Dining Adventure Saga….

Even though its really tempting and exciting to go on an outing and if that includes eating(and drinking for those who drink) . it just gets a lot more better! Sure enough that this can’t be done alone. Wait a minute, technically speaking there is no problem in going out alone and have dinner/lunch/snacks but if one is alone, why to take such a pain especially when you are not at a new place and has the comfort of being in your room? The best moments get created when you do this with your family and/or beloved and if not anyone out of the two, with your friends! That’s the same we, me, Sidhu and Ankit did too when we decided to go out in the evening and have dinner while being out. A flawless plan it looked, turned out to be a saga of dining adventures, most of which did backfired!

The planning was quite simple. We decided that we shall go to the City Select mall. Its a really big mall with 3 different buildings connected to each other and has so many places to go! Even when you are not really going there to buy something, it offers a real good place to spend time by just roaming around inside it. So this was the place where we all had to meet. Me and Ankit started together and Sidhu joined us after his office. The “perfect 3” did enter the mall and spent some time checking out the place completely. This is the first thing that we do all the time, when we are actually going to buy something and even when we won’t!

The major reason to go out tomorrow was not for shopping but to have dinner outside and the treat was on me for a small achievement of mine in my professional work. The plan., which was made by Sidhu and Ankit , was to check out a new eating joint this time which they hadn’t visited already. Sounded really cool since there are quite a few eating joints in this mall and all appear to look good when it comes to eating. There was just one little issue that I don’t take drink and don’t eat non-veg so the place must has to offer something in veg too . For this, there was a long telephonic discussion did happen between Sidhu and Ankit and it did include web based search as well! Finally it was decided that we would go to Geoffrey’s! So when we were roaming around, the final stop was there only! But since it was a little early to have dinner so after some argument, we(me and Sidhu, Ankit followed us) decided to have cold coffee at Barista. I had tasted Hazelnut Frappe at Banglore airport’s Barista outlet and liked it a lot so I ordered that for me and Ankit. Since Sidhu’s  has a real bitter relation with chocolates , he ordered just plain cold coffee. Though our Frappe was not so bad, but it failed in the comparison test which I did with the earlier one I tasted at Banglore! It was not at all matching in any aspects with that, neither in taste, ambience , anything! The one which I had in Banglore was really well prepared, was served with an ice-cream topping as well! But the one which we had yesterday was missing of all this. Infact, even the ice-cream topping was missing too from it and when we asked about it, we were told, its blended inside! Huh? Where would ice-cream taste better, blended inside the coffee or given as a scoop as a topping? Anyways, there was no use to question the serving guy any further. We finished our Frappe, heard Sidhu’s words of wisdom that its always better to stick with just plain cold coffee and came out! But it wasn’t the end of bad food, the party had just begun!

Oh and before I forget, we didn’t do just random wandering but we also did buy two books, Sidhu bought a poetry book(which I am going to take from him) and I bought a novel, Winner Stands Alone by Paulo Cohelo. Now when I have bought this novel, I am reading mixed reviews about it but still, nothing can be done now so I shall read and post my own review very soon! And how can I miss, we also did buy a paper carry bag which was charged to us extra! How amazing it is isn’t it that even when you have bought books close to almost thousand bucks, you still have to purchase the carry bag in an additional charge! Amazing!

So finally, we were at Viva La Geoffrey’s! Before we could enter, a lady stopped us on the door and asked us, table for how many? I wanted to say count us and see but I kept quite and said 3. She went inside, I believe must had taken a good look to fit us, came back and took us to a table. The first appearance inside the place was just HORRIBLE! It was so chaotic like its not a royal, high class restaurant but some road side food corner! The place was really low in lights making it appear more like a den or cave than a restaurant. The music was really loud and I believe neither the restaurant staff nor the guests were bothered about it or about its volume! As always that we are special, we did bother and it didn’t appeal to us at all! No water was served to us but we were surely asked that would we like to have a mineral water or normal one? I did go for mineral one in the starting(bad idea) but when the waiter brought up the bottle, I preferred(and regretted my earlier choice) the normal one only! Menus did reach to us by then and we were reading them like one reads the last minute revision notes before entering into the examination hall, paying attention to each and every word, trying to understand something, anything out of what was written over those many pages but getting failed in every attempt! We decided to try some starters and Sidhu and me started looking for something in veg because we gave the task to find the non-veg item to Ankit. There were just two veg items we zeroed upon a dish with the title, “Tomato and Herbed Olive Oil Bruschetta” . We asked the serving guy how it is, a stupid thing to do actually given the fact that why would a shopkeeper call his any dish bad, especially that which is so tough to read and gives a glimpse that it may be good! Anyways, we ordered this and Ankit ordered some chicken item. Starters were on their way but we were still struggling to find which drinks we should have with them! Sidhu’s choice was easy, he went for Orange juice, a perfect and assured hit of all times, even at a pathetic place like Geoffrey’s too! Ankit first asked for Carlsberg beer which was not available so he went with good ol’ whisky. It was me who was left and I picked up to have a Virgin’s Kiss oops, not Virgin’s but just Virgin Kiss ;-) ! Well, don’t get fooled by the name like I got , its nothing but a mix of lemon, soda and mint, stuffed with ice and probably a cherry thrown on the top with compliments! This is how it looks. Though the taste was not bad but I am not still sure what Kiss and Lemon and Virgin and Mint and whatever else had anything in common!

Finally the starters arrived. The long named Bruschetta was just named to rob good guys like us since it was nothing but a stupid piece of bread with a little of tomato curry “painted” over it. We asked for sauce for which probably there got a shortage of tomatoes since it never came! May be all the tomatoes were already used to make that stupid Bruschetta or whatever the heck it was! I was told by Sidhu and Ankit that their chicken was somewhat good but it didn’t help knowing this fact since it had no meaning for me. Just when Ankit was about to finishhis last bite and drink, he mentioned that its enough and it would be just a waste to sit here for anything else! Well, I believe we all were feeling the same and it didn’t take eve a minute to approve Ankit’s verdict when he broke the ice by finally mentioning the sad fact that choosing Geoffrey’s was a real bad idea! But none could be blamed for this since no one had visited the damn place before! We asked for bill which was awfully high, 1500 INR, paid it, came out and had a sigh of relief like one prisoner may be feeling after getting out from his cell! We managed to escape from the dark, deep caves of Geoffrey’s without getting much hurt but we were still hungry and we needed to find a place to eat soon! Like they say, where there is a will(to eat) , there will be a way(to some good eating place), we finally found ourselves standing on the doors of Sattvik restaurant, a really good, pure veg restaurant. Ironically , we did pass by from it before and even did ask about its food at the reception but since Ankit and Sidhu wanted to have non-veg we left it. But now we were back at the same place and it indeed was a good decision to pick it up finally!

If I would be asked to tell about Sattvik, I can do it in just one word, okay wait make it two,’truly awesome’! Yes, the place is truly worth of this much praise. Everything, be it ambience, be it food, be it atmosphere, be it staff , heck even be its menus, all are really good! We had to dig a lot to finalize what we would like to eat, not because the dishes were bad but all were sounding so mouth watering that it was so tough to make a choice! Finally, we did select two main course dishes, 2 different types of breads, one salad for us and it was indeed a treat to taste everything! Its really a place which I would recommend to everyone and believe me when I say this, even if you are a hardcore non-veg person(I had two with me as well), you would surely like it! Finally when we were done, we were filled to our limits. We grabbed the last mouth mint and left with a big smile and filled tummies :-) .

It took us surely some time to get to the place where we finally wanted to go and even the journey was not so smooth but still, its still was so good to get to the Sattvik finally! As I said, an outing is completely useless if done alone and nothing can make an outing more fun filled with little bit of adventure  in the company of your best buddies! It was indeed an evening very well spent :-) !