Soul Fry Casa da Case

Soul Fry Casa is a nice place to go. I guess it would be the upmarket equivalent of the Irani. If ever there is something like a Irani diner then Casa would be it. The caveat here is that the food is not exactly inspired or exceptional but fairly competent. The non veg section is fairly large but the vegetarian selection is also quite good. The Fried Calamari was exceptionally fresh but the mutton sukha was average. Having gone there with a vegetablarian I had a taste of the Mangalorean Potato Spinach (Tasted like Aloo Palak but who am I to comment) and Okra Coconut Fry was quite good.

I do like to have my meals in peace but there was a live band on. (Somewhere a Mack wedding was missing it's singer). Standard rock numbers were being mutilated but the diners in general were having a blast singing along. I guess it's just me being reactionary....

Goa Portugesa : No Sa

I really hate it when a supposedly speciality cuisine restaurant serves you food which is so very clearly tweaked for the mass market. If I wanted that I would have gone to a blooming multi cuisine restaurant or a frigging five star. Not that the food was bad but my basic issue is that when I go to a Goan food place I expect to get authentic Goan food not Goan as done by someone who has never left Mumbai but read a lot about Goa. The crab cakes were delish but the rest of the food was good. Liver, Brain and Pomfret along with Squid. All done well but again not quite goan.

Incidentally I perhaps am becoming a cynic (Probably am) but really the thought of knowing who the host is or how he met his wife and what all he does is sickness inducing. All i want to do is know about the awards won or what he suggests we eat.

In one respect at least the place is Goan as the service was very Susegad.

Crappy Chinese

Given that Chinese is now a recognized ethnic Indian cuisine can we please try and do better Indian chinese. The amount of places that do extremely crappy chinese is phenomenal. So much so that my expectation when ordering Chinese is the crappy sort. I can handle Punjabi Chinese (My explorations in La Land for Chicken Manchurian not withstanding) but all I ask is that it be done competently. So far my experiences in ordering Chinese have ranged from having coconut drizzled on top of my fried rice (It was a Udupi restaurant so somehow should have expected that) to Veg manchurian with fried aubergines as there was no cabbage available.

Anyway the main point of this extremely pointless post (oh all right Pointless blog too) is to say that the Chinese restaurant opposite Wanton house on Hill Road is quite quite crappy. Unpleasant experience to the level where I forgot the name of the restaurant, what I ate there and why. It's the kind of food where you feel extremely relieved post your next visit to the restroom that it's all come out safely without any major side effects.

Thai @ Shivaji Park

In the quest for Thai curry like the one Thai Me Up used to do we (Me, Rikhav and Sandy) have experimented with Thai curry at the weirdest locations. The fiasco at Fu Yong stands out fairly strongly. Tamnak Thai @ Shivaji park stands out as something which is almost but not quite. The Raw papaya salad is smokingly awesome especially if you ask them to make it slightly spicy. The prawn curry, sfried vegetables, the lamb, the chicken oh well the list is endless. And amazingly enough they have a fairly decent wine list. Incidentally anyone know whatever happened to Thai Me Up ?