Nothing Authentic

An interesting restaurant in Friends Colony market. The décor reminds me a bit of the slogan of Hooters: "Delightfully tacky, yet unrefined". Takes a pride in its tongue-in-cheek over-the-top columns and bullet-ridden dividers. I like to look at bathrooms in these places to see what they have done there – and here they have done what amounts to a disappointing hmmmm. What were they thinking?! Nice walls but terrible, old, badly maintained appliances!

Anyhow, the only reason the place still interested me (deliberately ugly décor can only go so far in holding my attention), was the surprisingly good food. The starters we'd ordered came in, looking nothing like their name – some kind of stirfried vegetable platter – and we found ourselves staring at a plate of pakodas. But turned out to be not so much the gunky fried slathered-in-the-worst-kind-of-oil fare but almost tempura-ish, lightly fried, delectable pieces of vegetable. The Thai curry was excellent, and the Mongolian stirfry, more a curry than a stirfry was not bad. Perhaps our expectations were just so low, these theme-y places usually underinvest in their cooks, that the element of surprise added that additional oomph of flavor.

Note to wives/girlfriends bringing sports-inflicted boys along: they do have a TV tuned to sports, so you may be abandoned as the boys flock to the TV to get a better view; better to bring a book or something for those times.