The Ant Blog

Weekends can be exciting for many reasons. For us, one happy thought (apart from sleeping till late) is to plan our lazy brunches with friends somewhere, or cooking up a delicious meal at home. The entire weekend sets rolling with all of this. So on one such rainy weekend, we thought of giving the online site  GourmetItUp   a try for the first time. They had a lovely set meal option at Oh:Cha Restaurant and bar. This place had opened a  few months ago, and we were planning to visit it ever since we had got some raving reviews. Located inside Mathurdas Mills compound, this place is almost hidden from sight. But as you walk in, the place turns around. The decor is understated, with beautiful hanging lamps all over the ceiling. Having reached there I realized that the place is run by an old friend. Tanai Shirali has been in the industry for several years now and I was happy to meet him after ages. I am a sucker for Thai food, and the GourmetItUp set menu was interest...

I recollect this evening with a lot of fondness. The Monsoon season has kicked in , and the showers are typically incessant in Mumbai. On this particular day however the rains were intermittent. We had driven down to South Mumbai to the one end of the city at the  NCPA for an evening performance. The show got over at 9:15 pm and left us with a myriad choices to catch a grub from. After debating for a while, we drove to one of the closest eat-outs The Tea Centre. I had heard of this place a lot, so was happy to pay a visit. The place has an old world charm, and has the look and feel of an era gone by. The name of the place  reciprocates in their menu, where the first few pages are dedicated to various kinds of flavors and blends available. It was late and the diners were all having their dinner. So we thought of trying our ' chai ' at the end of the meal. We ordered for our starters, Chicken with sauteed mushroom and onion , and Chicken Catchatori.       ...

The week before last, we had a wonderful Sunday brunch at VongWong ’s. It was a clean stretch of a drive on Sunday, straight up to Nariman point located next to the Oberoi Hotel. I was quite hungry as we had arrived late for lunch. We decided to go with their Sunday brunch menu. I ordered for the Strawberry cooler drink, while my husband went for a Pinacolada . Brunch Salads on the Right and Desserts on the Left at VongWong Strawberry coolie at VongWong I tried portions of most of their Salad options from the spread, and they were good. I quite liked the Seafood salad, and the Prawn cocktail . There was also a Crispy Duck in spring rolls option, which we tried. The duck was cooked in Hoisin sauce , I believe and was a little too sweet for my palate. Crispy duck rolls at VongWong Next we ordered from the Dumplings and Starter options. Among the dumplings , we had a portion each of : prawn and garlic chive dumpling, wasabi prawn dumpling, chicken...

It is in recent times that my husband has developed quite a palate for Japanese food. I have a great fondness for the cuisine too. So we often scout for new  Jap  hang-outs. We visited Kofuku a couple of weeks ago on a Friday night. When we entered, the place was roaring with laughter and chatter of young crowd. Since we planned it at the end moment, we did not get a regular table and instead got a place over the sushi bar. I like facing the kitchen directly since I get to see the goings-on in there, so I was happy. We quickly ordered our Sake and a plate of non-vegetarian Maki Boston Roll to go with that.      Sake at Kofuku                                             Boston Roll (non vegetarian Maki) at Kofuku The Maki was well made. Next we ordered a plate of Okonomi Yaki, which is a form of non-vegetarian pancake. We ordered our...

We have been to this place before for lunch, but knowing that Chili’s is a  great place for drinks we headed to the nearest Chili’s outlet last Friday. The place was full and we had to wait for close to twenty minutes to get in, which is acceptable on a weekend night. I was very thirsty after the wait, so we ordered a special drink which I had never tried before. A Beerita, which is supposedly a concoction of their Margarita and Beer. They came in big sized glasses, and I was pretty sure I would not be able to finish that drink. It was a clever mixture I must say, the flavor of the beer was more overpowering. Anyway the place was noisy and fun, so a heady mixture was exactly what we needed.    The enormous Beeritas at Chili’s A funny chimp poster at Chili’s The Beeritas require a big belly! I unfortunately didn’t finish the drink as I wanted to keep room to try another one! So we ordered a Slider and Crisper with a trio dip dish and an Applet...

We headed to a nearby Chinese eatery over a weekday, because we were too tired with the day and just needed to unwind somewhere. We headed to this age old restaurant, which I have seen perpetually standing at one corner of the Powai plaza area in Mumbai. We braved in to find out what it had to offer. The menu card has the regular Chinese fare that most Indian-Chinese places have to offer. I wanted to have a light dinner, so we ordered a Crab meat soup. To our surprise, the soup was very palatable, and flavorful. In fact, the soup gave me confidence to order for the rest of the food here. Crab meat Soup at China House Next we ordered the Crispy Spinach and Chicken, which was also quite good. They are priced very competitively to the quantity they serve here. Crispy Spinach n Chicken   I wanted a light dinner and I had it. However, my husband wanted to experiment further with main course. So he also ordered the China House King prawns. Unfortunately, we w...