Goodbye Bombay.......Hello Electronic City!

The countdown is finally over, 30th July 2012 is finally here. The day I finally move my ass out of my father's house and go out into the "real world". After a rather easy life the fortunate son makes his way to the city of Bengaluru for a college education that nowadays every Tom, Dick and HARRY has on his CV. Yes the ill-fated B-school, in my case its the WeSchool. I'm nervously excited, it is after all my first move away from the city I call home, yet let's be honest there could be a lot worse places that one can go to study in. Quite obviously the greatest challenge will be replacing the role of the mother, I'm gonna have to start learning to do my own laundry and start taking care of EVERYTHING on my own. Big step that, one that I should have done a long time ago, but at 22 years young, its still not too late.

Anyone who has lived in Bombay would know there is no substitute for this city, be it the fact that we can get a proper meal at even 3-4 am, or the fact that the local transport starts functioning at a whopping 4am, or the fact that despite popular opinion, the everyday mumbaikar is possibly one of the nicest persons in the world. I've lived in Bombay for 14 years now, my life is here, my family(at least the one that I really like) is here and most importantly my friends are here. I have been rather fortunate to have such a wonderful group of friends who are each just as important as Food or Music is in my life. So I thought my last post will be a mixture of all these things that make Bombay all the more special to me. People kept hounding me over the last 2 weeks about when exactly I was leaving Bombay and quite frankly I was kinda tired of hearing that clichéd line, "Meet me before you leave". Yes I did want to meet everybody before I left, some more urgently than the others, but at the end of day this change is definitely going to be GOOD for me. Leaving now felt like it was the right thing to do, I'm still energetic enough to embrace the challenges that await me in Bangalore, yet at the same time I know I have a wonderful "HOME" to fall back on back in Bombay. So I am not too depressed or bummed about leaving the city, yes I will miss its awesomeness in more than one way, but overall I am happy I've finally found some sense of direction in my life. Touchwood. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I will come back after I complete my course and given a choice I would work only in Bombay, but that's getting too far ahead of ourselves. In terms of food, I will miss the beautiful thing that is the Vada Pav. Pani Puri and Pav Bhaji will never be the same again in Bengaluru. I'd miss eating at Maroosh with my friends, I'd miss all the house parties and epic FIFA tourney's we've had in Raheja Vihar, I'd miss being the only guy in the circle who doesn't smoke, I'd miss sneaking in Masala Bay Biryani into my room and then eating it with my bare hands to destroy all forms of evidence of Chicken in the room and I'd most certainly miss not having to worry about paying rent and having a luxurious life in suburban Mumbai. The fact that I started working before most of my friends let me enjoy a certain perks, the most advantageous of them being the fact that I could always afford these lavish buffets and dinners more often than others. So seasons 1 and 2 have always been about the classy restaurants and the fancy lounges n pubs of this world. Now that will all change.


I will definitely not give up fine dining entirely, but without any source of income and numerous new expenditure to be incurred I am gonna have to start making a few budget cuts. I've always known myself to be a proud man and I could never go back to my father and ask him for money, but the fact that I know that door will always be open is reassuring. So I think now is the perfect time to end Season 2. Its been a roller coaster year, I've had way too much fun in these last 7 months, there is absolutely no way I can top this in the remainder of the year. Spent a good 5k just on buffets over the last three months and I have absolutely no regrets about that. I am not even close to being done with all the places to eat in Bombay, not by a long shot, but I guess I could use with a little bit of a breather. Music wise I am finding it harder to find time just to listen to music, with so much that's been going on, I could use a couple of months just to revisit some of my older favourite bands, at the same time explore into new genre's like Jazz, Psychedelic Rock, Punk Rock etc. All in all the end of season 2 gives me great joy and at the same time it gives me great hope that Season 3 will be even better. I am sure there are even more places to explore in Bangalore, new types of food to be had, new places to travel too, new music to listen to and new blogs to write.

PS: Also I've been stuck on 50 something followers for a while now, I think its high time I spread my fan base a little. So until 2013, Goodbye Bombay and Hello Electronic City. Till then don't forget, "If it ain't Classic, It ain't Rock". Peace. 

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Swami G goes Global

Call it a cliché but I really have saved the best for the last in terms of buffets in Bombay. Over the past 3 months I have had many sumptuous buffets ranging from Chinese to Continental to Veg :P, but without a shadow of doubt the ultimate buffet in this beautiful city has to be at Global Fusion, Bandra. Priced at a steep  Rs 900 per plate on a week night, some might say it's not really worth it, I mean for that kind of money you can probably manage to eat at a 5-star, but trust me on this one - Every penny spent at Global Fusion is a penny well spent. This dinner buffet was something that has been eluding me for a while now, I had only been there once before for a lunch buffet (much cheaper btw), and I really didn't do enough justice for the amount of food that was on offer, I guess it was because I was ill-informed, nobody really warned me that this buffet would be THIS awesome. There are certain rules that you have to follow in order to thoroughly enjoy a Global Fusion buffet and since no one helped me out, I thought I could be the nice guy that I am and help everybody who reads this out:

1. Its okay to have incredibly high expectations once in a while, specially if its a Global Fusion buffet. Do not consume any solids 24 hours before the buffet. No matter how hungry and cranky you get, don't give in, completely detox yourself from all kinds of food and survive purely on coffee/juices. It helps if you have like ten hours of lectures at college, but either way figure out a way to distract yourself and STAY AWAY FROM FOOD. Think only about the buffet and brace yourself for the greatest dining experience of your life.

2. Make Global Fusion plans with the one girl who can never ever be on time. You will spend an extra hour waiting for her to come and in this process your appetite will increase, you will be super pissed that you are standing at Linking road, a mere sniff away from the prize, yet you have to wait for her to arrive. God bless her actually, (Mehek Contractor) she did give me her word about eating at Global and eat we did, albeit a little late.
PS: Next time Mehek, remember what you ordered and don't go pick up random stuff from the sushi bar.

3. Make sure you take proper foodies with you (veg and non-veg), preferably potheads who eat like dogs. This will make sure you don't miss a single item on the buffet and more importantly you don't waste any of the delicious food. In the larger scheme of things it doesn't really matter whether you eat one dumpling or the whole box, still its a nice thought not to waste food. Also it helps watching everyone on the table stuff themselves, that way you are encouraged to compete and eat to your maximum capacity.

4. They'll entice you with crappy ice tea and pepsi as welcome drinks, don't have more than one, although it's unlimited, they slow you down, unnecessary CO2, focus on the main prize - A lip smacking buffet. My friends if you have followed all the above steps you are now ready for GLOBAL FUSION.

Indulgence. Sprawling space this restaurant has, no other restaurant has this much space to operate under. The ambience is magical, gives the dinner a very formal and posh feel to it, its really something that they have found so much space in the heart of Bandra. Full marks for presentation, every item of the décor is immaculate, this is the kinda place you wouldn't might sitting and eating at for hours together. It's sensible to make reservations here, specially on a weekend because its kind of a fancy place. Like I said they start you off with a welcome drink of Ice Tea or a Fresh Lime Soda. Another very important rule, probably the most important rule of all, when you finally do lose your Global Fusion Virginity, make sure you have like a proper foodie friend of your's with you to guide you thru the place, because trust me, for a newbie it can get kinda overwhelming. The idea is simple, a dish of every starter on offer is kept near the kitchen, you have to walk there with your table number and select the ones you want to eat. There's only like 15 types of starters each to choose from, so if you go with a large group, just order them all. Specially if you are a non vegetarian, there's like Beef, Prawns, Lamb, Fish, Chicken well basically everything expect pork because they don't serve it. Settle down and the guys will keep getting those starters to your table. Empty atleast half the cup of Wasabi and dig in. Just keep them coming. Pepper Chicken check. Chicken Satay check. BBQ Chicken check. Spicy Mushroom check. Prawn Tanayanki check. Baked prawns check. Lamb shaped like hot wings check. Beef check. Seconds of the prawn dishes cause they were bloody incredible check. Total time about 20 mins. Pause now and make conversation.

After a breather laugh at the vegetarian who has already started eating his main course and head on down to the Dumplings and Sushi bar. Honestly I love the dumplings at Global Fusion. They are the best part of the buffet, simply because each box of dumplings has only 2 pieces each. So all you have to do is order for one of each and you are set. More wasabi again, this sauce is the unsung hero of the global buffet, keep telling your waiter to refill this every once in a while. Again I left the fish cause I honestly don't like fish all that much, go straight for the prawns. Honest to god, at this buffet alone I must have out done myself in terms of no. of prawns consumed for the whole year. Chicken dumplings are awesome too, very easy to eat. Load up on these, your head might tell you to slow down, but don't listen to that old bugger, you are gonna be fighting a losing battle anyways. More great food ahead. Next up the Sushi Bar.

Very tricky part of the buffet this, by now I was well and truly full, I had eaten quite a lot of the starters. Mehek would eat like one bite of every starter and she went and ordered random other chicken items, so I would have the herculean task of finishing the entire plate. I managed to devour all the chicken and prawn, but the lamb and beef got the better off me, not that it wasn't nice or anything, there was simply too much food to eat. The Sushi bar is something you are either gonna love or absolutely hate. As much as it pains me, both my visits to Global and I've been a hater, I simply do not understand the concept of eating raw fish on top of a massive dumpling of rice - the icky looking mushrooms don't help either. Most of the seasoned sea food eaters love it and spend a lot of time on this part of the buffet, they've got a pretty decent selection of sauces here too, but my verdict on the Sushi Bar - a speed bump. Instead go eat 2 more servings of those awesome prawn dumplings and head on down to the main course.

Like any buffet, by the time you reach the main course you are simply too full and can barely process the thought of eating more food. Still it's against our Indian nature to not have a certain item on a unlimited dinner buffet, so I got myself a rather small serving of noodles with some chicken and prawn gravy. Honest to god, I ate every single prawn dish on the menu at least 2 times - it was just sublime with the Wasabi sauce. They had crab too, with shell but so I was still grossed out to try and break it and all, and Mehek is a useless person to eat with, she's GOBE after like 2 rounds of the starters and then all she does is play with the knives n forks etc.

Save enough room for the dessert guys, this place sets the standard in this department too. I'm such a harami I don't leave a single item on the dessert menu also, no matter how childish it makes me look. So there I was asking the man to give me 2 scoops of ice cream - one Milk Chocolate Chip and one Cotton Candy flavoured. There is absolutely no shame in admitting that it's one of the greatest memories of my childhood and to this day, I would still enjoy any form of cotton candy just as much as I did when I was a kid. Keeping with that trend, the kiwi and strawberry jelly were also decent, the cakes were tiny and awesome, my favourite being the mud cake and the other chocolate one. The blueberry cheese cake was okay and the walnut cookies were just there to make up the numbers. After a monster meal the baskin and robbins ice cream really hits the spot, and funnily enough this Baskin's ice cream tastes better than the normal ones you get in the "outside" world. Or maybe its just one more point for the ambience.

Global Fusion is not just fine dining, its an experience. No matter what kind of food you like, or what kind of appetite you have, there is only one kind of feeling that you get after dining here - CONTENTMENT. This is a luxury you can afford once in a while and make sure you do full justice for the price you pay. Do not miss out on a single item on the menu, even the veg sushi and dumplings taste alright. Don't waste "Stomach Space" on the soup and the sushi bar (my opinion) and focus only on the starters. Have atleast 3 rounds of the same and if you don't spend more than 2 hours eating your meal then you my friend are a failure. Global Fusion - Best Buffet Ever!! Peace.

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Mutton, Maroosh and Mr Absolutely Smashed

There comes a time in every man's life when he has had an obscene amount of whiskey and because of this he cannot walk, talk, text and of course drive back home. This won't matter much if you only went drinking around Raheja Vihar, but if you were a celebrity like Mr Raahil Chopra (no relation to Sheryln the latest playmate), you might need to make other arrangements. Also it doesn't help that you are punjabi and it is in your nature to outdrink everyone on the table. One of the coolest people I know, I have had the good fortunate of studying, eating, drinking and chilling with Mr Liverpool himself. I must say he has inculcated me about a lot of things - be it cheap jerseys at Funky's or Cocktail's at Chili's or the brilliant happy hours scene at Clove and the latest being Dinner at Maroosh.

I've always been a fan of Maroosh. Even in my vegetarian days I would enjoy their Paneer Shawarma. Used to be such a novelty item this Shawarma, had to go all the way across to Parel to have a decent Maroosh Shawarma. Times have changed now, even Powai has a Maroosh and it does brilliant business. 4 people eat dinner at Maroosh atleast four times a week, the four of us being myself, Raahil and Kalluri (wink wink). For many years I thought Maroosh only served Lebanese food like Hummus and Shawarma. So every single time I would go and order the Chicken Shawarma. As good as it is, it can get a tad repetitive so I needed change. Then Raahil told me about their "speciality" items, and do this day I have not enjoyed Tandoori food this much. Apart from the shawarma's they have an amazing set of Rolls. Crazy good gravy wrapped around a Rumali Roti only for about 125 bucks. WIN! All of them are bloody amazing. The Chicken Makhani Roll, The Butter Chicken Roll and the Mutton Seekh roll. Top drawer and I can eat anyone of these over and over again, or well atleast till my wallet allows. The Tandoori chicken is presented very well I must say, 8 pieces along with their infamous cut onions and chutney, this combination is the SHIT as Mr Chopra would say. These are usually our starters, very filling and very economical at the same time. Moving on to the main course, if you are still hungry then the Butter Chicken and the Chicken Lahori are definitely worth having. The good thing about their gravy's are that they are just about right for two people, so after a nice round of starters its very easy to finish two gravy's amongst three people. I love any place that serves rumali roti's simply because Rumali Roti's are the greatest thing that every happened to Tandoori food. But I guess their best dish in my book has to be the MUTTON BHUNA GOSHT. None of us are really huge fans of mutton but this mutton dish is easily one of the better one's I've had. Along with a sexy Dal Maharani (Black Dal) and a piping hot Rumali roti this is the complete bloody meal. The mutton is boneless of course so it makes it all the more delicious, very well cooked and perfect quantity for two people. You literally get a bucket full of dal but it is very nice and that's why we keep ordering it. The best thing about Maroosh is its very simple. Their menu is concise, you have like 25-30 dishes to choose from and all of them are very well made. We have eaten so much food at maroosh and we have never paid more than 300 per head but yes we do get special Raahil Chopra discounts at Maroosh. If you had friends as enterprising and entertaining as Raahil Chopra I'm sure you'd have a got of cool perks and discounts too.

Funny story that, possibly the third continuous night Raahil had come to Maroosh, he struck up a conversation with the waiter Tanvir and voila we had a 10% discount and we became "valued customers" overnight and got free hummus on our next visit. Almost always we grab a rather filling dinner at Maroosh were we eat like dogs and then go to Clove to get absolutely smashed. Eventually its just a few of us at Clove with me and Raahil downing whiskey's only because it's 120 per head, but as much as it costs, drinking at Clove is a rather enjoyable experience. You never have to wait for a table because of Mr. Chopra. You never have to see the menu because it's always the same, "1 + 1 Antiquity with Pepsi aur Ice Bhar Dena", and once you enter Clove with Raahil you are not gonna leave before last call and a STORY.

Be it a mad night with random firangs whom Raahil didn't want to send home, or a very angry young man getting into a serious confrontation with the waiter at the Elbo Room, or a very forgetful punjabi leaving his suitcase at the bar because he was lit up like a christmas tree or all of this in one night. YES. Dinner at Maroosh + Whiskey at Clove is a combination that never fails and I for one will never say no to these random plans. We've had Thursday Night Full Tight, Aaj Friday Hai AAJ hell we've had it all. Off late the excuse has been that I am leaving Bombay to go study and all so lets get "Absolutely Smashed" one last time before you leave. Funny thing is, we have gone out drinking virtually everyday of the week, never gotten Absolutely smashed even once and most importantly have never played Mono-Talli even once since its inception. Well there's still about 2 weeks of Bombay left for me, looking forward to some quality (serious) drinking at Chopra Bunglow along with Mono-talli perhaps or just our usual Maroosh + Clove scene. Either way I'm in. Cheers Bwouys!!!

PS: Basket you still have to buy me McDonald's Breakfast Menu for finishing third in EURO Fantasy Football, the morning after we get Absolutely Smashed I guess.

Another PS: I haven't been listening to a lot of music nowadays with all that's going on, but I promise 2 more fantastic bands and buffets before I leave Maximum City. Adios!! 

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I Can't Get No Satisfaction....

Its true really. There I was sitting in my room pondering on whether I should start a monthly theme for my blogs, so I decided on #MayBuffetMadness. That obviously wasn't enough to cover all the delicious buffets in Bombay (Snapdeal :P) so I decided to make it #MayandJuneBuffetMadness. Now June is also over, am I satisfied? Not really. Its now #FirstQuarterBuffetMadness. My dear accountant and finance friends will be familiar with this terminology, nonetheless on the eve of America's Independence day, I visited yet another buffet around the corner, listened to some Rolling Stones and decided to wind up Season 2 of the blog with more buffets and british bands itself.

Let me start with the Rolling Stones. Arguably one of Britian's finest and biggest commercial successes after the Beatles, the Stones rose to fame largely thanks to their leads Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. Despite popular opinion I am quite reserved when it comes to labeling them as the greatest ever British rock acts of the previous century. I love Mick Jagger for everything that he is and I think Rolling Stones would not have sold half of their records if it wasn't for him, but in many ways The Rolling Stones are just another one of your everyday rock and roll band. They made the most of the resources available and yes they did have some great music, but overall I'd say Rolling Stones would not even feature in my Top 5 even Top 10 british rock groups. I'm a Beatles man thru and thru and after hearing the entire discography of the Beatles, you'd find the Stones shockingly repetitive. Even more so some of their songs are direct covers/copies of Beatles' originals like "I Wanna Be Your Man". The math is simple really, The Beatles made 15 albums, the Stones however made twice as many albums and possibly twice as much money from those albums. Commercial success is one thing, but as you might have noticed I don't care much for that, hell to this day my favorite band is Survivor and they barely sold like 1/100th of what the Rolling Stones did. I don't want to be too critical of Mick Jagger and the Stones, they do have somethings going for them. They gave blues rock and the whole idea of Rock & Roll a whole new meaning with all their music, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger immortalized themselves and forever cemented their status as true rockers alongside the likes of Jim Morrison, Freddie Mercury etc. I mean Keith Richards is one crazy englishman, he's the guy who snorted his own father's ashes - talk about being hardcore. I can't even think of a word to describe that. In this day and age, nobody, not even the biggest Rolling Stones fan would have the patience to sit and go thru 29 studio albums and god knows how many more singles and live albums. I don't care how many albums went #1 and platinum according to Wikipedia, in my book the Rolling Stones are just a decent band and the two CD set of their greatest hits is more than enough to enjoy their music. 40 of their greatest hits aptly called "Rolled Gold Plus" starts off with a bang, CD1 is arguably the better of the two CD's, with their popular songs like "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", "Its All Over Now", "Carol", "Paint it Black", "Lady Jane" and my personal favorite "Mother's Little Helper". CD2 becomes a drag really with the really good songs few and far between  with the best one being "You Can't Always Get What You Want" closely followed by "Ruby Tuesday". The former however became such a favorite purely because of that season 4 finale of Californication when Hank Moody drives away into the sunset, that brings out the true meaning of this song. All in all I'd listen to this band once in a while, very rarely, its the kind of band you wouldn't mind hearing if it popped up on Shuffle but you wouldn't yearn for it on a regular basis.

In many ways the same can be said about the Buffet I went to last night. Keys Hotel near Military Road, Marol. Not the 5 star luxury I was used to, but sometimes when the need for meat is on a daily basis, you gotta exhaust all available options. For 299+ tax, this buffet doesn't disappoint. Lunch and Dinner cost the same, the location isn't great but you could visit here once in a while. Not the kinda place you'd want to go with family (guests especially). To be frank this place is nothing more than a 3 star hotel with a good buffet. Sadly their ad's say they have over 40 dishes but what they fail to tell you is that of these 40 only about 6 of them are non vegetarian. Over the past few months I've had a lot of buffets, most of them have had an insane spread - so many different kinds of meat to chose from, I would always have to have little little of everything because they all were equally good. Well this buffet was different. There were only 4 items worth paying for, the Prawn Curry, the Malabar Fish Curry, the Chicken Tandoori and Green Peas Pulao. 5 very very hungry guys entered this place and went to town on these items, each one of us took 3 huge helpings of the above. We didn't even bother wasting our time on the Veg side, and mind you they had quite a decent spread for you veggies - about 4 different main course dishes, biryani, pulao, and a couple of Chinese dishes too. That being said I've come a long way from that boy who used to get only Idli Molgapudi in his school tiffin box. I'd rather eat 2 insane non veg dishes than eat 20 good veg dishes. I will eat Chicken Tandoori anywhere in this country, you can't possibly mess it up, its one of the basic starters in Non Veg cuisine and like expected it did not disappoint. Seafood is usually my Achilles heal mainly because of the fact that I am not too used to the anatomy of a fish/lobster etc. That's why I only prefer prawns as they are so easy to eat. However the Malabar Fish Curry here was out of the world, luckily for me it was boneless so I had no mental block whatsoever and thoroughly enjoyed it with the pulao. But without a doubt the Prawn Curry had to take the cake. Easily the best prawn curry I've had in my life, it may not have been the richest or the best in terms of quality, or maybe it was the fact that I was just very hungry, but never have I enjoyed Prawns this much as I did at Keys Hotel Marol. Simply devine I tell you. This was one such buffet were we went for quantity over quality. We each must have had atleast 3 generous servings of the prawn and fish curries, an entire plate of rice each and we even tried the Risotto from the live counter. A tad bland it was, not the biggest fan of Risotto, yet with a little bit of Tabasco sauce it was quite decent. The desserts were also limited, Gulab Jamum with Rabdi and chocolate ice cream. Simple yet elegant. Piping hot gulab jamuns with ice cream in this gloomy weather is always a win and this time was no different. All in all, for a little over 350 bucks, we had eaten an incredible amount of food and we were rather happy about it.

A word of caution though, try and hit this buffet a little early, the Prawn Curry is bloody amazing but they also stop refilling the dish after about 10.30 pm. The buffet shuts at 11pm, they have a decent bar too with Happy Hours from 3.30 to 9.30 pm. Not too over priced with a pint of beer at about 135 bucks. That along with some delicious Prawn/Fish Curry is just the kind of way you want to spend your evening after a day of doing nothing but watch the bombay rains from your window. Like I said, #FirstQuarterBuffetMadness won't end till this month's end, a fitting way to go off to different locales and cuisines.......I shall not reveal too much for now is not the time. More to follow guys! Peace!

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