Weekend Delight

This weekend was a culinary delight. On Saturday, I met up with my friends at Woodside Inn in Oshiwara. I can't believe it that I stayed away from this place for so long (it was my very first visit). The experience was just amazing. The interiors, the lighting, the little cabinet of books, the selection of music and the service, all was wonderful. Their menu is really well balanced and does not leave the vegetarians disappointed as there are plenty of really exotic vegetarian dishes on it. The monthly specials, well, are different every month. By some strange coincidence, all three of us wanted to stick to a vegetarian fare. As an appetizer, we ordered the truffle fries and some iced teas. The fries were excellent, with shavings of truffle and presented with a delightfully sweet, sour and pungent sauce. 

For the main course, we shared one pasta dish - whole wheat penne with a tomato cream sauce, with mozzarella and an assortment of vegetables like artichokes, asparagus, and zucchini. We also ordered two side dishes - baked goat cheese bruschettas with tomato basil confit and brussel sprouts with candied bacon and capers. The pasta was perfect - the delicious sauce was enough to cover the pasta and the veggies and the cheese added the extra layer of creaminess. Unfortunately, there wasn't any bread on the table, otherwise, I would've mopped the plate clean with it. The bruschettas were to die for - the toast was crunchy and the goat cheese was creamy and tangy and sweet - all at once. It was basically heaven in a couple of bites and I could easily have polished off a few more on my own. The biggest surprise were the brussel sprouts. I'm not particularly fond of them, but its not like I hate them or anything. I guess they belong to the category of "likeable but never used in my kitchen". So this little dish, full of halved brussel sprouts, candied bacon and capers, was a punch of one flavour after another. The sharp, pungent taste of crunchy brussel sprouts, with chewy crispness of the bacon and the salty bits of the capers made it into a very interesting dish.

For dessert, we ordered something called the Mississippi Mudpie, basically a slice of layered chocolate cake served with some chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream. Chocolate is always good but this wasn't anything great, basically nothing compared to all what we had eaten previously.

Then on Sunday, we had Gujarati thali for lunch. My husband and I were out shopping and he took me to this tiny, no-frills place called 'Aaram Restaurant' near BKC. The place is on the first floor and there's a spiral staircase to get there. You arrive right in the middle of the restaurant with the tables arranged in two concentric circles. Each table has a masala dabba containing a lovely garlic chutney, a couple of types of pickles, salt, lemon wedges, chhundo (that maharaja of all Gujarati pickles) and a sweet tamarind chutney. There are also four giant steel thalis on each table with tiny steel bowls in them, all covered up with napkins. Once you are seated, the servers keep bringing you food and believe me, their service is good. Very polite and attentive, the servers fall short of being hoverers (I've discussed this in one of my earlier reviews about another restaurant).

It looks pretty, doesn't it!

So there was the quintessential aam ras, 2 snacks (khandvi and some kind of a potli kachori or something), salad, fresh green chutney, 2 kinds of sweets, dal-baati, Gujarati sweet dal, Gujarati sweet kadhi, 4 vegetables (gattey ki sabzi, potato curry, sweet methi-malai matar and flower-batata-nu-shak); there were methi puris and bajra bhakri, along with chappatis. There was masala rice and steamed rice served with lovely boiled yellow dal and ghee. And yes, as you can see, there was also a papad. All-in-all the meal was excellent; it wasn't too oily; and with the exception of the methi malai matar which I did not like at all, everything was well prepared. And it was perfect for a rainy afternoon.