Monday, June 21, 2010

The Comedy Store - Awesome !




The Comedy store is an awesome addition to Bombay entertainment. My experience in the second week was great, the audience was fun and the place was full and unlike the terrible nonsense that passes of as humour on Indian television.

The jokes are unrestrained and observational, bits on Bombay, relationships, politics, being American and even sketches about the Middle East. While Ian Moore & Gordon Southern (who does a hilarious impression of Navjot Sidhu) kept it light, Dave Fulton does angry misgoynist schtick like no other, taking on sex, religion and politics.

For a lot of people the comedy store will be an initiation into live comedy, which is adult, in-your-face humour, peppered with bad language but very often with a serious point to make. I could see a few members of the audience squirm especially the senior citizens.

So if you want a night out with your family and have a few laughs, dont go there but if you want to laugh and experience some visceral emotion whilst you are at it, head on down.

Also, in the interest of food and drink,they have a limited but top notch food service with fries, pizza and wraps (all very well priced between 150-200) and a brilliant bloody mary !

Laugh away...

Tel : 4348 5000
Tickets : 700 Fri-Sat, 500 Sun.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Hot New Place : Fifty Five East

Rest : Fifty Five East
Loc : Hyatt, Kalina, Santa Cruz
Meal : Lunch

I got the opportunity to have lunch at Fifty Five East yesterday.

Although due to open in April, the restaurant got delayed a little. FFE replaces M, the grill and is also the default breakfast space for their sprawling in house guests.

The Hyatt is a modern, minimalist business hotel, Fifty Five East, their new venture is more of the same in terms of look and feel. While most of the restaurants are one side, you walk down a long staircase to get to FFE.

The first thing that struck me was how roomy the entire place is, large, airy and well lit. It also reminded me of Thai Pavilion, which is to be expected considering this too is a Super Potato designed eatery.

The thought behind the restaurant is to offer a business restaurant with familiar cuisine in a buffet style with a twist. The menu is wide and they offer Soups, Salads, Mezze, Sushi, Thai, Grill, Indian & desserts.

The twist, is that everything is made fresh and mostly to order in the live kitchen. The ingredients are fresh and most of the dishes are created in single serve portions on the spot, while you wait. So its only priced like a buffet but does not serve or operate like one.

The dolmas were fantastic, best ones in the city and it has to be down to the freshness (i know i am going on and on about this aspect but freshness in eating out is something i have just discovered and am enjoying the idea immensely)

The other mezze they had were couscous salad, Muttabal, hummus all served with warm pita on the side.
Mashed potato was a little bland but i liked the concept as well as the presentation. A bit more effort and this one could turn into a hit.

This was the mushrooms and kidney bean salad. Very nice, a little heavy. There was also the option of having other salads made to order whilst you wait.

They have a Japanese chef onboard who has been here six months. He cranks out the Sushi when you order it. I had the yellow pepper sashimi, one with shitake and one i cant recall.Each of them was fantastic. The taste, the freshness of it all, lingers long after they have made their way down my food pipe.

The Grill section is interesting, the aspragus was great as were the yellow peppers. The stuffed potato thingy was bland though.

The dessert selection is not only expansive but also puts emphasis on some fruit based desserts which come highly recommended. The choc ice cream with cherry compote was great. Enjoyed it immensely.

The creme brulee didnt work at all though, neither did the tiramisu nor did the cheesecake. In hindsight i should have stuck to the recommendations.

The Thai Curry (not pictured here) was also quite stellar, thai pavilion good in fact.

Overall, the menu offers old favouraites with stellar execution.

Keeping things live, cooking dishes fresh and in smaller portions means the food tastes better than most other places. The concept in itself is so simple and yet is rarely if ever, followed.

Having single serve portions means, everyone can eat what they want and yet have a proper business chat without having to worry about sharing food or even wondering what to order when in a largish group.

Try and get their early though, the place was packed to the hilt by 2pm and they stopped cooking by 3.


The service staff is cheeful and fairly quick, no complaints there. Worth checking out for sure.

Food : 8/10
Service : 8/10
Damage : Meal for 2 without drinks 3500+
Sunday brunch with alchohol and pizza from Cellini 2400+ pp.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

New Finger Footie game for Iphone

My good friend Shailesh Prabhu runs a gaming outfit called Yellow Monkey Games and they have just released their first IP project called Finger Footie for the iphone & ipad. While its fun on the iphone its just fantastic on the ipad.

Video is here










The game can be bought here http://itunes.com/apps/fingerfootie

Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Kailash Parbat - Epic disaster

Rest : Kailash Parbat
Meal : Lunchish
Loc : Andheri Link Road

I have been stuck in Andheri for post production on the film for the past couple of days. Its unfortunate that the post prod hub for films in Bombay is located in an overtly commercial culinary wasteland such as Andheri.

There is no halfway decent restaurant in the entire stretch ( i havent been to the Indigo Cafe) Getting ready for a 5.30 pm lunch, we were starving and tired, didnt have the courage to cross the street and head into the Infiniti Mall for a bit because lets face it - it was too hot and Infiniti is a wasteland of another kind.

So we ducked into Kailas Parbat as it was the closest restaurant. Big F***** mistake this. The place was sort of fullish probably coz KP has been trading on its name. We ordered the Kachori which was fairly disgusting.

The Chana Bhatura was reheated, oldish, spicy and the bhaturas looked dodgy. We also tried the tikki but neither of us had the courage to actually go further then two bites.

They didnt get us our drinks and we found it prudent to just get the hell out asap. Although, whatever it was they put in the food followed us back home and we ended up with upset stomachs.

Food : 1/10 (lowest rating ever)
Service : 1/10 (lowest ever again)
Damage : 300 or so on food, physiologically about 200,000 worth.

Avoid like the farking plague
Blog Widget by LinkWithin