Getting HIGH on THAI - Dining at the White Elephant

Dining should be an experience. An experience that transcends into a memorable event. 

In my quest for such experiences I discovered one such opportunity at White Elephant.

An authentic Thai restaurant in Indiranagar, Bangalore.

When we spoke to the owner's about their concept, it sounded to me that they had the same thing in mind about dining experiences as I did.

Which is why they got many things just right. The ambience looks great, a large Buddha Statue adds to the tasteful decor, great service and most crucially an interesting and tasty dining experience.

Interesting  because of the insights we got from the owners who spent some time talking to their guests about their inspiration. 

Their chef has been specializing in Thai cuisine for over 9 years and has perfected his art and ensures you will get a fine dining experience. The service was good too with ever smiling servers.

The menu cleverly has limited variety for 2 reasons -  the 80-20 principle applies here in terms of dishes ordered and also helps the chef and management focus on taste, presentation, ingredient management and ensure each dish is cooked aptly.

The owners of White Elephant

Before I get to the food I also must mention about their table artist who has flown down from the US. Watching him perform illusions  right in front of your eyes  is an experience beyond imagination. We have seen guys like him on TV but to see it happen not 2 feet away from you is extremely mesmerizing. He comes over on fridays and saturdays so plan your dining experience accordingly.

DONT MISS HIM.

Back to the food - Being a group, yes i like to dine at new places in groups, helps us try a larger variety and get a better sense of the food, and that's what we did.

A picture of the interiors

Review of each dish is as follows:

The Khao Pod Naam Prik Pow = Babycorn cooked in thai chilli paste. Not very spicy and should suit most taste buds 

Khao Pod Naam Prik Pow

The Pla Yang - a spicy delicate basa fish satay. melt in the mouth stuff and my favorite amongst all that I had here. The raw papaya salad is a great combination. Comes with 2 Thai Chutneys to enhance the flavour.  

Pla Yang

The Kai Hor Bai Tey - have you ever had chicken wrapped in leaves? You normally would think this was a fish right? That is what makes this even more special, chicken cooked uniquely and accompanied with a sweet sauce to match the flavours.

Kai Hor Bai Tey - Chicken, not fish

The Manfrog Tod Samros, better known as the sweet chilly potato is  good choice for vegetarians and a dish you can never go wrong with.

Sweet Chilly Potato

Chutneys served with the starters

To help all these starters go down we had a great mix of cocktails and mocktails from. My Fav was the Mid night Martini which really got the evening going for me. I did try other varieties too like the Cosmopolitan and the Long Island Ice tea. Unfortunately the cocktails are not as good as the food here so you may want to stick to regular mixes if you do want to drink. Heard their wine selection is well paired but as I dont drink Wine I could not try it.

The main course had a big surprise for me. I normally do no like Red Thai Curry and always prefer Green. For the first time I had had a tasty, spicy Red Thai curry with Jasmine rice that really was cooked to perfection. To accompany this we had Prawns that was perfectly cooked and nice and juicy.

Thai Curry and Rice

Juicy Prawns

To end our stupendous meal we come to my favorite part - the DESSERTS. Yummyyyy.

Fried Bananas with ice cream. Delightfully tasty

Tub Tim Grob - Water chestnut in coconut milk. First time I ever had it and found it had a nice flavour to it

Chili's - The American way of eating... 

Like all good things, generally associated with America, Chili's is also a larger than life sort of experience.

One only needs to see their serving potions of  food to know how really larger than life they can be...

A good ambience, large screens to watch sports, and excellent service makes this a great place to dine out with family and friends and having visited the place twice over the past week I am in no doubt I will be going there often with friends.

A view from the floor above (the place is across 3 levels)

There are times when a place you visit often gives you great memories to retain.

It's then tough to re-associate that with something new (referring to the venue) 

Chili's is now also in Indiranagar.
For a guy who loves food as much as I do, one can't help but feel nostalgia when you visit an erstwhile place.

What Chili's managed to do was to trump that experience with great food and excellent service. Their cocktails are made to such perfection that one can't help but over indulge.

The bar on the top - excellent liquor collection

Over the week i headed out there with some friends which turned out to be a rather great strategy. What this helped us do is to not only try a great variety of their dishes which one can't resist but also do justice to the quantity.

Their portions are extremely large and if you go in as a couple you may struggle to finish your meal. The thing about eating out here is that you need to plan yourself a little.

As one friend suggested  its a great place to taste 2 dishes at a time of any combination as a couple and keep visiting frequently to try out their entire menu and i can tell you the menu is worth trying out indeed.

Being a group of 8 with large appetites we managed to try a lot but not enough. 

My fav dish was the boneless chicken wings. A great blend of spice and good taste, best part is it's boneless chicken.

Here is a variety of cocktails we tried with my favourites being the Mud Slide and the Spicy Mango custom made mocktail which my wife favours.  

The MUDSLIDE is the best I ever had and takes absolute skill to get it right. You will not be able to get this cocktail anywhere else that tastes as goo here. It was so good, I had to take a sip before I could take a click.

Mudslide

Spicy Mango mocktail - custom made for us

The Tripple sipper with Chicken wings, boneless wings and cheese balls. The 3 different sauces add a good flavour


What I missed is that they dint have a pizza on the menu but they do make up for it with this nacho and cheese based starter - also known as Classic Nachos.

We stuck to Pasta and Burger bites for main courses although I did try the Blackened Salmon which I was advise was extra salty and it indeed was and hence dint suit my palette.  Again the portion of the pasta was immense for 1 person to complete. 

No GOOD meal can be rounded off without dessert and hence we tried the Molten Chocolate cake and the ChocolateChip Paradise Pie. 

FINAL VERDICT - This is a must visit place not just once but multiple times over if you looking at having great food and a good dining experience.

Re-visiting Cup O’ Joe. With MORE FOOD involved

Serene. Idyllic. Quite. Peaceful.

Now adding – Great FOOD.

For those of you who read my earlier blog about how great my first experience was and what a lovey place this is would realize I dint get into the food details too much so we decided to go back to try out their fare and help complete the experience.

(for the ones who missed it – read it here - http://kunalgwalani.blogspot.in/2014/09/a-perfect-evening-my-visit-to-cup-o-joe.html )

It’ s rare for a place to get almost everything right but I think in time to come, most people will agree that Cup O’ Joe is almost there. Not just a great relaxing ambience and the right place to hang out with friends and loved ones but their food and pricing will add the icing on the cake.

This time we were 2 couples and had an opportunity to try out their drinks, starters and most importantly had our share of their heavenly mousse which has always left me spell bound. So much so that I threatened to kidnap the chef who makes the mousse.

The place is not overly priced and gives great value for money.

Because this is a first time initiative for the owners, the food is getting better with time, experience and feedback.

What I like about the food – HIGHLY CUSTOMISEABLE to your taste buds. They are very flexible to making the dish as you like it, more or less spicy and hence be sure to specify how you like your food. In today’s dining experience it is not common for a chef to cater to individual tastes buds but they do it here with ease.

Here are some pictures of the dishes we tried with our experiences.

We started off with some tasty chillers:

Oreo Chocolate Smoothie on the left and the Lemon, Orange and Pear on the right

I had the Oreo Chocolate cookie whiles the others ordered a Lemon, Orange and Pear smoothie.

As promised they customise food here for you and the missus wanted a spicy mocktail so the chef concocted one for her right here with the salt rimmed glass et al. 

Not in the menu but you can ask for it.

The customised spicy mocktail. Every sip set the taste buds on overdrive but delicious indeed.

For starters we went for their house special, the nachos with cheese sauce which is a must have here. It is supremely tasty and cheesy and 1 is not enough on a table for 4. Only because we liked it sooo much.

The other starters we had was the panner tikka and chicken wings.

The flavours were great but the chicken wings were not as spicy as one would hope so do remember to ask for it to be spiced up if that' s what you like.

Main course was a pasta which had the flavours just right.

Paneer on the top and the chicken wings at the bottom

And to top it all is the Chocolate Mousse. You will never believe that is eggless.

YES eggless. And because it is possibly the best I even enlarged the picture so we can all crave for it even more. 

I look forward to going back there again soon.

Do invite me if you go, I would love to have their desserts again and again!

My Experience with Honda and the #AmazeLongestDrive

Imagine a car built, not just for its Looks or its Styling.

Not just for Endurance or Performance.

 Not for Speed or Mileage.

But a car built to do what a car must do. DELIGHT you while you travel, yet not burn a hole in your pocket.

 A car made to take the hits and bumps. A car made to take the heat that’s India’s Summer. Yet enjoy the cool winter’s breeze that’s sweeps across our beautiful country.

As a friend of mine who drove the Amaze said, it is so smooth a car and so easy to drive and navigate on narrow and crowded Indian streets, it felt like I was controlling it with my mind more than my hands.

Yes folks, that indeed is how the Honda Amaze really is. The name does not let you look for adjectives beyond itself. A drive in this car, will truly leave you AMAZED.

To take their point further – Honda is Driving the Amaze across the length and breadth of India to showcase its superiority in every aspect.

1 Amaze car. 250 towns in India. Over 23000 kms.

Yes, the #AmazeLongestDrive.

What more does one need to fully appreciate how well this car has been designed and built.

The Amaze Longest drive is an initiative by Honda to showcase not just the performance and quality of the car but also help bring into focus the amazing experience one will get when they traverse across the roads India.
 Yes it also highlights the infrastructure problems we have but what it does most is inspire you to get in your car and plan that road trip you are always thinking about but have never done.

Go see India in a way you never imagined, all in the comfort and safety of the high performing Amaze.

Click here for details on the Amaze Longest drive - http://amazelongestdrive.com/ 

Bunny Punia taking us through his experiences

I had the opportunity to interact with Bunny Punia, the man behind the wheel for this amazing journey and he had nothing but praise for the Amaze and its capabilities. This past weekend the #AmazeLongestDrive reached Bangalore and we were invited not just to meet and greet Bunny’s team as well as some happy customers but we also got a chance to drive around the Amaze in Bangalore and feel for ourselves first hand, the sheer comfort of driving this car.

Driving the Amaze

As a car enthusiast who has driven cars of almost every make, including automatic gear shifts, I can tell you, that the ease of driving this on Indian roads is uncomparable. We took it for a long drive through Bangalore traffic to simulate as real life conditions as possible and the feeling at the end was that nobody wanted to get out of car and wanted the drive to just go on and on and on to maybe another 23000 kms.

#AmazeLongestDrive

One set of interesting stats – The Amaze is Honda’s fastest car to reach over 1 lakh units and has more awards then one can count on your fingers.

Click here to see some stunning pictures of India as taken by the Amaze team on the 

#AmazeLongestDrive  https://www.facebook.com/HondaCarIndia/photos_stream?ref=page_internal

There are also some pictures from our meet that show cases how much fun we had at the event and look forward to more interactions with Bunny and his team.

The audience having a good time

RJ Rapid Rashmi waiting to engage the audience 

Bunny in the Amaze

The Amaze being flagged off

And lastly, waiting to send more time in the drivers seat in the Amaze J

A Perfect Evening - My visit to Cup O' Joe 

Serene. Idyllic. Quite. Peaceful.

Some of the words that come to mind when I think of my experience at Cup O Joe, a new restaurant in Koramangala, Bangalore.

Watched 2 groups a friends play board games, there were about 20 more on standby and a book cabinet to keep you company when alone.

Like to play the guitar and have your friends sing along with you, no problem. They have that too.

The origin of the name is interesting in itself and can be found here - http://blog.dictionary.com/cup-o%E2%80%99-joe-starbucks/

A new place opened in Sep 2014 is a great place to go to unwind after a long hard day. Whether its with some friends, or looking at spending some quite time with that someone special, there is something for every one here.

The food has a good variety of light eats, coffees and shakes ranging to mocktails and main courses of European nature.  So if you are looking for a quite coffee shop experience (unlike the noisy chains) in the evening or a romantic candle light dinner at night, there is enough fare to keep you hooked.

Click here for a full set of very realistic pictures -  http://on.fb.me/1m8jaSm

I personally dint get to eat a lot, but I did love the Nachos in cheese sauce and their chocolate mouse is out of this world. One of the best I ever had and believe me I have had a lot. The Red Thai curry we had was not as spicy as we hoped but presented really well.

The good thing about going to new places is that the food will only evolve and get better with time and the Chef here is very attentive and customer friendly.

A meal for two should cost you around 800 bucks for good eaters which is well worth the money. This includes mocktails too which was quite good.

The place is owned by 4 partners from the software world, who got a new calling in life.

It’s a must visit place and I will surely be spotted there on weekends gorging on their Chocolate Mousse.

Check them out here: https://www.facebook.com/cupojoe.cafe

P.S. – They currently don’t serve liquor but don’t let that deter you from going there.

P.P.S  - Very friendly management who are all set to provide you a very pleasant experience.

Breaking: Magnets found mixed with tar on Bangalore Streets, Bad Drivers finally forgiven.

During a recent dig by some students of the Bangalore chapter of Archeological Survey of India, searching for the lost gardens and water of the city (students of the current batches had only heard of the garden city and wondered where it all went and as a side project decided to venture on a treasure hunt), they found that road contractors were laying magnets on Bangalore roads mixed with tar. Apart from high road erosion, these magnets  were creating an interesting traffic phenomena. 

That almost all Bangaloreans were forced to drive in the middle of every road thanks to the magnetic pull. Funnily enough on the 1 or 2 multi-lane (wide) roads the city has, these magnets created a pull towards the center of the center of the center lane. And the balance power was shifted to the center of the center of the side lanes.  

When a news channel heard of this, they promptly got into action to interview people meaninglessly, knowing fully well that this would do nothing to change the traffic situation, but vociferously
as they had to still had to sell their air waves that evening.  

Excerpts of the Interviews are as follows:

Contractors - Magnets are a lot cheaper to buy, is a sturdy metal and helps make the road look shiny and new so even when there is no road (which is the case in large parts of the city), the glare from the sun reflects on the magnet into the drivers’ eyes and makes them believe there is a road that they are driving on. We learnt this from the 3 Idiots movie, where Aamir says in a scene keep fooling your heart and yourself and you will believe that something is real and hence Bangaloreans believe they have real roads to drive on. So its a social cause.
ALL ISSSS WELLLL.

The typical car driver – thank God I now have somebody else to blame for always driving in the middle of every road I drive on in Bangalore or outside, I like being the center of attention and now I can do this shamelessly and not be blamed. We obsessive centre lane drivers now heave a huge sign of relief,

The Auto drivers’ union threatened to go on strike on being asked if they believed the magnet story – we don’t follow any rules or give in to any pulls whether its gravity or magnetic, we drive all over the roads. We are followers and believe in the snake god who is more powerful than any magnet and are his disciples who follow his ways.

The Bus driver’s reaction was simple – we drive with our eyes closed, how does all this  matter to us?

Finally they met an erstwhile member of the now defunct Bangalore Bikers Wheelie Association who said in disgust – Now I know why we could not lift our bikes and perform wheelies on the roads here. The contractors should be blamed for me not being able to impress chicks in my college. Now am forced to take them to movies and coffee shops and hang out outside malls all day to keep them happy.

   He signed off, sobbing – Even Axe deodorants dint work. 

Don’t you sell to Indian’s in India even if you are not Indian?

This past weekend I finally got to visit Café Max which is at Max Mueller Bhavan in Indiranagar.

This is not a food blog where you will get to hear my experience with the food. The simple reason for this was that I never actually got to eat the food there to be able to write about it.

And why dint I have anything to eat? Because I was a vegetarian that day and hence had to lay off almost all the items in the menu.

The fact is that most of their food is non-veg which is not wrong in any sense.

What irked me about the menu was that they passed off Non Veg food as Veg food!

That’s right, they have food that has EGG in it and they explicitly call it VEG food. Now maybe in Germany egg is termed as vegetarian and hence it is acceptable to call food that has egg but no meat as Vegetarian but last I checked we in India still consider it as non-vegetarian.

When I was living in Singapore it was a common problem when you ate at a local eatery. You could order veg food and they would serve it with the egg and when you insist I want veg food they would be like this is veg, no meat. Then we would need to explain that Indians consider egg as non-veg and hence we can’t eat the food since it has egg in it.

Here are some snapshots of their menu from Zomato.

Click here to check online - https://www.zomato.com/bangalore/cafe-max-indiranagar/menu#tabtop

This is the menu items that we saw too and hence it is as new and relevant till this 

past Sunday.

I would like to draw your attention to the entry – Crepes.
By highlighting that Ham and Cheese is Non-veg your suggesting that the other 2 are veg right? But you forget that Crepes are made with Egg and hence ALL the items ought to be non-veg.

Same goes for the Mediterranean crepes in the starters section! It says Veg when it has egg. 
And this was confirmed by the waiter as well.

Don't believe me? Read the entry highlighted under breakfast!

A quick look at the Max Mueller Website’s about us section  - reveals this at the end of the about us -
We would like to support them (Indian artists, scientists and journalists) in their roles as promoters of culture and pave the way for future international and cultural cooperation.

http://www.goethe.de/ins/in/en/bag/uun.html

Great way to promote their culture I guess. Personal preferences be aside, Indian’s as a nation term Egg as non-veg and hence even if their primary audience maybe German (which is not the case as I know people who go there frequently and the clientele is largely Indian).

It is grossly un-cultural to be promoting eggs as vegetarian in India. Good for health, maybe but surely not vegetarian and surely not in India.

A quick byword about the service we experienced - Crappy. Not worthy of a tip let alone the service charge they force you to pay on the bill.

P.S. – the author of this blog is a hard core non-vegetarian and can only tolerate vegetables when accompanied by non-veg.