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

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.