For a vegetarian who chooses to eat out in the city, it's likely that the meal they have will fall under one of the following categories: street food, Gujarati/Rajasthani thalis, a random selection of "continental" food (think pizzas, burgers, Chinese-Indian dishes, nachos and other Mexican offerings) and fare christened as Punjabi/North Indian.

While diners in SoBo's Opera House-Girgaum area have had several options to choose from in each of these categories, what the locale had been missing was a place that goes easy on multiple iterations of the paneer tikka and instead, plays with ingredients like zucchini, jackfruit and yam by giving them an edgy twist. The newly opened Botanica promises to plug that gap, and whether or not it delivers is what we aim to find out on a rain-soaked Monday night.