Showing posts with label hangouts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hangouts. Show all posts

Friday, October 24, 2014

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.


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!







Friday, September 12, 2014

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.
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.