Monsoon

The Park, 14/7, MG Road, Bangalore - 560042
Phone : 25594666
Email : tpbl@theparkhotels.com
Website : theparkhotels.com

Food : 3.5/5
Service : 3.5/5
Ambience : 3/5
Meal for 2 : Rs 1500



A quick lunch date on a very busy day took us to Monsoon at the Park. This tastefully done up 24-hour restaurant serves multi-cuisine where you can take your pick from a well planned menu of Mediterranean, Indian and South- East Asian cuisine.


Tenderloin with green pepper sauce

The tenderloin with green pepper sauce was piquant and fresh on the tongue - mind you, these were not green bell peppers but green unripe berries of the pepper plant. The mushrooms and potato fries served alongside were a perfect foil for the mild but fiery taste of the sauce on meat.


BBQ Quail with grilled veggies, jerk seasoning and balsamic reduction

Next was the barbequed quail with jerk seasoning , grilled vegetables and balsamic reduction. Sounds like a mouthful, doesn't it? It tastes equally delectable! The meat was moist and tasty and the seasoning complimented the subtle charred flavour of the dish.

And now for my favouritest part (pardon my English, I lose control when I talk of dessert!) of this review - chocolate mud cake with icecream! I had never had mudcakes earlier and I am glad my first one was at Monsoon. Because I now truly believe that nothing can surpass the lusty mudcake I had here.


No chocolate is too much chocolate!

The sight of rich chocolate sauce oozing out of the warm cake is like poetry to the eyes of a chocoholic! This dessert is meant to be savoured slowly, taking time to enjoy the gooey warmth of the cake with the cold sweetness of icecream. Yummy!!! This is definitely a must try for those with a sweet tooth.
Also on offer at Monsoon is a sumptuous buffet during lunch where I could see some divine looking desserts (needless to say, I always spot these first!).
Pricing is a bit on the higher side but this restaurant is worth a visit - atleast for the mudcake :)

Did you know.......
..........................that chocolate is a mild stimulant to humans mainly due to the presence of theobromine? It is much more potent for horses, and its use in horse racing is prohibited.
..........................that the muscle tissue from where the tenderloin is cut does very little work, so it is the most tender part of the cow and thus the name?

Villa Pottipati

142, 8th Cross, 4th Main Road, Malleswaram, Bangalore - 560003.
Phone : (080)-23360777, 41280832, 41280833
Fax : 41280835
Website : http://www.neemranahotels.com/villapottipati/index.html.htm

Food : 2/5
Service : 2.5/5
Ambience : 4/5
Meal for 2 : Rs 800



Tucked in a corner of the ever busy Malleswaram, is a charming colonial bungalow now converted into a hotel, Villa Pottipati. A sprawling property with a lovely house, a pebbled courtyard, abundant trees under which you can have your lunch....hard to believe this is in namma bengalooru. Getting there was a boggling task with all the one-ways, bylanes and the infamous traffic that Malleswaram is never short of! But once we reached this pocket of green, the bustle of the city seemed like a distant memory.
Villa Pottipati has a fixed menu everyday with four courses and a choice of vegetarian and non vegetarian. For the alcoholics, beer is the only drink available. It would be wise to call up to the restaurant a couple of hours in advance for reservations and directions (believe us, you will definitely need that!).



Under an old mango tree with the call of birds in the background, we settled for our meal. It felt like time stood still that afternoon; it was so peaceful and quite. Unfortunately, the food at Villa Pottipati is not so appealing :(
The carrot soup that we started with was bland and passable. Next was the compose salad which turned out to be the ordinary green salad in disguise. Sliced cucumber, shredded capsicum and carrots topped with some kind of sweet brown sauce and mayonnaise, it was nothing special.


Carrot soup


Salad compose

Following that was the capitan grill for me and chicken in orange sauce for Balaji. The capitan grill was a huge slice of grilled fish which tasted very good. The way it was presented, it looked like a dish from an Andhra restaurant, lemon wedges et al!


Capitan grill

The chicken in orange sauce was not bad either, the chicken succulent and the orange sauce, a tad too citrusy but still good.


Chicken in Orange sauce

Choice of dessert included a very ordinary tasting fruit salad and roasted pineapple with honey. Roasting had killed the taste of pineapple and it also smelled a little odd.


Fruit salad


Roasted Pineapple with Honey glaze

Service is good and unintrusive - something that naturally goes well with such an ambience.
If only Villa Pottipati served better and more innovative food, it would be the right place to laze over a satisfying lunch on a deliciously languid afternoon soaking up the old world charm amidst the peace and quite.

Did you know.......
................that the name Pottipati derives from a village in Andhra Pradesh from where the owners, the Reddy family, originally migrated to Bangalore?
................that this 120-year-old garden home was restored by award winning heritage hotel experts Francis Wacziarg and Aman Nath?