Shobha (Matunga West)

Sumptuous vegetarian fare

Thanks to its rather prominent location on LJ Marg (any taxi-driver plying his trade in these parts would know the traffic signal next to Shobha), Shobha is almost never empty. And yes, people keep coming back. After all, Shobha is one of those rare places which excel in all departments of vegetarian cuisine, and unlike other Maharashtrian restaurants, keep the hot spice quotient to a minimum. What results is dal fry which is just perfect, and vegetable curries which can be wolfed down with the paper-thin chapatis. The butter masala variants of paneer and mushroom are popular choices here and may be tried only for the rich gravy, but the real show-stealer is the cheese kofta, which is moderately crisp on the outside, and melt-in-the-mouth soft therein. On the South Indian front, the regular masala dosa is a decent option, with the filling being adequately garnished and yet not obtrusively spicy. One unfortunate thing here is the management's refusal to accept payment cards for amounts below INR 100 and even card abuse by throwing it across the desk on the customer's insistence, though the cashier does relent if the customer offers to compensate for the Merchant Discount to the acquirer with the additional 4-5 rupees. In any case, a full meal at Shobha will ensure that the bill goes above INR 100, simply because most of the things on the menu are just too good to resist!

Ambience                ★★★
Service                    ★★
Presentation            ★★★
Taste                      ★★★★

http://mumbai.burrp.com/listing/shobha-refreshments_mahim-w_mumbai_restaurants/13056079 

Infinitea (Bengaluru)

T-E-A, not E-A-T

A quiet cup of tea in solitude might as well have been the value proposition of Infinitea, but the space constraints and bustling Cunningham Road crowd ensure that that is not going to happen anytime soon. What greets you instead is the rather cramped interior where the heat might just get to you. To add to that, the Curacao Iced Tea is a little too bitter for comfort, though it is expected that the flagship beverages of the place will be considerably better. The food is at the most ordinary, with the pasta being practically tasteless and ironically needing garlic bread to comfort the taste buds a little. It is expected that with a number of tea bars coming up in all the major metros (The Tea Centre in Mumbai, with plush interiors, aphorisms related to tea on the walls and not to forget appetising food, comes to mind immediately), Infinitea, which has had its own loyal clientele, will pull up its socks and make itself much more amenable to gastronomic pleasures.

Ambience                ★★
Service                    ★★★
Presentation            ★★★
Taste                      ★★

http://bangalore.burrp.com/listing/infinitea_cunningham-road_bangalore_cafes-restaurants/126181683

Hotel Chandrika (Bengaluru)

More for less

To start with, Chandrika provides a refreshing whiff of traditional fare in the more globalised locale of Cunningham Road in Bengaluru. More importantly, it fits the local bill quite well with its spacious and nicely made up interiors. And as you tuck into the idlis and the vadas, as large and delicious as they are cheap, you are only left asking for more. This is indeed one of the few places where idlis, plain rice cakes otherwise, have their own distinctive taste even if you do not add the customary sambhar and coconut chutney. The other delicacy to be tried here is the kesari bath (a traditional creamed wheat dessert similar to the halwa in other parts of the country), one of the few desserts best enjoyed when piping hot. The filter coffee too lives up to its great southern tradition. The only sore point of Chandrika is the somewhat lackadaisical service, with stewards offering excuses like no dosas being prepared on Sundays and refusing to serve vadas immersed in sambhar the way a lot of other places here serve them. Then again, given what Chandrika charges for sumptuous traditional meals, perhaps good service is a little too much to expect!

Ambience                ★★★
Service                    ★★
Presentation            ★★★
Taste                      ★★★★

http://bangalore.burrp.com/listing/hotel-chandrika_cunningham-road_bangalore_restaurants/143174366

Shezan (Bengaluru)

Keep ordering, keep eating

Value for money, decent food, small portions. What do you do? You keep ordering more, and then eat some more. Shezan seems to encourage this kind of behaviour among patrons, as you end up ordering half the things on the menu and end up liking most of them. To start with, the chicken soup is quiet good in doing what soup is supposed to do - whet up an appetite and invoke the taste buds. The dal and chicken dishes to follow also live up to the mark. One excellent thing to try out here is the biryani, which is quite different from its equivalent in other parts of the country in not being rice containing whole slices of meat. The chicken biryani here contains rice that is richly flavoured with spices and has a slight bit of meat thrown in somewhere - the gravy that goes with it is what makes it delectable. The portions, however, are so minuscule that you could just order and consume helpings of biryani one by one. The dessert too is a bit of a disappointment as the mud-pie lives up to the Small is Beautiful credo but does not taste as good as the fare before it. Overall, a full course meal at Shezan might just start with a bang and end with a whimper (which, in fact, is also what the stewards do most of the time).

Ambience                ★★★
Service                    ★★
Presentation            ★★★
Taste                      ★★★

http://bangalore.burrp.com/listing/shezan-restaurant_cunningham-road_bangalore_restaurants/1391469970