Foodie post #3: Fisherman's Wharf

The daunting drive from Basavanagudi to Sarjapur Road was always a roadblock, so to speak, for me to try out this place. Today however, I was visiting family who live a hop away from Fisherman’s Wharf and I jumped at the chance. Being a Mangalorean, I face painful withdrawal symptoms when denied my seafood fix and I can therefore tack on my name to the been-there-done-that list of coastal cuisine restos in Bangalore. Funnily enough, I’ve never ever tried Goan cuisine before. Oh, I know all the wonderfully musical keywords (bebinka, recheado, sorpotel, balchao), and today was my chance to dig in!

Ah! Finally a place in Bangalore where you don’t have to drive a couple of u-turns to find a parking spot! The restaurant itself is set like a traditional coastal home, all wood and brass, Mangalore tiles and airy central courtyard. The theme is carried forward with wicker chairs, wicker accents on the ceiling fans (!) and the nautical-looking hemp wrap around the pillars. A gazebo seats a live band that plays Goan music very tunefully and is a wonderful add-on to the place.

We walked in at 3pm, almost when last lunch orders were being taken, and were promptly seated. Yay! Happy hours had just begun so we now had a 1+1 offer on beverages, and we promptly asked for the classic margaritas. They arrived chilled, tongue-curlingly tangy and just what the doctor ordered for a lazy Sunday lunch.

Their menu features everything from continental to north Indian to Chinese to Goan.  For starters, we went with a Greek salad, Goan style chilli prawn, kingfish rava fry and squid rechead.

The Greek salad was good but pretty generic, with fresh, sweaty feta that by itself tasted fantastic, but mixed into the salad imparted a slightly dairy-ish flavour to the rest of the ingredients. But these guys do know their seafood! It’s very easy to overcook fish and turn it into Goodyear, and I was thrilled that all three starters passed the test. The portions too were quite generous: good-sized prawns in a capsicum/onion spicy base that tasted vaguely Chinese, a large kingfish steak with the crispy rava casing that I’m so familiar with, and non-rubbery squid rings in the flavourful sour-spicy rechead masala.

For mains we ordered prawn balchao and Goan fish curry with kingfish, both accompanied by white rice. I had actually been looking forward to eating my meal with red boiled rice that is such an intrinsic part of coastal cuisine, and was terribly disappointed to learn that it wasn’t available. The fish curry was a delicately flavoured dish made rich with coconut milk and a large chunk of tender kingfish. Two thumbs up! In contrast the prawn balchao was an explosion of flavours, it was all out war! Spice battled the sour, sweet fought for supremacy. Never having tasted balchao before, it was an interesting experience, but I’m not sure I’m a fan.

I am yet to taste a satisfactory tiramisu in Bangalore, and though we ordered one for dessert, I kept my expectations low. I was right. The tiramisu came in a glass and was a frothy, caramel-flavored whipped cream confection that didn’t remotely resemble that famous Italian dessert. Completely avoidable.

All in all, except for the dessert, it was a great seafood meal, even if it did pinch the pocket a bit. This was one of those times where I was happy to have sand in my shoes!

Meal for 4: Rs.3800 (1 salad, 3 starters, 2 mains, 1+1 margarita)

Foodie post #2: Spiga

Sigh! It is a sad, sad day when a cherished food fantasy bites the dust. The old Spiga at Vittal Mallaya Road had captured my imagination as a budding foodie, as a go-to place for great continental food. This is what fuelled our visit tonight, a first after the shift to the current location on St. Marks Road.

The new Spiga it turns out has undergone a makeover, plonked itself on a rooftop and now seems intent on joining the teeming horde of lounges/pubs jostling for space in Bangalore’s nightlife. Spiga has a lot going for it in terms of ambience: a rooftop setting, candlelight, comfortable seating, a view of UB City lights and Bangalore’s incomparable outdoor weather. It would have been perfect if I hadn’t been blasted from the get-go by their loud and incongruously jarring house music. Honestly, I wish these in-between lounge-restaurants would just make up their mind and be done with it. I just find it so hard to drum up an appetite while being blasted by irrationally loud dinchak music. Anyway, we were promptly seated, but our happy spirits were not reflected in the dour-faced gentleman who refused to meet my eye to take our order and came over only after much signalling and outright hissing.

Since it was pretty late, we ordered for starters and mains all at once. They have a pretty diverse menu, ranging from American burgers, to English fish n chips to Mediterranean to Thai. We went with Satay prawns to begin with followed by veg chimichangas for myself and rosemary lamb chops with mushrooms and mashed potatoes for the husband. We were promptly given a little tray of garlic bread: hot, buttery and crusty, it went down well and set a good tone for the meal. I also asked for a lemon basil soda, which although refreshing, had no hint of basil whatsoever, although I detected a bit of ginger…unexpected and unasked for.

The prawns when they arrived were good for a loud, long belly laugh. They were MINISCULE!! They looked so damn lost and sad and forlorn as they sat in the plate skewered by the wicked wood picks. When we finally stopped pointing and laughing and got around to eating them, we found them pretty unremarkable. A standard sweet peanut marinade crowded out the flavour of the mini-prawns. Sigh!

It’s practically impossible to go wrong with a chimichanga. Take a burrito, stuff it with cheese and whatever’s at hand and dump it in the fryer. Indeed, there was nothing very wrong about my chimichanga, but it was just the little things that rubbed me the wrong way. The burrito casing was terribly hard, a saw would have been helpful in place of a dinner knife. As I worked my way though the dish, the measly dabs of sour cream and salsa sauce lasted for only the first few bites, and I was left to finish my dry, chewy chimichanga with congealed, unappetizing refried beans. I saw no sign of the guacamole the menu had promised. I finally gave up when I was three-quarters done. Sigh!

The husband was terribly disappointed with his dish of rosemary lamb chops. The cuts of meat were just AWFUL, the ribs all running together, and required gnawing like a caveman rather than using the steak knife they offered. We had pictured a delicate dish of grilled lamb chops flavoured with rosemary and other herbs. What arrived was a plate piled high with bad cuts smothered in a standard pepper sauce with shallots, no hair nor hide to be found of mushrooms or rosemary. I no idea pepper and rosemary could be used in the same sentence. The mashed potatoes were grainy and contained onions….eeks! The icing on the cake was the aged, fibrous beans they had added as an afterthought to the plate. Sigh!

We couldn’t leave the place fast enough, never even considered dessert. Such a sad end to a long-looked-forward-to meal.

Meal for 2 without alcohol: Rs. 1400

Foodie post #1: Smokehouse Deli

Boy! Winning a bet this time around paid big time!

I' m a small and insignificant member of a Bangalore foodie group on Facebook, and the name Smoke House Deli filtered through a couple times above all the usual chatter. So, yet another bet won against hubby and I picked Smoke House Deli to rub his nose in it and get a dekko at the oft mentioned place.

We picked a Friday night to do the honours and the place was packed with Bangalore’s beautiful people. It might sound a bit perverse, but a filled to capacity restaurant usually gets my juices flowing. It doesn’t necessarily follow that a packed place guarantees great food, but hope springs eternal! On a Friday night, table for two usually gets us seated pretty quickly, this time was no exception. The brightly lit and cheerful interiors made it easy for me to do my bobble-headed who’s-here-wearing-what ogle. The restaurant had the cheerful off-white-cream-beige thing going with very imaginative pen drawing on the walls, flowing onto the furniture and sideboards and, hats off to their consistency, even peeking through from the wait staff shirt cuffs!

The camel in me went straight to the bar menu and I ordered the very first thing I saw on it! To be honest, I did go through it in its entirety, and to my untrained eye it did look like a pretty satisfying list of cocktails, coolers and white and red wines. I zeroed in on the cucumber, basil, lavender and vladivar infusion. It was the word infusion that got to me; it gave an almost therapeutic righteousness to my drink and immediately offset the guilt of the vladivar! In a word YUM! It was one cool tall fragrant drink, redolent with the cucumber and lavender and I could feel my toes curl up in pleasure.

For starters, we went with chicken and ordered the coriander grilled chicken skewers. The portion size was generous and the chicken was succulent and beautifully cooked. BUT I chastised myself for playing it so safe and going ahead and ordering what was essentially a glorified hariyali tikka. The dip, what tasted like a sweet roasted red pepper sauce redeemed the dish and snatched it away from the jaws of pedestrian dhaba-ness.

For mains I ordered the spaghetti with field mushrooms and red onion and hubby went with the chermoula spiced grilled chicken. Now, my gold standard for spaghetti with wild mushrooms is this little bistro called the Minganelli at the Spanish steps in Rome that I ate some eons ago. That I haven’t forgotten the flavours of the place is a testament to its awesomeness. I’m not saying that the spaghetti at smoke house took me back to Rome, but it was buttery, garlicky without being overpowering, and made me grin with the very first bite. BUT, I could count the pieces of mushroom on one hand, why oh why?? Hubby was quite satisfied with his chermoula spiced grilled chicken. A bite revealed beautifully cooked chicken with a very balanced pepper-cumin-lemon flavour, ho-hum, all things everyday-home-Indian that I’d been trying to forget.

Dessert picking time is gut wrenching, I just find it so hard to let go of all those choices and pick just one. What if I made the wrong choice and the ones that got away paved the stairway to heaven? Anyway I played it safe, tore my eyes away from the tiramisu, Philly cheesecake and roasted almond torte and ordered the raspberry and Oreo cheesecake. The cheesecake was light on the palate and raspberry and chocolate is always a winning combination. The tart raspberry compote did manage to save it from complete boredom.

It was altogether a new and unexpectedly lively gastronomic experience, what with the mix of flavours and cuisines on the menu. They have a whole selection of interesting burgers and sandwiches and I am sure to visit on my next cant-live-without-burger day.

meal for two: Rs.2400 (2drinks, 1starter, 2mains, 1dessert)