You'll go crooning tere dil ki baat main jaanu, the moment you bite into the food at Sanjeevanam, the city's new all vegetarian health restaurant in Koramangala

The city boasts of several restaurants that spring up in every nook and cranny, every few days for the globe trotting, jet-set foodies. Yet finding one good healthy vegetarian fine dining eatery, besides the regular darshinis, is one mean task.
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But when Sanjeevanam, a casual vegetarian restaurant serving fresh and flavourful non-fussy north and south Indian food, opened doors last week for the health-conscious, on-the-go Bangaloreans, my vegetarian friend was quite excited to head forth and I was game.



The ambience of the restaurant is devoid of any kind of fuss. There are only the basic chairs and tables with glass walls on three sides and on top. The evening we dropped by the rain gods decided to descend and the pitter patter of the raindrops on the glass roof made it quite an interesting sight and sound.

Green Peas and Barley Soup (Rs 45) seemed a perfect start to the rather pleasant splishy- sploshy evening and when the soup arrived on our table, my friend made a funny retort, "There's so much green in the soup, no wonder this place belongs to the Ayurvedic family of Kerala that makes Medimixu00a0Ayurvedic bath soap, which is also green". But on a serious note, this healthy broth of greens worked for me, with lots of fibre from the barley I chose.

The Chickpea, broken wheat Galletes (Rs 45) were round tikkis, but not the fried aloo ones you get in the famous Delhi chat houses, but oil free ones made from ground chickpeas. It was soft on the bite and high on taste.

The Kidney Beans and Apricot Tikki (Rs 45) was another melt-in-the-mouth bite from the appetizer menu. Then followed the Tofu steaks (Rs 55) that tasted divine dipped in the fresh mint chutney. We had tasted three appetizers and were already giving our thumbs up to the oil free fare.

Trying to go for nibble sizes I was whetting my appetite to sample the 7 Taste Uthappam (Rs 60), which is called thus, as it is plated with quite a flair in seven coin sized portions, each with a different topping and taste.

A must-try here for all the health freaks is the Sprouts Kurma (Rs 55) which has all the possible goodness of the just blossomed moong dal and cooked.

Scoop this and the Khumb Makkai Hara Pyaaz (Rs 65), a mild tangy-sweet, all-flavour-no-fat dish with their rotis, which will make even the finickiest of vegetarians smile. It goes without saying that none of their parathas or rotis are adulterated with a mix of maida in the atta, customary to many restaurants.

The herbivoracious bent of our minds was feeling quite satiated and didn't want to take any detour just yet and settled straight for the Payasam (Rs 45). Ours was made with jaggery, rice and coconut milk and made a soothing and sweet ending to our healthy vegetarian dinner.
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But, hey just as we thought it was time to head home, our eyes stopped at the beverage section on the menu that read Ginger Coffee and Thulasi Coffee (Rs 25). We've all had our share of ginger chai and tulsi chai, but never heard of this concoction.

The blend of thulasi in the coffee sans the milk was a mild fragrant one; whereas the ginger coffee was an instant pick-me-up.

Gone are the days when you could either pick between a restaurant that would serve only healthy fare or only tasty food. Just because the offerings at this new restaurant are meatless, oil free and devoid of any extra spices doesn't mean that it was low on taste.

The food we were told by the chefs is prepared only in earthen, bronze and copper vessels by trained cooks, using minimal oil without using ingredients considered detrimental to health.

If you're stopping by for lunch, we recommend you try the Rajakeevan meal (Rs 250) a satvic meal served on a banana leaf with ripe banana slices with grated coconut, five types of juices, uncooked vegetable dishes, semi-cooked vegetables, fully cooked vegetables, red rice/white rice with dhal, sambar, morkozhambu, rasam, buttermilk and payasam.

Downside: Since the restaurant is spanking new, a few of the dishes are still not available on the menu, but we were told, they would soon be up, along with a few more additions. We're waiting.

At Cholayil Care Sanjeevanam Vegetarian Health Restaurant, 50, 100 Feet Road, Opp Kendriya Sadan and Fab India, 2nd Block, Koramangala
Call 2563 1962
Meal for two Rs 400