenade along the harbour which serves as an outdoor museum chronicling the history of Hong Kong cinema, decade by decade. On the footpath are embedded metal stars with cinematic star's names beside each - kind of like Hollywood's Walk of Fame, only featuring stars from HK cinema.


We snuck a quick look into the afternoon tea ceremony on at the Peninsular Hotel (HK's parallel to NYC's Plaza) - a grande dame of a hotel with sumptuous interiors and even more sumptuous afternoon tea (the British styled one - complete with multi-tiered stands holding sandwiches, scones, cakes etc) - whose slots are booked months in advance.

TST is also home to a lot of museums - from science to art - but it was getting towards evening and our energy reserves (though recharged by the fragile egg tarts left over from breakfast during our walk along the Avenue of the Stars) were rapidly waning, so we bid them adieu and dragged our feet towards the nearest MTR station for the last bit of sightseeing for the day - a ride on HK's MTR, i.e subway/metro. Needless to say, while the MTR station was crowded, it was well organised and the journey back to Causeway Bay was quick and relatively comfortable. K, who had to take a different train home, bid me farewell at the station.

As we parted, all I could do was give K a hug and hope that she understood that I was truly grateful for the incredible amount of herself - her time, her energy, her knowledge, her affection - she had given me. To see the real Hong Kong - to walk along the road trodden by its residents, to eat at cafes where the locals ate, to jostle among the crowds at the station - was what I wanted, its what I want from every big city that I travel. And thanks to K, I was able to live Hong Kong despite being part of a "If its Tuesday, this must be Belgium" kind of package tour. May I see every city I visit the way I saw Hong Kong!

Restaurant Review: Chocolateria San Churro, Bandra (W)

My foodie horizons have been broadened immeasurably thanks to regular morning-cuppa-time reading of some delicious food blogs from Down Under. Thanks to these sincere food chroniclers, words like churros, ribs, hotpot, dukah, crackling, mado, ube and many, many more have entered my culinary lexicon.

So when I heard (thanks, M for the update!) that Mumbaikars could sample churros right in the heart of Mumbai's gourmet district( Bandra West) I was excited and couldn't wait to try them. All it needed was a free Saturday evening and the company of a food-loving BFF and we were set!

Churros, as Wikipedia will tell you, 'are fried-dough pastry-based snacks, that originated in Spain( ...)normally eaten for breakfast dipped in hot chocolate.' Fried Dough. Two words with such promise in them! The promise of crisp crunchy exterior and a toothsome centre. Of a vision in golden brown. Of buttery crumbs that leave a trail on your lips. AND all this coupled with melted chocolate!! The best just got better, in my opinion! :D

The Mumbai franchise outlet of Australian chain Chocolateria San Churro, located bang opposite Red Box Cafe on Bandra's Waterfield Road brings these delights to Mumbaikars.

The restaurant, or self-named chocolateria, has a couple of tables, the main service counter with chiller cabinets below it, and a menu-wall behind it on the ground floor. A dangerous staircase (narrow steps, barely wide enough to take a size 6 shoe!) takes you to the first floor, which is surprisingly roomy. It is one BIG room with no pillars or nooks or corners to break the expanse of space. The far wall is floor-to-ceiling glass, and one entire length of the room is lined with a VERY comfortable, VERY wide (you can easily sit cross-legged on it) chocolate-brown leather banquette. The floor is wood, the tables are simple square ones, the chairs are leather tub chairs, and the walls are cream painted over with dark brown murals - marshmallows, Easter Eggs, and a curling flower-and-leaf motif. A row of Spanish tiles - dark blue and cream - runs through the centre of each wall. The decor is pleasantly different from most cafes. The vibe is easy, especially due to the two MAMMOTH flat screen TVs mounted on the walls, tuned to live cricket matches.

My BFF (lets call her C) was ravenous so we quickly ordered the Churros Medio (6 churros with 2 small pots of molten chocolate - you can choose between milk, dark and white) and the Mushroom Vol Au Vent. The Vol Au Vent was not listed on the menu - the menu only lists variants of the churros, chocolate fondue, shakes and ice cream desserts. For the rest of the stuff (pies, quiches, sandwiches, dessert cakes, cookies, brownies, marshmallows and cheesecake) you need to head down to the chiller cabinet on the ground floor and choose what you like.

The Vol Au Vent came first - nice flaky puff pastry encasing a creamy generously-proportioned glob of chopped mushrooms cooked in white sauce with sage. Delicious! It would have been perfect had the base of the pie not been chewy and difficult to cut into.

Our churros came next - a vision of beauty on a long rectangular plate, flanked with the 2 pots of dipping chocolate.


Unfortunately, they came spruiked with icing sugar (no problem with that) and ground cinnamon (Blasphemy! I cannot stand any CONTAMINATION to interfere with the pure chocolate taste!) What's more, the chocolate (we'd asked for dark in one pot and milk in the other) also came laced with mint (creme de menthe, maybe). The mint flavour was light, but the damage was done. :(

That slight apart, the churros were great - crispy, crunchy, beautifully golden with delicate spikes that had been fried to brown tips. And they retained their crispy-yet-chewy texture even after being swathed in the voluptuous molten chocolate. Yet there was something missing - the rich, buttery taste of good pastry, maybe?

Our next round of food, unfortunately did not live up to to the expectation set by the Vol Au Vent. C's potato sandwich (yes, there is an abomination like that in existence!) was too salty, my chicken salami quiche was nice but too, too heavy (I had to doggy-bag more than half it) and the New York cheesecake was dry and stodgy with a nondescript base.


The damage (yes, that IS the right word!) came to approx INR 900. So, CSC is by no means reasonably priced, and for such a pricey place, the service was almost comically distracted. Yet, its a nice place to hang out, sample the churros, and enjoy the vibe.

Chocolateria San Churro
Silver Pearl
Waterfield Road
Bandra W

Ramzaan F(e)asting at Mohd. Ali Road

This is a ridiculous time to put up a post about Ramzaan feasting - but then I recently took up a task on my to-do list at work which has been languishing there for more than three months...... so you get the pattern. :-D For me the fact that the job finally got done (finally being the operative word here) is more important...... :P

Anyhow, so way back in late August/early September last year (yes, its been 6 months!) I got invited to join an exploratory expedition into the winding by-lanes of Mohd Ali Road during the holy month of Ramzaan. Muslims fast during the day for the entire month, and can only eat during the night, so the narrow alleys sprouting off from the arterial Mohd Ali Road in South-Central Bombay come alive at night during this time. Not only is it a food fiesta, but also a time to deck up, shop,catch up with friends/family......all amid the multi-hued splendour of a thousand and one stalls and shops.

We were lucky to have with us H, who knew the entire area like the back of his hand AND knew all the best places to eat at. Being a practising Muslim meant he had fasted the whole day and could not partake in all the gorging - when one has not eaten the whole day, you cannot begin stuffing you face with rich food right away, else the tummy protests. :) So he only nibbled at the spread of food we tasted, while we indulged in an all-out feeding frenzy. :D

To start off, H took us to this restaurant at the end of a dark dead-end alley. During normal (read: Non-Ramzaan) days it would have been a small nondescript eatery, but during Ramzaan, it was a DESTINATION - with tables spilling over onto the road under strings of bright lights. We began our epic food yatra with payaa - a gravy dish made by slow-cooking lamb/beef trotters with spices in enormous cauldron-like pots. The piece de resistance was the bara handi - a blend of payaa from 12 (bara) different cauldrons (handis).


Surprisingly the payaa was not spicy - it was bursting with flavour, but was easy on the chilli. We got thick wads of tandoor-fresh roti to mop up the sauce with and cold Thums Up to wash down all that richness.

Next stop was a roadside stall (again, with seating consisting of plastic tables and chairs on the pavement) selling only one thing - roasted chicken. It had all the makings of a tandoori chicken except for the fact that it wasn't grilled in a tandoor, but on a open charcoal grill.


You could choose your pick from three offerings - eloquently named Laal/Hara/Safed'(Red/Green/White) - no zaffrani/hariyali/nawabi window-dressing for these guys!

We chose to have one of each like well-behaved epicureans (rather than asking for all the chicken the guy had to offer like gluttons!)....and regretted this restraint on off the first bite of the steaming hot chicken...


....such succulence! Such superb balance of juicy tenderness and smoky charredness! Such a glorious bouquet of spices and tastes! It was easily the best tandoori chicken I have ever had in all my....err... considerable years. The red chicken was significantly spicier than the other two, and we quickly made up for our mistake of ordering only one of each by ordering 2 more pieces to share. :D
Luckily, H wisely shepherded us out of the place before we could order another round, luring us by promises of more treats to come. Else we (OK, OK, I!) would have happily stayed there all evening, downing endless pieces of grilled chicken!

Pushing our way through the throngs on the brightly-lit streets, we went to Hindustan Chhota Kabab, a place specialising in, you got that right, kababs. Here we were met by a revelation - these 'kebabs' were small (grape-sized or slightly larger) and sold by the dozen! Not only that, but they were deep fried, rather than grilled. Made of mutton mince these were spicy, oily and served in a newspaper lined by leaves.




Personally I found them too oily and spicy rather than flavoursome, but I can imagine them being an addictive snack with a beer or two (or more! )

H had saved the best for the last of course. After what seemed like miles (but was only a few hundred feet) of trekking through narrow lanes bursting with decorations and lights and music and CROWDS we reached the main road and the shrine of sweets of that area - Suleiman Usman. This bakery/sweetshop has been a culinary landmark for generations and is particularly sought-after during Ramzaan. We betook of creamy, comforting phirni set in earthenware bowls and piping-hot, fresh-from-the-kadhai malpua.

Each malpua was easily the size of a dinner plate - golden, gleaming with syrup, redolent with the aroma of pure ghee, and drizzled over with creamy rabdi. My personal reason for loving malpua is the textural contrast between crisp, crunchy latticed outer edges and the soft, pillowy centre....such bliss!

We were so lost in the sugar-and-ghee induced daze that the malpua had brought on that, when it suddenly started raining - puring!- it took us several moments to shake off the stupor and run for shelter. Needless to say, we followed the 'women and children to be taken to safety first' principle, and pushed the plates containing our precious malpua and phirni into safety of the makeshift pandal before taking refuge ourselves. :D


All in all, it was a fun evening with plenty of good food and great company. But on a personal note, it was like a culinary pilgrimage - a long-standing item in my Foodie To-Do list was finally ticked off. So what if it took me 6 months to write about it!

Restaurant Review: Cafe Basilico, Bandra West

First of all - apologies for the HUGE gap between posts. Its not that I have been too busy to eat out (Cafe Gulshan, Out of the Blue, Cafe Basilico, Kobe, Cafe Madras) or whip up something in the kitchen (Chocolate Pie, Brownie Cupcakes) - but the time to write out a meticulous post with all details covered has proved to be elusive.

Anyhow to cut to the chase, last month has seen an orgy of eating out - 4 times in one week IS too much, don't you think? Flagging off the eat-a-thon was dinner with friends from work at Out Of The Blue, which I shall blog about after I visit it again - for research purposes, of course. :D

Second off was a leisurely (read: three hour long!) high-tea-turned-dinner at Cafe Basilico at Pali Naka with a fellow foodie friend. VS is a US-based lady who, like birds, heads south (aka back home to India) every winter. This time, we were determined to check out some of the niche, quaint eateries that are the hallmark of Bandra West. Basilico was a natural choice for 'afternoon tea' after an afternoon of window shopping.

When we walked in, the inside seating area (all dark modern square tables and chairs and huge picture windows) was empty. The outdoor seating area had a couple of late-lunchers going strong.

With us being one of only three occupied tables, service was swift. Menus, glasses of water, table napkins etc were dispensed in record time. It took US much longer to decide what to begin our "tea" with. :)

After deliberating the menu options (and confirming that the Lamb Peri Peri that VS remembered as me having and lavishing praise on two years ago - there's a foodie for you! - was not available till 7:00 PM) we started off with a serve of the Thai Chicken Wings.

Yes, these are chicken wings, not prawns

These wings were unlike any wings I have ever had (very few, to be honest) or seen (too many! I adore TLC!) . These were stuffed chicken wings - stuffed with spiced chicken mince. Kinda bizarre, but very tasty, nevertheless. Even more bizarre? They gave us a steak knife and fork to eat these with. :-D My caveman (woman? person?) instincts were so damped down by this!

The only quibble was that the wings were slightly chewy - which meant getting a neat no-sauce-running-down-your-chin bite was impossible. (I abandoned the knife and fork after the first wing where the knife spilled the innards of the wing all over my plate) And yeah, the fact that there were only 4 wings in one serve which meant VS and I polished them off pretty rapidly. (We were hungry! Hadn't had any lunch! :P )

Next up, we asked for the Spicy Vietnamese Chicken Sandwich. I had misgivings about this choice - the words 'soy-marinated chicken' conjured up visions of too-salty chicken and not much else. But I SO GLAD we went with VS's choice!


The sandwich appeared to be a cousin of the famous banh mi and was a delightful combination of crunchy-yet-chewy baguette, tender morsels of chicken drenched in a sweet-spicy sauce, just-enough mayo and shreds of onion and lettuce. Such a treat for the taste buds! Especially when alternated with the crunchy fries served with the sandwich. The tumble of lettuce served on the side was doused with a light sweet-sour dressing, rounding out the offering. If asked to survive for the rest of my days on only one dish, this sandwich would be in the top 3 spots for sure.

To digress - the waitstaff would whisk away our plates and cutlery after every 'course' and replace them with new ones. Which made me feel remarkably swish. (Especially since the last few weeks have seen me on a mission to discover the city's cheap eats)

By the time we'd worked our way through the wings and the sandwich, it was past 7:00 PM, so...................
..............Yes, you got it right, we ordered the much-salivated-over Lamb Peri-Peri. Minus the lamb. In a vain bid to be virtuous, we ordered chicken instead. :)




And...... it wasn't the treasure trove of deliciousness that I (and VS, by transitivity) remembered. :( Maybe it was a case of over-expectation. Or maybe the dish needed lamb. Or maybe my memory had embellished the dish and made it seem brighter, better than it was? Either way, the Chicken Peri-Peri was nice, but just that. Not lip-smackingly awesome. The Peri-Peri sauce was not very spicy, the bed of rice-potato-vermicelli had way more rice and way less starchy, more-ish potato than I remembered.....sigh. We all outgrow our deities some time, I guess.

By this time we were full, but not unbearably so. :D So of course, we had to order dessert. Basilico is the only place I have visited till date which does about 5 versions of cheesecake. (Most places serve only frozen blueberry cheesecake, few others serve the aforesaid FBC plus one baked variant of cheesecake) Basilico serves - get this-

1. Baked Philadelphia Cheesecake
2. Baked New York Cheesecake
3. Baked Blueberry Cheesecake (with the blueberries inside the cheesecake, not on top)
4. Baked Cranberry Cheesecake(with stewed cranberries on top of plain cheesecake)
5. Frozen Blueberry Cheesecake

And this is in addition to a vast array of chocolate-based desserts (Baked New York Chocolate Mousse Cake, Chocolate Mud Pie, Chocolate Flourless Cake, Gooey Chocolate Cake....droooooool) and the usual suspects of brownies, tiramisu and chocolate mousse.

We ordered a wedge each of the Baked Cranberry Cheesecake and the Baked New York Chocolate Mousse Cake. The cheesecake was right at the top of the heap, vying with those served at Ovenfresh and Out Of theBlue for the spot of best cheesecake in town. VS wasn't too keen on cheesecake (her order was the chocolate mousse cake) but one bite and she was a convert. Light, tangy, yet incredibly smooth and creamy, the cheesecake was a stuff of dreams. And the base - crumbly, buttery, sugary - was the stuff of wet dreams :P

The absence of photos of the dessert tells you just how...errr....compelling they were... :D

All this fabulous food wasn't exactly inexpensive or even reasonably-priced - but given the exotic menu, the great food (often one sees menus with super-exotic descriptions - which the food falls short of), good service (paying upwards of Rs 300 per dish means no one can evict you because you have overstayed your welcome - we saw one PYT nursing one mug of coffee for 2 hours!) and great location, it was well worth the price. So the next time you have a session of catching up to do with long-lost (or migratory) friends - you know where to head.

Cafe Basilico
Pali Naka
Bandra-West
Telephone Number: 022 55055555/ 55039999

Restaurant Review : Koolar & Co, King Circle, Matunga (E)

Can you believe it - despite living in Mumbai for most part of my...err.... considerable years ( :P), I had never eaten at an Irani's? That is to say, a true-blue corner cafe with a crusty old owner at the cashier, old ceiling fans whirring away, old dark wooden furniture, old posters framing the walls, old waiters - basically, everything old,everything from a bygone era. The Irani cafes are a Mumbai culinary landmark, a must-visit in a city that has precious little to offer tourists other than its fine colonial architecture and immense culinary diversity.

I filled in that vital missing piece in my foodie jigsaw yesterday, by having a late Saturday lunch at Koolar & Company at King Circle in Matunga (E).


Koolar has everything an Irani should have - an amazing location at the V-shaped corner where two streets meet, mirrored walls, ancient ceiling fans, wooden tables with red-and-white checked tablecloths, creaky wooden chairs and a kitschy mish-mash of curios for decoration.


At Koolar, the decoration included a hanging clock - the kind seen on old railway station platforms (ostensibly from VT railway station, but likely a fake from Chor Bazaar!), a metal lamp suspended from the ceiling (straight from the Arabian Nights, complete with elaborate lattice work) bumping shoulders with 2 other lamps with - get this - Pepsi-branded lampshades.


As for the framed posters-oh my! They included:

1. Marilyn Monroe in her famous white-skirt-flying pose from The Seven Year Itch,
2. The first-page of the newspaper carrying the headline of the sinking of the Titanic,
3. An unknown-to-me busty Hollywood blonde wearing the tiniest miniskirt known to mankind,
4. A Harley Davidson ad, AND,
5. Charles Bronson, in a dapper suit

Plus, the sheer variety of things available for sale at the counter was breathtaking. Get this- there was detergent, bottled water, chips, biscuits, bread, cakes, cola, soda, cigarettes, eggs, butter, deodorant, shampoo, mayonnaise - everything one could possibly remember as running low at home while on a Sunday morning breakfast jaunt!

Taking in all this glory made the already-short wait for our food seem even shorter. First up was the kheema pao.


The kheema (mutton mince) was served in a big white bowl - it was not too spicy,and with a surprising dash of sweetness. Thankfully it was not too oily either. It was served with 4 fresh pao (bread rolls), and some of the juiciest freshly-cut onion I have had in ages and the inevitable lemon quarters. Quick and fairly tasty. And at INR 90, pretty decent value for money too.

Next came the highlight of our lunch - nay, one of the highlights of ALL my eating history. The chicken cutlet was simply divine. Oddly though, it was served pre-cut - a jumble of golden brown pieces served in a bowl with sliced cucumber and tomatoes for company.


But the first bite made me clean forget the unusual presentation. Crunchy, evenly-golden thin crust giving way to a chunk of succulent, juicy, steaming-hot, perfectly seasoned chicken. Bliss! Worth every paisa of the the INR 80 price tag!



We wound up lunch with the must-have at every Irani restaurant- the double omelet (INR 40). This too, was served with pao and had a nice evenly tanned brown appearance. The omelet was not particularly fluffy but was juicy and tasty and the bits of onion and chilly inside packed quite a punch.


Other items on the menu include the Wrestler's Omelet (made with FIVE eggs), sandwiches, burgers, Irani tea (served without milk) and oddly enough - cappucino, among others.

In conclusion, Koolar, while not being exactly a cheap feed, is still awesome value for money when you throw in the old-world charm, the idiosyncratic decor and the quick service. Not to mention the simple-yet-tasty food! I am still drooling over that chicken cutlet.....