Boca Grande

I love this place - it is as simple as that.

Boca Grande is situated almost diagonally opposite to Koramangala police station (bangalore), so near but away from the crowd. The place is kind of hidden from the view by the trees, and if you really don’t look for it, you may lose it easily.

Parking is not great, but passable, and there are by lanes if you find that there is no free space in front of BG.
The place is spacious and have lot of seating options - the simple task of deciding where to sit - do u want to sit outside, under the tree, or do you want to lounge on those sofas or do you want the wooden benches or do u want some nicely lit corners – it is as tough as choosing something to eat.

The service is nice - they don’t hover near your table or keep asking for orders - they serve you the food and let you continue in your world - the pin up "Don’t look at time, it comes free with the food" says all. (they have got lot of nice and interesting quotes on pin ups)

The selection of food is equally good and tasty - and for a change, vegetarians are not left behind for choices. The Chicken ceasar salad I ordered was nice and the garden salad my friend ordered didn’t disappoint at all. The chicken and mushroom soup was good, but not really impressive, but the potato wedges where quiet good and crispy, without being too much oily. They make some good pizzas, and the Chicken Cordon Blue and grilled chicken with saltimbocca were impressive. The Chocolate milk shake was thick ad creamy, but the litchi milkshake was a tad too sweet for our liking.

They have some awesome desserts and thick and creamy milk shakes and for chai lovers, they do have good verity.

The place is ideal for an unwind session with friends and they do have board games if you are in a mood for a group game. All in all, a place worth dropping in - if you are in and around Koramangala and need a place to while away some time, away from the rush, this can be your ticket.

Oh, and before I forgot, they have a designer dress boutique inside-Irah – some nice designs on display, and they do extensive customization.

thnx winnipoohie, for introducing me to this place.

Fire Wok - review

Last Saturday me and my fried decided to checkout the restaurant 'FireWok' at Polynation - the food court of Oasis mall, one of the new entrants into teh already crowded mall list of Bangalore.

First things first - Oasis is bang on Koramangala 80Ft road, and it is impossible to miss it - once you reach the mall, parking is easy - they have parking spaces at each floor, so if you want to head to food court directly, you don’t have to park your bike at basement or ground floor and have to catch a lift. We parked out bike on 2nd floor and decide to give do a quick check out @ lifestyle before heading to Polynation.

Polynation have some well knows outlets such as Madras Curry House, Yellow Chillies, Tandoor, Fire Wok, Cream&Fudge Factory, Doughnut bakers and Pizza corner. Our main aim was to try the Noodle bowl @ FireWok, so we headed straight there. The ambiance is ok, and tables near the glass wall give good view.

The concept of noodle bowl is - they have three varieties of noodles - Flat, regular and rice - you can take a bowl and pick you choice of noodles - u can mix them also - and then you can pick the vegetables you like from the vegetable counter – once you fill your bowl with noodles and vegetables, pass it to the chef, pick the spices you want from the list, and pick the sauce of your choices. If you want chicken, paneer or prawns, they will add it - and they will cook it the way you asked them.

I picked up rice noodles, spring onions, carrot, bean sprouts, mushroom, fungi, and an assortment of some other vegetables i didn’t much cared to identify, and asked the chef to add chicken, ginger, garlic and crushed black pepper, black pepper sauce and oyster sauce.

The service is fast, before we had time to decide whether we want to order starters or not, we got our main dish. The dish tasted more or less like I expected, but a l'll less on salt. It was not much oily, but then it was not exactly superb also. Priced at 135 a plate, the bowl is a good option if you are really hungry, but don’t go there expecting the authentic Chinese taste - it is more like commercialized Chinese taste.

Ps: after the lunch, we had ice creams from Cream&Fudge factory - they really do make superb ice creams... I tried a combination of one scoop cookie dough, one scoop caramel, macadamia nuts, gummy bears, chocolate sauce and caramel sauce - yeah, perfect recipe to forget all the calorie count, but take it from me, you will never regret the decision... :-D