Tag: koramangala

Restaurant review: China Pearl

swords

(pic courtesy: link)

This cosy little restaurant is in 60 feet road, Koramangala, Bangalore. I had always seen this restaurant when I had passed by it, but had never been to it. One of my colleagues recently told me that, his family likes the restaurant so much that, they lug it all the way from Whitefield to her, once in a few months.

Ambience: Very nice ambience. Lots of Eastern relics in the decor. Swords. Chinese porcelain dolls. Oriental wall hangings etc. They could with some lesser focus lights – some times, these give you a headache. Music is passable chinese background music – nothing fancy.

Menu: Very clear. Something that pleased me immensely was a note at the bottom of the first page – “For our vegetarian patrons, please turn to page 7”. Most vegetarians are inherently skeptical of what they would get in a Chinese restaurant, since they have this predisposition that it would mostly be non vegetarians. So this note and a few pages of pure vegetarian menu goodness, was a welcome change.

Food: Fairly authentic. Slightly high on the oil, but tasty. We had the crispy fried vegetables, veg ball in Hunan sauce, and Five treasure chowmein. Noodles were hakka type, well cooked, but just the right amount. Quantity of the starter was generous.

Service: A restaurants acid test with respect to service, is how well they respond on a busy saturday night. It was saturday night, and huge crowds. Service was slow. It tends to irritate customers when it takes 10 minutes for the bill to come, and another 15 minutes to get back the change. One nice touch on the service, I should mention though. My kid (who is 4 year old) got his own kiddie melamine plate (cartoon characters and all), and a small plastic fork and spoon. That is a first that I have seen.

Cost: Overall damage was around 700 bucks. It is on the slightly pricier side, but it is worth it.

Overall: Enjoyed the meal and the ambience. Perhaps, if it was not a saturday night, and if service had been better, we would have enjoyed it even more.

 

99 Variety Dosa – Koramangala – Food Truck

Oh boy, this is good stuff. This is a food truck – an articulated auto. Good quality ingredients used (all amul stuff). We tried this on friday and last friday. Both experiences were very good. Tried different types of dosa. There are basically 4 different varieties – chinese base, pav bhaji base, potato base, and cheese base.

The chinese base has a smattering of chilli, garlic, and soya sauces. Some have cooked noodles and shredded cabbage tossed in.

The pav bhaji base has the pav bhaji masala as the base. A smattering of all kinds of vegetables, cheese and paneer are toppings based on your choice.

The potato base or the mysore masala as it is called has the traditional “aloo palya” base and a smattering of vegetables, cheese, or paneer as toppings based on your choice.

The cheese base has veggies and cheese. period. Each dosa with cheese in its name gets a grated cheese cube (oh yeah, one full cheese cube grated fully!).

All in all, good stuff. Do check this out. This is on the road that joins the NGV gate and the forum road – also called 80 ft road. When you head from the NGV gate, there are two positions that this food truck takes. It is either on the left, right outside the Laxmi Devi Park ; or further down the road on the right hand side right opposite to the Ganpati temple.

Restaurant Review: The Elegant Elephant

We have been wanting to try this out for a while. This is on the same building as The Great Indian Thali – Near Sony World Signal – Koramangala.

  • Serving type – Buffet – but served to the table. Not sure, if this is always like this, or, was yesterday an exception – because of low crowds.
  • Crowd – there was very less crowd
  • Food
    • The starters and the gravy had _no_ salt in them. And when I say no salt, I mean no salt, not less salt. Unfortunately, starters are something that you cannot ‘add’ more salt on. We did sprinkle away saltiness on our gravy to make it pallatable.Starters were Paneer Tikka, Baby Corn, and Corn Tikka.
    • One paneer gravy. One mix veg gravy. And one mushroom gravy (which we turned back – both R and I are not fans of Mushroom). Dal Tadka. Plain roti, Butter Naan, and Kulcha made up the roti basket. The Paneer was fresh (both in the starter and in the gravy). The rotis were not that great either. The dal was the only palatable side dish. For some reason, the chef put salt in it.
    • Jeera rice and Plain rice was the rice ‘varieties’. Again Jeera rice had zero salt, but this is a matter of preference between chefs.
    • Desserts were the only good thing to have happened – Gajar Halwa, Gulab Jamun, and Butter scotch icecream.
    • The over all service was fantastic though. The waiters filled water glasses even without asking. Jumped up in serving us when our plates were done. Great service I should say.
  • Ambience. There are two seating areas. One is the terrace. We skipped this. Was too bright for comfort in the afternoon. And there is an A/C dining room inside. This was nice and cool. Minimally decorated but clean. Washrooms etc were maintained well.
  • Damage to wallet: Rs 950 for two – all inclusive.
  • My opinion – Not worth it at all.

Restaurant review: El Tablao, Koramangala, Bangalore

Location:

On the road connecting Sony World Signal to Jakkasandra (Koramangala I Block). When you come from Sony World signal, it is within the first few buildings on the right hand side. The restaurant is above Reliance Jewels. There are three restaurants on the same building (Great Indian Thali, El Tablao, and Barbercue Factory).

The Good:

  • Good authentic Mexican food
  • Fairly extensive wine menu (though we didn’t order any)
  • Menu is found here -> [link]
  • Good service
  • Food arrived super quick from the kitchen
  • Reasonably priced
  • Awesome location

The Bad:

  • The ambience could be much better. It is exotic  cuisine, and good food at that. It would heighten the experience so much more, if the ambience is spruced up.
  • Not too well lit. Seems to be forcibly pushed into the fine-dining-ambience-template !
  • Most Mexican restaurants that I have eaten (in the US) are loud and raucous and bright.