Explorer of Experiences

Eating a meal when you're traveling around a new city is an experience in itself. Breakfasts, lunches, dinners and tea/coffee breaks become integral in your itinerary and carry the spirit of exploration and discovery of the local culture. Last year I went to Spain with friends and zipping across Madrid, Valencia, Toledo and Barcelona, we got to taste so many flavours new to our palate. It was fun recapturing those tasty memories as I sat down to share with you our epicurean adventures... Museo Del Jamon, Madrid This is a unique restaurant frequented by locals and tourists since 1978 for particularly two things: beer and ham. Plain and simple. The space almost has a 'retail' and 'deli' feel to it with fresh cheeses and charcuterie with lovely shades of orange, red and brown on display as well as a wide variety of smoked hams suspended from the ceiling. Expect the finest quality of cured meat here. Its popularity has rendered it a spot on a must-visit attrac...

Food Story’s authentic Hyderabadi cuisine is delicious enough to move you… Subhash S. is a restaurateur par excellence. His resume boasts of his still-popular 20-year old restaurant ‘Eden Park’ in Bengaluru and 15-year old recently closed iconic 800 cover restaurant ‘Our Place’ in Hyderabad. He set his eyes on Pune for his next culinary venture. Enter ‘Food Story’. June has brought with it not only the monsoons but this old-world Hyderabadi restaurant for the city’s gourmands.   The restaurant name and décor does not trigger preconceived notions of the cuisine it serves or the kind of experience it will offer. This is deliberate. Subhash wants you to walk in hungry and with a clean slate. We concluded the interiors to be simple, toned-down and unassuming; the only striking elements being two 19 th century-esque chandeliers. The variety of dishes for both non-vegetarians and vegetarians is inviting and enticing. Subhash is hands-on and was rearing to serve us. We happily ...

  The good folks behind Brooklyn Shuffle , Jimmy Hu and WTF! , now bring the nearly year-old The Bombay Bronx from Mumbai to Pune. This is an all-day bar where everything, from the interiors to the food unbridles the soul of Mumbai. Enter the bar, and it feels like you’ve chanced upon a set of a movie that is an ode to the maximum city. The Bombay Bronx is fitted with installations reminiscent of the city – take for instance the local train-style booth seating with train handles suspended from the ceiling, Irani café-style tables and chairs, a wall-sized painting of Amitabh Bachchan in his Deewar attire, tin fittings on the bar resembling the roofing of Dharavi ’s slum houses, train routes mapped out on the ceiling, lights fitted into loud-coloured dabbas and the neon signage of the iconic Eros theatre. Clearly, subtlety was not the brief to the interior designer. It is little wonder that we caught many wild-eyed walk-in diners taking a tour of the place before settling...

A view of Trois from the terrace It's a big deal when a new restaurant opens its shutters in Pune, it really is. So inadvertently, you are bound to hear reviews from some of the first visitors to the place. Launched last May, Trois Kitchen and Wine Bar has created quite a stir in the city and its owner-chef Mayur, has impressed most food lovers. Read the reviews, and you'll notice he's had a near 100% success rate so far. The venue is an enchanting white one storey-ed villa on a quiet tree-sheltered lane in Kalyani Nagar (that's right, not Koregaon Park!). Al fresco seating is a big plus when it comes to restaurants (something Mumbai restaurateurs  envy), and Trois has enough of it.  White wine sangria - a top shot I chose to sit at the terrace area where I was in the company of many other diners (a lot of expatriates). With the tinkling of wine glasses and cutlery, happy conversations and Cafe del Mar-esque music as my audio make-up, ...

If you've gone through my blog, it may bemuse you that this is my second post on tofu. How much do I love eating it? A lot. And why not? I find it tasty, love the texture, and enjoy the variety. You heard me...there's variety even with an ingredient like Tofu - silken, firm, extra firm, fermented, flavoured, etc.  And this 'obedient ingredient' (as chef Roger Mooking would call it in his food show Everyday Exotic), is super versatile to cook with. Deep fry it and cook it with veggies in sweet and sour sauce, or make an evening snack out of it by toasting it on a pan with a little oil and drizzle with salt and cracked black pepper. Like me, if eggs don't suit, you then scramble up a tofu and add the other usual scrambled egg ingredients and you're set!  One of my favourites tofu dishes is when it is baked with peanut sauce. Pure bliss. A picture below to treat your eyes. Now that's a happy meal for me. Just a quick tip, give your tofu a boil in water fla...

Don't you wish you could go back in time just to truly appreciate where you were and what you were doing with your time then? I ponder about this sometimes. I spent two years in Melbourne. That city was a treat food-wise. I tried so many new things, experienced so many new flavours! Narrow lanes used to be dotted with little quaint cafes and the fruit and vegetable market lined with food carts, and it used to be but a pleasure to walk by, trying these treats on a free day.  Chinatown in Melbourne (image courtesy: www.victoria.aussietrueblue.com) But of course every major city has to have its very own Chinatown, Melbourne included. We had a community kitchen in the lodge we stayed at. Every night after classes, the group of Chinese girls and guys used to collectively cook in the kitchen - sharing their sauces and veggies, and thereafter eating together. Laughter from the kitchen echoed into the halls and I used to envy the sense of togetherness they experienced over food!...

Many times I have been recommended a restaurant that is super popular in the city, but after dining there I tend to walk out feeling disappointed...it was good, but not that good. Pune has a few restaurants that are deemed a must-visit for outsiders. My theory is that these popular outlets were good at one time, but once they gained popularity and the footprint, somewhere along the way, the prices sky-rocketed and the food quality suffered. Nonetheless with some PR machinery backing them up, they do get their desired footfalls.  Sometimes, the best restaurants turn out to be the ones very few have heard of.  One such not-much-talked-about place is Soy. My sister discovered it two years ago when severe sushi cravings drove her on a city-wide hunt for a restaurant that serves decent ones. Sheltered on the ground floor of Le Royce Hotel, the chefs at Soy dish out some remarkable Chinese and Japanese food.  Their menu has good range and better still, vegetarians will not...