Lollo Rosso - Ahmedabad

So I had seen a lot of amazing pictures of their food on their insta page recently, and I wanted to taste those delicacies for myself. So I asked my friend if he was free this sunday, he said yes and we had a plan! Oh by the way, if you’re wondering what the name means, it is a variety of crinkled lettuce that has red-edged leaves. Now the interesting part is, I called them around 11 to reserve a table for us and they took the details. So that was that. But when we reached there at 2, the restaurant was completely full so I went ahead and asked for our table and they said it would take atleast 20 minutes for them to give us a table, I said I had a reservation. So the guy said they don’t usually take reservations because it is a very small restaurant and if they do, they prioritize them. Now we had an event to attend to at 3:30 so we were in a fix. They should have said the same over the call and saved us the worrying thinking we might not make it to the other event because going to eat someplace else wasn’t an option, given the time constraint. Also, the insta page only had pictures of their food and not the place. It is an actually tiny place with just 4 tables that could seat 3 or 4 people at a time. I am not saying it was deceiving but that was wrongful assumption on my part, thinking it would be a regular sized restaurant. So the start was quite bumpy.

We were given a table after 20 minutes and meanwhile we had placed an order so it would be done by the time we get the seats. What we loved about the menu was it was precise but packed so much variety that it was unbelievable. The ingredients for each dish were explained beneath the name of the dish so that was quite helpful. Plus almost all the items were available in veg, poultry and sea food. Just take a look at their men and you’ll see what I am talking about.

We ordered one greek bowl and one shawarma bowl for each of us. The quantity of one bowl is enough for one person. The looks of the bowl would amaze you. It had so much variety and so much colour that it was very refreshing to just look at it. so I quickly took some pictures and we got to business. There were two or three different vinaigrettes and sauces in the shawarma bowl and all of them complimented the remaining ingredients very well. Be it the chicken or the rice or the salad, it tasted very well with the sauces. The greek bowl too was spectacular to look at with all the grilled chicken and the fresh cucumbers and pomegranate and the labneh. They also provided a double glass distiller that had olive oil and balsamic vinegar. My friend added some olive oil to his bowl and it tasted very good. The only thing we disapproved of were the raw tomatoes in the shawarma bowl. We also ordered one slice of their famed spinach, feta and pine nut pie. It was a delight to look at and the taste was absolutely divine. The crust was perfectly crisp and seasoned perfectly. The filling was a perfect combination of spinach, feta and tomatoes. However I would have liked a bit more of those delicious tomatoes as they even provided with a fresh tang to bite through the heaviness of the cheese. Also, pine nuts. Not that I could find one in my part of the slice, so even a bit more of that would be a plus! But it definitely is a must have!    

The next thing that we wanted were some drinks but given the limited menu, they only had a few cold drinks. So that was that. The next thing was dessert since my friend is a big sucker for them. We went ahead with the espresso cannoli. Now it is a crisp and hollow pastry tube that is filled with an espresso and cream filling with a little bit of chocolate sauce at the ends. They had sprinkled a little cinnamon on top and the entire ensemble was quite exquisite. It was so good we even ordered a second cannoli that had a chocolate filling in it. Even that turned out to be splendid.

All in all, we loved the food. The wait for 20 minutes and the initial hiccup was almost worth it all. We also loved the preciseness of the menu and the wide variety provided by it. But if you are a large party, you might have to wait an extremely long time depending on the day of the week that you’re visiting them as they only have 4 tables. The service however was quick, the staff efficient and well mannered. Décor is minimalistic and yet done in a very classy way. Lovely place. 

Bon Appetit!

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Bogarosa - Ahmedabad

After a splendid Sunday lunch at Lollo Rosso and a splendid event with friends, we decided to have the last meal of the day at Bogarosa, and before I say anything else, it was a wonderful ending to a wonderful day! It wasn’t absolutely delightful but it was great!

So if you’re a first timer there, you’ll easily be able to locate the place if you put that up in google maps. Also, parking isn’t that big an issue since it has ample space around the place. Now the first thing that you notice when you arrive is the sheer size of the restaurant. It is huge! An entire building is dedicated to just being a restaurant. So there’s a lot of space everywhere. They have old style heavy iron patio furniture on the outside. When you enter the façade through their pink door, you’ll find the huge 60’s style sofa chairs and mirrors in the passage way which by the way is a very nice spot to get your pictures clicked. The indoors too has handsome furniture which is comfortable and the décor is done very tastefully. For those who are looking for some good Instagram photos, this is the place for you. As I have said earlier, they’re huge so even a party of 10 could be accommodated easily. Now we went there for dinner on a Sunday and from what we had heard, we were expecting to wait for atleast 20 minutes before we could get in but surprisingly, there was no wait. We went straight in. It was around 9:45 and the restaurant was half full. So it really depends on your luck as to how long you might have to wait.

Coming to the staff and the setting. The décor is quite calming and soothing to look at. The shelves are full of trendy kitchen utensils and servery. The tables have these cool table cloths beneath the glass tops that go perfectly well with the whole setting. The chairs are a combination of large and small and it is sort of a mix and match there but then again it is all comfy and trendy so that’s that. They even have a raised counter and high chairs for those who would prefer to work on their laptops there, however I am not sure if they provide you with a free wifi. But if you carry your own internet, it shouldn’t be an issue. The staff seems well trained and they are quick between the courses to clear up your plates and provide you with new ones. The only drawback is that you constantly need to remind them to refill your water. That is something they tend to overlook or forget.

The menu is quite extensive and they have tried to give you a huge array of dishes but that did not work for us because they did not have quite a few dishes mentioned therein. On enquiring, they said that they haven’t yet started serving those dishes. The waiter said and I quote, “Sir, we haven’t had these dishes since the first day.” So my natural question was, why they are still there in the menu, to which he had no response. I guess they’re still finalizing on the menu and maybe they’ll come up with a solution to that. We were fascinated by the names of some dishes like the pizza samosas or the molecular puchkas but they weren’t available so went with what they had in store for us. Same was the case with a few of the drinks and tbh, it sort of gives you a disappointing feeling when you don’t get what you want but then that’s life! Can’t always get what you want. ;)

So we ordered three drinks, the Angoori Soda, the Caiprioska, and the Pomegranate Sangria. All three of them looked amazing and tasted very good. In fact they went very well with the food that we had ordered so no complaints there. The next was the soup. We had ordered their Pink Root Consommé with Crisp Bread, Nutmeg and Citron. It a 5/5. We were absolutely in love with the colour the consistency, the round croutons and the taste of the soup. It was so good that we kind of wanted to cancel the rest of the order and just have more soup. (And the soup kind of raised our expectations from the rest of the order.) So we loved the soup.

Next came in the Margarita bursts. They are their version of a cheese ball. I think it was the soft pizza dough which had a cheese filling in them. It looked very well, the presentation was spot on but they were almost like a miser when it came to the quantity. Five tiny balls for 225 bucks + taxes felt like a pocket pincher. It did taste good but the quantity was almost too negligent. Given we were three people dining there, we couldn’t even distribute it evenly! Sad.

For the main course we went for the Roman Sensation, Kolkata style street biryani and Afghani spiced paneer with Garlic Naan. Now before I begin I would like to say one thing. The restaurant believes in European Portion sizes, meaning thereby, if you order one dish, it is only for you and not meant to be shared by 2 or 3 people, as is the case in India. The quantity in most cases is enough for one person but in some cases it is too less even for a single person. So I suggest you order as many dishes ass many people you have on the table if you have a decent appetite. Otherwise you might be disappointed with the quantity if you’re not accustomed to having European Portions.

The Roman Sensation was a disaster. There was nothing roman about the taste. It was a sizzler basically and we all know how that works, they put up three to four components together on a hot plate and these components compliment each other. Far from that, some of them were undercooked. To begin with, the hot plate wasn’t lined with enough cabbage leaves so the pasta stuck to the plate and gave it a burnt flavor, not to mention, it went dry and felt chewy because of the overcooking by the excess heat of the hot plate. The mac n cheese had a béchamel sauce that was raw. We could taste the flour in that and the spaghetti was given in a red tomato that was too sweet for our preference. The only good thing on that platter was probably the French fries. So that, we did not like.

After that, we had the Kolkata biryani. Again, dinghy portion sizes. It wasn’t enough even if a single person had it alone. Served in a tiny tuna can it looked very pretty. The taste was good and we loved the chef’s special curry that they served along with the biryani. But that’s that. And when you say Kolkata style biryani, one expects potatoes in the biryani because that is the only major distinction between a biryani from any other part of India and a biryani from Kolkata. But the potatoes were missing too. Also, it is really pulao if you don’t have any meat or poultry in the rice but to each his own!

We had only ordered the above to dishes to begin with as we thought that would be sufficient but given the serving portions, we had to order a third dish and that was the Afghani spiced paneer. Before the waiter could serve us, we tasted the dish and asked them to make it extremely spicy. They took it back and brought it out again with all the three chilies, red, green and black! And we liked that. The subzi tasted very good and the naan was crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. So the end was good and that was their saving grace, I suppose.

So the place is definitely worth a visit and the food does taste good but it can be a hit and miss for a few dishes. The drinks are definitely good unless you have a really bad day. The staff and the service as great so I suppose that should do it for them.

Bon Appetite!  

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McDonalds _ Baroda / Vadodara

Baroda is no better than Ahmedabad when it comes to late night food joints. Everything shuts down around 11 or 11:30 PM and you don’t have much choice left but to go to the food chains. Now I don’t have anything against the food chains but honestly some of them are detestable. I have formed a similar opinion of McDonalds based on the multiple visits to their numerous outlets. Let’s not even get started on how deceiving their advertisement pictures are.

So it is almost midnight and we want to go to the recently opened Tea Villa near Genda circle but they said they are closing so wouldn’t take any orders. So we ended up at McCafe near Manisha cross roads. It was densely populated for that hour but then it was the Diwali weekend so we weren’t surprised. We went ahead to order. The staff was very polite and courteous and had a ssmile on even at that hour, even with so many people around, which was great. We ordered from the new menu and asked for a takeaway. Even with so many people there was ample space for us to sit down and wait for our order. We did like the lovely yellow lighting.

Since we only had 2 drinks and a muffin to go, we did not have to wait long. We had placed an order for the Italian mocha shake and an American mud pie shake along with a chocolate chip and vanilla muffin. We did want to try the new “Flavours without Borders” and so that’s what we got. When the order arrived, no one told us which one was what so we took a sip and guessed the coffee in one of them, making that one the mocha shake. To be honest, both of them were a bit on the sweeter side and tasted the same, except for the fact that one of it had coffee in it. they had added so much ice that they were very gritty and turned watery after a while, when the ice melted. To be frank, they were just okay, given it was just a 100 bucks a piece we did not mind rally but its not something that you would go especially to have. The muffin was warmed up for us and it tasted just okay. We’ve had better. To be frank we thought the sweet muffin would go well with the coffee shake since it was supposed to be bitter, but since it was already sweet, it did not help much. Give them a try if you’re there. But a special visit should certainly prove disappointing.

Bon Appetit !

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Wall Street Cafe - Ahmedabad

I got a voucher for this restaurant about a month ago, but in all this rush for finishing the work before Diwali at work and the shopping, I somehow did not get the time to visit them. So post Diwali, this was the first place that we decided to pay a visit. It was the 2^nd day of their opening up after Diwali. The place is right at the vijay cross roads junction, above Belgian waffles. Previously, the same place hosted The Tea Exchange. Now they had the same décor and the mechanisms of tea exchange with the screen still up there for the drinks menu. For those who aren’t familiar with the concept of a tea exchange, it basically works like a stock exchange. The prices of the drinks are shown on a screen and they keep fluctuating depending on the demand for the drink. If you’re in luck you may end up paying much less than the actual cost but that seldom happens, so good luck with that!

Now the space is large with all sorts of settings available, the regular table chairs, high chairs, indian setting and so on. They have books and games for you to enjoy with your meals. They have two screens that show the stock market kind of pricing for the drinks menu which isn’t very convenient to be honest. If you’re seated at some table from where you cant get a proper look at the screens, you’ll have to get up to look at it and place your order. Plus the font is so small that I think you’ll have to get up anyway.

The menu isn’t very extensive so that’s a good thing. But given the short menu, they did not have half of the things that we wanted to try and their excuse was, “We only opened yesterday, after the Diwali Break!” so that was that! The entire place was empty except for us and a group of 4 guys on one other table, and it remained that was for the entire portion of our stay there. There was only one person to serve and take orders that day which I guessed was again because of Diwali. So we ordered out of the limited options that we were given that day.

First to arrive were the mint mojitos. They were good but lacked salt so we had to ask for it since they don’t have salt and pepper shakers. Once the much needed salt was added, it was good. The next to arrive were the pasta. Tbh, they looked sad. It was such a deep red sauce that it looked more like an over cooked gravy than an Italian pasta sauce and there was absolutely no trace of any green. So the freshness was gone. And the moment we tasted it, we were like they should call it Paneer makkhani pasta, cause that’s how it tasted. The pasta was cooked al dante but we did not like the sauce. The pizza reminded us of Jasuben’s, with their ready made crust and meagre toppings, topped with processed cheese. Thumbs down. The waiter suggested we try their Mexican Phuskis. Now I did not know what that was and on asking we were told that it is a fusion of Pani puri that has a Mexican stuffing. We weren’t very excited but since they wanted us to try that and also because they did not have a lot of things available that day, we went ahead with that and we regretted our decision with the first bite. I don’t know what they added to the stuffing but wasn’t at all mexican and tasted exactly the same like their pasta in red sauce. Again, this was topped with a lot off processed cheese which did nothing more than choking you if you tried having the entire pani puri in one go.

The guy taking the orders was very decent and polite and the service was good, but food wise the place still has miles to go before it expects a regular clientele. Also, we had the voucher so it did not pinch so badly but I wouldn’t want to pay 900 bucks for that food. They definitely need to improve on the food front if they wish to continue as a successful restaurant in Ahmedabad. It might kindle the taste buds of a few college goers but that’s about the size of it. Also did I mentions the parking menace? No? Well guess what! It’s huge.

Bon Appetit! (And from what I’ve been through, you’ll need it here.)

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