Best Clicks: Lovin’ Food

It’s been quite some time since I have written something. Reason being, no inspiration!

I haven’t had a delicious meal in quite some time. Sure, I have had some good food in the past 2-3 months but nothing divine enough which would inspire me to write.

In search of inspiration I was going through my photo gallery and something struck me. I was hungry!
As I looked at some of my pictures I realized I was drooling. I could visualize how it tasted and started craving for those flavours. It was food porn at its best and that’s when inspiration hit me!

Food Pornography has existed for quite some time, and by some time I mean a decade or two. Its popularity resurfaced in recent times and currently is a buzzword in the culinary world. Food pornography is more than just an exotic representation of food. It is also to do with how food evokes feelings of hunger. Additionally, it forces us to look at food beyond its conventional terms. But before we dive into that, I decided why not showcase some of my best pictures in a blog post and tease your palate a bit.

Until my next blog post which will deliberate on food pornography in the present day, treat your eyes to some gorgeous looking food! :)

Red velvet cupcake from Glen's Bakehouse, Bengaluru

Vegetable sandwich at the Black Rabbit, Bengaluru

Gooey Chocolate at Cafe Moshes, Mumbai

Chettinad chicken prepared by Chef Somshekar, Bengaluru

Dhansak at Red Fork, Bengaluru

Churros at The Glass House, Bengaluru

Strawberry Surprise at HongKong, Bengaluru

Chocolate Wantons at Berry'd Alive, Bengaluru

Tomato and feta cheese at Cafe Zoe, Mumbai 

Strawberry white chocolate at Aubree, Bengaluru

Basil fried rice with potato pepper curry at Beijing Bites, Bengaluru

Corn and cheese balls at Cafe Noir, Bengaluru

Sponge pastry, Bengaluru

Nachos from Chinita, Bengaluru 

Chocolate mousse from Ambara, Bengaluru

Raj Katori from VV Puram food street, Bengaluru

Sol Kadhi prepared by Chef Shailendra Kekde

Drooling yet? ;)

Vietnamese affair at Phobidden Fruit

Phobidden Fruit was on my wish list for quite some time for two reasons, one for its lovely green ambience and second for Vietnamese food. I’d heard so much about how delicious their food was and until quite sometimes back Phobidden fruit was one of those few places which offered authentic Vietnamese food.

In Vietnamese cuisine, fresh ingredients play a key role. Distinct flavours of this cuisine make it stand apart. Once you have tasted any Vietnamese dish, it is not easy to forget it’s flavour.

Herbs and aromatics are extensively used and oh how can I forget soy sauce which is one of the most common ingredients used amongst dishes offered in this cuisine.

Did the food at Phobidden Fruit delight me? Read on to know more.

Ambience:

It’s like a sea of green here. Simple yet elegant, calm and serene, what more can one ask for? Yellow dim lights at night adds to the charm making this restaurant a perfect spot for a date night!

The restaurant is spacious, tables arranged in an orderly manner and a lot of space to move around, even when this place gets crowded it doesn’t seem clumsy. If you ask me, I’d suggest you visit this place for dinner because the ambience is all the more appealing and beautiful.

Grub:

As mentioned earlier, the essence of herbs and soy sauce is dominant across most Vietnamese dishes. Hence, if you aren’t a big fan of soy sauce, Vietnamese cuisine as a whole might not appeal to you at all. But, if you don’t mind the sweet n sour taste of it then eventually you will start relishing the exotic flavours this cuisine has to offer.

The menu here is limited. You start browsing through the menu and within two minutes you are done. Limited offerings under each course are a disappointment indeed! Additionally, if you are a vegetarian your options get reduced all the more.

We took our time to order appetisers and main course. Yes, being vegetarians we didn’t have much of a choice but my brother and I took our time to go through the menu in detail and then place an order.

We started off with Potato Fritters and vegetarian Congee. When we were served with Potato Fritters, I couldn’t take my eyes off it. God, it looked delicious! But on the other hand, the oil hadn’t been soaked completely. The fritters were dripping of oil which in the beginning turned me off. Imagine all the excitement I had when I saw the potato fritters and the second my fork poked and picked up one of the fritters I could see oil dripping and all my excitement went away, just like that. However, on the bright side, the fritters weren’t that bad after all. Tangy & crispy would probably describe these fritters the best. But, stay away from this if you don’t like to savour the aroma and taste of soy. 

The soup was absolutely refreshing! With a pinch of pepper, the house special rice soup was the perfect start to my meal.

House special rice soup

Looks delicious, right?

For the main course, we opted for Viet red curry (vegetarian) & Saigon noodles. Viet red curry was an absolute stunner. A treat to the eyes and my taste buds, the red curry was cooked so well. The flavour of spices stood out and won my heart! This Vietnamese take on Thai red curry is a must have here.

On the other hand, Saigon noodles was lovely as well. A sharp taste of soy sauce, the noodles were dressed with cucumber, bean sprouts and cabbage bok choy. Again, pretty to look at, the noodles tantalises your taste buds and if you love herbs and soy sauce, you will enjoy savouring this dish.

Vietnamese take on Thai red curry

Noodles be so yummy

Service & Pricing:

Service is a no-nonsense one. Friendly faces and prompt service enables you to have a great dining experience and that’s exactly what all of us look out for, don’t we?

When it comes to pricing after having a sumptuous 3 or 4 course meal the bill will leave you wide-eyed. Not because the meal left a hole in your wallet but because how cheap this affair turned out to be. And when you experience such moments, the feeling of contentment heightens all the more.

A beautiful place which offers some flavoursome food at a reasonable price, we need more such restaurants in Bengaluru, don’t we? Thumbs up to this one! I am definitely going back to experience this delightful dining affair again.

Quick bites:

Rating – 4/5

Cost for two – 1200/- inclusive of taxes

Why you should go here – To enjoy Vietnamese cuisine at its best

Location - St. Marks Road, 15/16, Ground Floor, House of Lords

Landmark – Diagonally opposite to Mother Cluckers

Relishing European flavours at Café Mezzuna

It had been a long week and I desperately needed something to pep me up a bit. What a better mood buster than some lip smacking food, right?

Deciding the place where I would pamper my taste buds wasn’t that difficult as there was this one café I was hearing good reviews about and was for long on my wish list. Becoming the next big thing in the café scene in Bengaluru, Café Mezzuna was an absolute delight!

Ambience

Located on St Mark’s road, Café Mezzuna is easy to spot. A little ahead of Truffles, a big black hoarding reading out Café Mezzuna is something you can’t miss. A basement level with minimalist furnishing, wooden décor, white walls and crockery, the ambience of this place is indeed quite lovely! With options of indoor and outdoor seating, the café is spacious, decorated with artistic wall hangings and has a feel good aura. Yes, this place does get very crowded, however even in all that noise of conversations and music; you can enjoy a good meal and not feel agitated with all the commotion around you. Casual seating in a cosy dining environment is what stands out here.

We opted for the outdoor seating, where a bed of artificial grass was laid out. After getting seated comfortably (changed tables twice) and having a look around the café, I went through their extensive menu.

Menu & grub

Their bar and food menu is very elaborate. If you want to drink and have some starters to go with it, you can do that or if you want to have a proper continental meal, you can do that as well. Since I was very sure that I wanted to relish some good food and have a proper meal, we started by ordering for mocktails and starters.

Watermelon & basil crush, CNC (Cucumber frappe spiked with cumin) and the ginger twist was what we ordered from the mocktail menu. The first two drinks were absolutely refreshing, especially CNC. The mix of cucumber and cumin gives you a kick which energizes you. The ginger twist was just okay, wasn’t too great for me to sing praises of and it wasn’t bad either. It was just another drink!

CNC, so good!

Ginger Twist

Watermelon & basil

I started my food tasting-pampering session with appetizers – Spinach – cheese sambousek creamy garlic dip and Potato leek cheddar croquette, smoked paprika aioli. Both the dishes were delicious! The spinach and cheese sambousek was cooked to perfection. The crispness overpowers the taste of the spinach which is the filling hence for people who aren’t a big fan of green vegetables can still enjoy this dish! The croquette was fried well and had a beautiful texture. When the texture looks so good, it’s just all the more appealing to me!

Potato leek cheddar croquette, smoked paprika aioli

Spinach – cheese sambousek creamy garlic dip

While stuffing myself with the appetizers I was quite pleased, my mood was getting better.

In the main course section, you have an array of dishes to choose from. Pizzas to wraps to burgers to risottos, they have it all. I decided to go the Italian way and ordered for a plate of pasta and pizza!

A large-sized thin crusted pizza made its way to our table. Fresh tomatoes, basil, buffalo mozzarella and roasted garlic as the toppings, the pizza didn’t impress me much. For some reason the base of the pizza was wet. Probably the plate wasn’t wiped properly before serving pizza in it. I don’t really know why the base was wet and there was water on the plate but that ruined the pizza for me completely. Moreover, the garlic wasn’t roasted; it was just plucked out and put on the pizza directly, plain. The pizza was just plain bad. Period.

Pasta on the other hand, got me peppy and chirpy again. Yes, this one was not only well cooked but the flavours were so sharp that it just awakens your senses! This is the kind of food I look out for.

We ended our meal with Orange crème brulee, almond biscotti. If you need a sugar rush, this one will seal the deal for you! This dessert is for the sweet tooth if you don’t have one, opt for a different dessert. That said, the crème brulee was delightful! With this thin sheet of caramelized sugar and the almond biscotti, the dessert was top-notch.

Pasta be so yum

Orange crème brulee, almond biscotti

Service & Pricing

The boys were very attentive and it was a no-nonsense service. Very obliging staff and accommodative to your needs.

Pricing is very reasonable! We enjoyed all this and paid less than 1500/- which left us stunned. And this was with all taxes included.

Apart from the pizza, the food overall was good. Yes, they don’t really pay much attention to the presentation of the food but the taste makes up for that. The ambience is beautiful and in the plethora of café’s Bengaluru offers, Mezzuna finds itself in the top of must visit cafes for two reasons. One, their ambience and two, the variety of European flavours they have to offer!

Quick bites:

Rating – 4/5

Cost for two – 1000/- inclusive of taxes

Why you should go here – To enjoy the ambience and treat yourself to some European food

Location - St. Marks Road, 15/16, Ground Floor, House of Lords

Landmark – Building next to Chianti or a little ahead of Truffles 

It’s a pizza affair at Onesta

What are the little things in life that make you happy? If you ask me, I’d say the smell of mud when it rains, sloppy kisses from Bruno and a cup of hot tea. I call them my little joys! Yes, there’s more to that list and having a pizza loaded with cheese definitely makes it to the top 10.

Winter is here and the joy of eating hot samosa and pakodas, biting into a crunchy pizza and drinking hot chocolate will be heightened. There’s nothing more you’d want to do apart from indulging yourself in a culinary escapade when the weather is so pleasant.

It’s been a long festive weekend and after relishing all the Diwali sweets, I decided to pamper my taste buds to pizzas.

Onesta is a recent entry in the pizza café market in Bengaluru and has created a buzz. Apart from my cravings, the entire buzz made me very curious me and that led me to Onesta.

Ambience

At first look, the place comes across as cramped up. With the way tables and chairs are lined the spacious café seems like it’s not so spacious after all. The décor is unexaggerated and plays with colours of nature, green and brown. Plants beautify the outside seating ambience while the inside seating area is what one would call elegant. There is nothing creative about the décor but like they say simplicity does wonders and Onesta echo’s just the same.

The atmosphere here is buzzing with conversations making it difficult to hear the music in the background, but you know what? I didn’t mind that at all. The laughter and conversations made this place come alive! 

My only concern here was the table we were given. So the table for two here is very small and half the table is already occupied with the placards, spoon stand, water bottle and other things making it difficult for us to adjust our plates and dishes on the table. There was hardly any space on the table and I feared that something from the table would fall if we weren’t careful enough.

Grub

The menu offers you with bruschetta, lasagna, a variety of pizzas (veg and non-veg), drinks and desserts. What disappointed me a little was that there was no garlic bread on the menu. Call me traditional but if I am having a pizza I would like to start by munching on garlic bread first.

We spent some time on deciding which pizza to order and then finally asked for – Pesto & red pepper and Cream roasted veggies. Apart from that we also ordered for Roasted broccoli and cheese bruschetta and Green apple cooler.

As we eagerly waited for our pizzas, the staff served us bread and mayo. I wasn’t too keen on having the bread but since our pizza was taking time, I thought why not just take a bite while I wait to satisfy my cravings. And my, the bread along with mayo tasted delicious! The mayo was oh so yum; I would give it a full ten on the taste test.

As we toasted our green apple coolers, our pizzas arrived and we faced a problem. No place to keep two pizzas on the table! Somehow we managed to rearrange the stuff on our table and found enough place to keep the pizzas.

The cooler was refreshing. We sipped it as we munched on our pizzas and concluded that nothing better would go with it!

Green apple cooler..oh so refreshing!

The cream roasted veggies pizza is loaded with cheese (just how I like it) and dressed with marinated vegetables. How did it fare? Well out of all the pizzas we ordered this one took away the cake. Crispy and cheesy, tasted just right and I was in heaven!

Cream roasted veggies pizza

The Pesto and red pepper pizza didn’t impress me much probably because there was just way too much pesto. I didn’t get to enjoy the crispness of the crust because the pesto overpowered it and felt like I was having bread and pesto and not a pizza.

Pesto and red pepper pizza

Bruschetta, however, was nothing special but the toppings, roasted broccoli and cheese went very well with each other and managed to bring back my cheer.

Roasted broccoli and cheese bruschetta 

We decided to go for another pizza and settled for Farmhouse special as pizza Italia was unavailable. This one is quite similar to the ones you get in Pizza Hut/Dominoes. It passed the test but didn’t really impress me as much as cream roasted veggies did.

Farmhouse special

After the pizza, I headed towards the dessert counter and asked for the Black forest pudding. Delightful to look at, I enjoyed the freshness of the cream the most. Spongy layers of chocolate and the fresh cream makes this one a must have at Onesta. 

Black forest pudding

Service and Pricing

The staff is hospitable however service takes time. The place is usually crowded hence this can probably justify the delay.

The pricing is what is very attractive about this café. You can enjoy a sumptuous meal and not burn a hole in your wallet. A perfect place to go if you are on a budget and, have to treat a huge group of people.

Verdict

When it comes to food, with not much attention paid to the presentation the flavours are right however they won’t blow you away. The pricing is another aspect which is a crowd puller.

However, for someone who dislikes loud and cramped up places, Onesta will not impress you but, if you are someone who just can’t do without pizzas, this place can become your second home.

Quick bites

Rating – 3.5/5

Cost for two – 600 - 800/- inclusive of taxes

Why you should go here – To relish pizzas and desserts at a reasonable price

Location - 562, 8th Main, 4th Block, Koramangala 4th Block, Bangalore

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