Monthly activity sheet - Food *shakes head in disappointment*

There is a tonne of places/ things I have wanted to write about since the last time I open the editor for this blog. But everything that I held important over the last one year of jobless salary earning, suddenly seems to have taken a back seat. For the record, I am not one to give in so easily. So here we go, even if my opinion on all things important in life, comes in the form of a monthly report this time!

Daddy's Deli, the parsi restaurant, Off 100 feet road, Indiranagar - If the ordering in was good, eating at Daddy'd Deli is even better. Unbelievably quick service and steaming hot parsi fare make for a very interesting, gluttonous outing. And the prawns here were the freshest I have had in Bangalore. Absolutely brilliant!

Daddy's Deli, the cafe - quaint, and very aptly in one of the quietest lanes of Indiranagar, the Daddy's Deli cafe is absolutely mindblowing. Brilliant sandwiches, refreshingly "different" peas patties, fresh, awesome salads, and a Corner House to balance all the healthy eating. You can give the coffee a miss, or strictly order black. Like most other places, getting the right coffee is pretty difficult here. But having said that, I totally recommend this place and I am now waiting for the English breakfast trip to Daddy's Deli. It will happen the first Sunday I manage to wake up in time for breakfast.

New Punjabi Hotel, HAL 2nd Stage - It is really difficult to decide what the USP of this place is - price, taste, or the refreshingly "dilli waali feeling", complete with a Sardar ji asking you if the food is good and Biharis making you feel at home, serving you like you really are a guest and not a customer, and lassi! The food is absolutely brilliant, kaali daal is to die for, tandoori chicken is surprisingly succulent, and the naans and rotis are the best I have had in Bangalore. All this for less than Rs 200 for two people who generally overeat. The biryanis can be given a miss here, the lassi and naan, absolutely not! If you thought Kund (Indiranagar) was good, try New Punjabi Hotel. This is the closest you can get to the real dhaba experience, so far away from where the real dhabas are. +10.

Daily Bread, Wind Tunnel Road - Stupid coffee, dry-ish sandwiches, brilliant salads. For those who actually go to Daily Bread for anything else except cakes and pastries. I would say stick with what they are good at. The rest of the menu is plain incidental.

Starke's Chicken and Burgers, Indiranagar - It is a pity I will never go here again because the ambience is actually interesting, complete with verandah seating and fence and all. But you pay a huge price with the painfully slow service and the terrible bouts of indigestion that follow. I never really bothered about the "I puked after I ate there" reviews because, for the record, I have a stomach of steel. But hello, I am not invincible. Stupid service, stupider staff. But what takes the cake is the stupid feeling you get when you puke in the middle of the night. Best avoided.

Purple Haze - What can I say that has not been said before. It plays music I know, it has people who don't stare at women who smoke and scream songs tunelessly, and the staff is an amazingly happy bunch. One word - cult. In the last year and a half, my Purple Haze plans always went awry. Either replaced or completely dumped. But I was there for hours at a stretch last night, came home feeling very very happy, and I am glad today after I realized that youth is not completely lost on me. It's the kind of place where you have everything you need to destress. LOUD, good music. The real classic rock. And chilled beer (which is surprisingly rare these days!). And the prices and the music make sure all your other senses are numbed. Abso-freaking-brilliant. It is a pity I went to Purple Haze only now. It is the original cult pub. It is the Toons in Bangalore, which explains why I have been feeling so young! The HRC and Jimi's and Cirrus' of the world can go take a walk because I can say with absolute certainty that last night was the first of many, many visits to Purple Haze.

I have also been thinking that all the pretentious places around should take some customer service gyaan from smaller, even inexpensive places like Purple Haze and New Punjabi Hotel. The service is not fake respectful or annoyingly intruding. People look happy to serve you and that's all that matters!

More on the other side of the break, more to come on books and movies. Happy eating. In, out, wherever!

Jimi's Beer Cafe - Misleading name for a place that plays everything but him

We entrered with Floyd, and we thought we had got it all right. Except that the ground floor seemed a lot like Daily Bread. And here's how the evening turned out-

The beer seems flat.
Jimi's special fries. Chewy. Ho hum.
The smoking area is stuffier than usual.
Why are those kids dancing to rock music?
Blllaaah! Stop headbanging to just about anything!
It is 9 pm, will we get some breathing space at Purple Haze at this hour?
Beer cocktails. AAARGH! If I wanted Iced Tea, I'd not have come here!
You can hear me, I can hear me. The speakers aren't good enough!
GET ME MY TOOOOONS! 
...
...
...
This place is awwwwesome!
We are awwwwesome!
This chicken tikka is awwwwesome!
Bangalore is awwwwesome!
Life's awwwwesome!

You get my point, don't you? If you are planning a sober evening with only music to bail you out, Jimi's (Indiranagar) is not the place to go. Because for all the classic rock charade outside, the closest they get to classic/ hard/ psychedelic is one Floyd, one Metallica, and that's it. The rest is just too much of the Linkin Park brigade. The place is good for cheap beer, some select starters, and for those times you want to get home without an iota of sobriety. 3 on 5 from me - 3 only for the awesome time we generally have, even if you make us sit on the roadside and not give us any beer.

Cirrus

Last night was my second visit to Cirrus, Indiranagar. The place is just one step short of being on my top 5 list of cheap beer drinking places in Bangalore. It has everything going for itself - the ambience (rooftop on a quintessential Bangalore evening and not crowded beyond capacity), non-pretentious crowd for most part, prices, and food. Now if only they played some rock on Saturday nights.

But then again, I can't hold it against them. I may not be a part of their hip hop listening target group. But what the hell it was fun! If you are planning to go there, book a table on the terrace way in advance. It's a tad bit difficult to find a table of your choice even after the booking, and it doesn't help when the manager just chooses to look in the other direction when you speak to him about it. All you have to do is remind him that it's not great behaviour and then he will smile at you tirelessly all evening!

That said, the service is quick, the alcohol is not expensive, the food is quite good. And the ambience is quite simple and quite nice (I can't emphasize enough on booking a table on the terrace though). Just don't expect immaculate behaviour. And don't drink and drive. There are cops right outside the building!

Sathya Restaurant (Bar Attached)... Imagine!

A bunch of us from office decided on impulse to grab a bite somewhere on our way back home last Thursday. After a lot of deliberation (read getting stuck in bumper to bumper traffic all the way from Bannerghatta to nearly everywhere else in the city), we finally decided to go somewhere cheap and awesome somewhere close to everyone's house. That's when Sathya happened. And grabbing a bite became more like  grabbing bottles, pardon my sophistication anti thesis ;-)

Old time Bangaloreans say this shack-like place right in the middle of the most peaceful stretch in Koramangla (3rd block) was originally a shady dhaba with open seating and palm trees and cheap, decent non vegetarian fare and alcohol. Soon the demand increased and they turned it into Sathya Restaurnant - Bar attached (typical Bangalore). I am glad I went there. I remember such places from my college days in Pune and was now beginning to forget the pleasures of cheap beer outings. Where we parked our car was an unlikely parking area - palm trees and brilliant breeze. We sat in the smoking area- slightly warm but the weather wasn't very Bangalore that Thursday night and I will let that pass.The place is held together by bamboo sticks and looks a lot like a shack. Cheap beer (the best part- they don't serve pints :-))), cheap and pretty decent starters... Fresh and delicious chicken chilly, to-die-for-mushrooms, and absolutely awesome prawns.. It was as good as being in Bombay (I really need to get over my Bombay hangover!). Just much more peaceful. The crowd was excellent and not in the least wannabe, which is the curse of Bangalore eateries for most part. And music that was soft enough to allow long conversations and crazy jokes. Sathya was the kind of place I would not normally go to now, thanks to its name and how it looks from the outside. But it was an awesome evening. Worth a revisit. It's going to be stone's throw from where my office is moving next week :D Recommended for last minute plans and catching up with friends over intoxicants and long winding conversation.

By the way I have no idea when Paathsala came and went from Bangalore theatres. I am not going to forgive the multiplexes here for some time now. Unless I am wrong. I hope I am. Let me know!