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Burp! |
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By: Philippe Mercure |
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Date:
2009-06-19 |
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Place: Bangalore |
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The new power lunch at Mocha on Lavelle Road is a hearty 3-course affair
With its wide terrace, colourful decoration and winning mix of food, non-alcoholic drinks and hookah, this popular hang-out has always been a hit with students.
But Mocha is now targeting a whole new clientele. "We want to attract the corporate crowd," says Ritikaa Luthria Sadhwani, co-partner, Mocha-Lavelle Road. "There are a lot of offices around and we want to see these people come here for lunch."
To attract them, Mocha has set a very interesting and flexible menu that comes in four courses: soups, salads, pastas and desserts.
You can pick two courses for Rs 175 or three courses for Rs 250. The whole four courses experience will cost you Rs 300, but be aware that it also implies the risk of sleeping a part of the afternoon on your desk trying to digest all this good food.
The portions here are not the tiny ones you will find in fancy restaurants. They are real portions.
First course on the menu: soups. After considering the Curried Washington Apple Soup and the Spice Lemon basic veloute, we chose the Tomatolinoâa garlic-enhanced tomato soup with chopped spaghetti that started the lunch on a very good note.
The pleasure then continues with salads. Crumbled cottage cheese and Roma tomato, warm pepper and chikpeas or the Asian wok tossed? After the Italian soup, we decided to go Asian. And were not disappointed with the mix of bean sprouts, mushrooms, corn and peppers served with a slightly sweet dressing.
Oh yeah all the salads can be enhanced for a few rupees with a bunch of ingredients ranging from cottage cheese and American sweet corn to shredded chicken and chicken frankfurters. By the time you attack the pasta (that also can be boosted with herb roast chicken or Italian meat feast for Rs 30) you'll already be half full.
Lemon-infused char-grilled veggies with parmesan, pimento and mushroom laced with orange arrabiata, caponata laced herbed handpicked peppers and zucchini: the choice is hard to make.
We finally went with the pesto cream laced mushrooms and sundried tomatoes that were cheesy and delicious.
You'll have to push hard to be able to fit the dessert over this whole meal. The seasonal fruit pie was tempting, but we went with a dessert called That Chocolate Thingâa chocolate cake garnished with dark chocolate ganache. A simply decadent treatâtoo bad we couldn't finish it after eating so much. |
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