Being one of the old world restaurants, Bombay Brasserie is a behemoth of a dining room, fitting in no less than 300 covers. The dining room in spite of its recent refurbishment to give it the visage of a grand Parisian restaurant stands out like a sore thumb as soon as one picks up the menu; there is just no harmony between the sound and style of food offered and the room it is served in. The menu, straight out of the 1970′s, feels like it should be served in one of the several impostors masquerading as restaurants on Brick Lane.
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September 12, 2012
Bombay Brasserie
July 12, 2012
Off the Grid, San Francisco
You’ve got to hand it to San Francisco, they sure do food with style, whether it’s 2 star Michelin, a restaurant that seasons their garlic with food or serious health conscious fare. However, what San Francisco does better than anyone else are food trucks. Now, living in England, the thought of a food truck serving you something that you might be interested in seems like a farce – our experiences being limited to the pitiful excuse for food served out of these trucks at festivals and fairs. Off the Grid is San Fran’s food truck revolution bundled under one happy umbrella. The organisation has food truck markets every week, all over the city and even tells you how many trucks are going to be present at each market. Once a month, at Fort Mason, Off the Grid brings together no less than 30 trucks serving up anything from cupcakes to creme brulee to pho, beer, jerk chicken and tacos. Throw in a live band and some of the best food you’d pay handsomely for in a restaurant, and you’ve got yourself a perfect summer evening. My efforts must have taken me across at least half the food trucks and I have to admit, I was ecstatically shocked and surprised – everything I tasted was fresh, vibrant and just, downright, delicious!
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July 9, 2012
Vij’s, Vancouver
Whilst there was no shortage of great food on my travels through the Americas, the one bit of eating that is dire across South and North America is Indian. There seems to be a disastrous lack of quality Indian restaurants for the discerning diner. By quality, I naturally mean restaurants of a calibre we have in London, after all, greasy Indian eateries are a dime a dozen the world over with varying degrees of shock and horror, and very few making it to the list of ‘decently edible’. However, before I ventured into the western hemisphere, a couple of friendly travellers that I met in Sri Lanka insisted that whilst in Vancouver, I make a trip to a restaurant called Vij’s, Canada’s seemingly most celebrated Indian restaurant. Of course, the nature of it’s celebrity status was only revealed when I actually landed on Canadian soil and the name Vij’s rang out like a insistent echo; everybody knew of it, almost everyone had been there or wanted to go there and the man himself, Vij, was a bit of a celebrity with his cookbook, his supermarket products, his endless charm and what not.
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March 17, 2012
Trishna: Marylebone, London
Having walked by Trishna many times in Marylebone (most notably for dinner at Roganic) and having missed going to its original form in Mumbai, and then nearly going, but not, I finally made it one afternoon. Being one of the quieter Indian restaurants ticking away in London, its Mumbai counterpart is anything but short of renown, serving fare from the south west coastal regions of the subcontinent, or a distance of a few thousand kilometres and a vast and varying culinary style. With it’s short, yet enticing array of dishes, picking a few isn’t as easy as one might hope as the possibility of one’s eyes being larger than their tummies is quite a risk.
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