Litti Chokha

This Saturday, we friends went to a place called 'Chili Pepper' to eat Litti Chokha. Its a Bihari dish. The Litti is similar to the Baati from the famous dish 'Daal Baati', except that it is filled with 'sattu' and 'mustard'. I would say, it has a pretty heavy dose of mustard. I like that extra mustard. It just runs up my nose and makes me feel as if I have put my nose in a container of ammonia.

Chokha is nothing but mashed stuff - typically consisting of egg plant, tomatoes, potato, garlic, coriander and mustard oil. Except for the egg plant, everything else is raw. I love this combination. You can call it "Kachcha Bharit" in marathi.

The food was good. I really enjoyed the Litti-Chokha and along with chicken curry, it tasted fantastic.

Something that was really different was the attitude of the waiter. I guess he had a bad start to his evening because he was in a really foul mood. Some instances of his bad mood -

• He was unwilling to join two tables. When we told him that for 1 hour, we will be uncomfortable, he said - "aapko 1 ghanta baithaunga kya main?".
• Later, when we left some tip for him, he was unhappy with the tip and was grumbling under his breath.

Fortunately, there were more sensible waiters over there who told him to keep quiet.

Hunt for Pav-Bhaaji in Bangalore ...

turned out to be an exercise in futility. Richa was craving for something "nice" to eat since Saturday afternoon. Whenever she says "nice" - I know I am in a big soup because converting that "nice" to something specific is a very difficult task. Many-a-times, I have gotten so frustrated with this exercise of conversion that I have literally said - "Get back to me with something specific. I find all this very vague".

This time however, the conversion from "nice" to "pav-bhaaji" was quite quick. It was followed by description of how Pune pav-bhaaji is so good, and how Bangalore sucks. Nevertheless, pav-bhaaji it was. We then browsed through burrp to find out places that served good pav-bhaaji. Adyar-Anand-Bhavan was one of them and it was reasonably close.

AAB in Koramangala was way too crowded. Both of us did not feel like eating there. We made a quiet escape. We then went to Empire on Jyoti-Nivas-College road in the hope that we might get pav-bhaaji there. We forgot that Empire is a predominantly non-veg place, and both of us were NOT in the mood to eat non-veg food. We drank a glass of water and made another quiet escape from there. By now, we had given up on the idea of having pav-bhaaji.

Richa then came up with a place named "Babette's". Actually, quite some time back, I had seen a poster in NetApp. It is a continental place - we both knew. Looking at the exteriors, we thought it would be reasonable. Once inside, we realized that we two were the only people there. Richa warned me that it might be very expensive. After looking at the menu card, we realized that a simple soup was around 200, salads around 250, and entrees around 400. No wonder the place was empty. If the place is Taj, I can pay this much, and I certainly have paid this much in the past. For a place named "Babette's", paying 400 or so is quite atrocious. We made another escape, this time however, on the pretext that my pregnant wife can't eat Italian and Japanese food.

We then headed for Maharaja, a multi-cuisine place, with renewed hopes of finding pav-bhaaji and if not pav-bhaaji then some decent food. When we reached Maharaja, there was no place to park and the place looked full. So "yahan bhi give up ho gaya".

Finally, we parked near "Mast Kalandar", or at least where it was. We were searching for Mast Kalandar, but it was nowhere to be seen. We came to know that it was replaced by "Go Veg", and from the looks of it, it seemed like just a change of names. Anyways, the only other stop would have been "home", so we stepped in. The place looked "nice", the crowd was good, and we were sure we will get vegetarian food.

The food was amazing. We ate Jowar roti, Alu kulcha, Makke ki roti, Chole, Chat, Jal Jeera, Buttermilk, Maa-ki-Daal and Raita. Our tummies were full to the brim. My pregnant wife was also satisfied - which is a rarity in itself.

All this for just 250 bucks. Babette's ka soup and salad was around this much. Babette's - you are gonna close down pretty soon. I am confident.

Ate a lot this week

Ever since I put my foot in Pune, I have been eating a lot. First night, I went out to have a bite of Naturals ice-cream - my favorite - Alphonso mango slices with mango ice-cream. The next day, my mother-in-law had made chicken. The next night, after my in-laws left for Mumbai, I and my brother-in-law had beer at midnight to beat the heat. It was so so hot and humid that beer with lots and lots of ice felt nice. I slept peacefully and woke up only the next morning when the power went off.

The next evening, I went to my brother's place, and once I am there, there is no escaping my bhabhi's culinary delights and that un-ending "आग्रह". The best part is even if I eat like pig, my bhabhi manages to feed me a bit more by saying "you haven't eaten anything". That evening, I had vodka with lime cordial, and tiger prawns in coconut curry for dinner. Delicious. 

The next evening, I had gone to my friend's place for dinner. The spread was awesome. She had made fried Pomphret stuffed with green chutney, prawns made in Goan style, sol-kadhi, rice, and Alphonso mangoes for the dessert. Ate a lot and really enjoyed the goan style sea-food. 

Next evening, we ordered some food from "Tunday Kababee", a new shop in Wanowrie. Some food here means a dish of chicken kolhapuri, mutton gravy and a dish of butter chicken. I was so full at the end that I had no space for the dessert. Unfortunately, that was my last full meal in Pune. 

After coming back to Bangalore, it was time for Bala's birthday treat. He took us to Ebony in Barton center on M.G. Road, from where I could see a big chunk of Bangalore. Any city looks good at night, and Bangalore is no exception. I could see the screwed-up-MG Road right beneath me, and believe me, its a massive muck right now. Coming back to the food - I started with a Long Island Iced Tea. It was quite a cocktail - rum, vodka, tequila, gin and coke, and it was quite strong :-). The effect of cocktail was that I was cracking some really slapstick and idiotic jokes. It was followed by some chicken, prawns and khasta roti. That consumed every iota of space in my tummy.

Have eaten a lot in the last few days.. Now I need to get back to exercise...