holE in thE wall

I'm a timid eater in captivity being reluctant to try anything new "alone", but in a tag team with a foodie; I turn into a vicious connoisseur devouring anything that comes in my way like a true predator in the wild ;)

Lucky I got a good partner foodie for a roommate; we decided to try out a place called Hole-in-the-Wall, which was recommended heavily by another food junkie in my new employer's payroll. Verdict is that it was one of the best decisions of my life to have switched job and roommates ;)

After waking up at 11 am on a nice Sunday morning, it was the perfect time for brunch (thanks to the west). Giving heed to the stomach's starved howls and grumbles, we packed light and set off on our quest. Thanks to Google maps, finding the place was not that much of a pain. What struck us as the most astounding fact was that the place literally lived up to its name, being a hole in a wall which can accommodate hardly 6 tables with max occupancy of around 20 mouths. Needless to say, the place was packed and overflowing for its size. We had to wait almost an hour for a table. Although we heard some whispering voices mentioning Thulp and some other places, we decided to hold our ground and ignore everything else lest we fall into temptation. Finally by 12pm, we were rewarded with a nice cosy place next to the kitchen & cash counter.

No time was wasted in placing the order as we decided to gobble up on an English breakfast with pancakes to be washed down with hot cocoa. English breakfast was done and placed on our table with the egg prepared sunny side up, in a jiffy but nothing was cut short on it- there were sausages, bacon, beans & mushroom. It was whole sum & pleasant for my not so tiny stomach and don't bother, the taste was awesome. By the time we finished it, pancakes felt like overkill, but decision was already made by our taste palates; so we decided not to renegade on that. It was my first time with pancakes, but lo, it tasted like something my mother used to prepare of which we didn’t know the name until then. Finally as a tangy afterthought I got a lime and ginger juice which was quite unlike anything I’ve tasted.

Overall one of the best brunch experience in Bangalore. Apart from being a hole in the wall, I can’t think of any other USP for the place besides the food. Ambiance is normal, with a couple of photos of B.Marley, some paintings, cartoons, this-and-that framed and kept around. Even the hotelier licenses are framed and go well with Bob’s twitched smile. all this coupled with the antique furniture, closely knit group/family(?) of people serving and managing the place, the rock and a strange feeling of being in the mama's kitchen (believe me, if not for the billing counter separation, you are 2-3 feet away from the stove) could be cited as the wonder glue holding the place together.

To rate it; hole in the wall sure fired in the hole :) [4/5]

Here are a few links which may provide more thorough and tasteful insights with menu and pictures shedding light into the "hole".

Menu: 

http://www.zomato.com/menus/50237/menu-photo-for-the-hole-in-the-wall-cafe-1.jpg

http://www.zomato.com/menus/50237/menu-photo-for-the-hole-in-the-wall-cafe-2.jpg

http://www.zomato.com/menus/50237/menu-photo-for-the-hole-in-the-wall-cafe-3.jpg

http://www.zomato.com/menus/50237/menu-photo-for-the-hole-in-the-wall-cafe-4.jpg

Review & Photos:

http://www.bangaloresrestaurants.com/2010/08/hole-in-wall-cafe.html

a hard choicE

As the sun climbed the skies, over my head and a little further to the other side, i lay in contemplation in my tonsillitis-induced-fever-antidote-medicine-induced lucid dream, i was thinking what every man,woman or child in my position at that time would think of; food. i was cleverly moving my checker pieces across the various mains and crosses of my locality in search of that place that would have the honor of quenching my "thirst" for food. as  they say, dreams last only a few minutes when we actually have dreamed about ages passing by; since the decision was made in a lucid dream it took me only a few minutes. not because i outsourced that work to compress-years-to-minutes phenomena of dreams but because the choice was limited.

if i take a left stepping out of my abode, i would see a Bombay chat center, of course the noon choice is not chat. then what else do they have - they have parotta, biriyani, chicken biriyani, fish biriyani, egg biriyani, and what-not-else-biriyani, as if they were all different dishes (if they are different, then i will say 5 polar bears and their parents make up 15 kinds of animals in north pole). if i go further left, i would reach a place where they are supposed to serve food from my home state and has a name synonymous with a food storage. but the horrid taste of that food (i know them better), which made me puke the last time i had it, immediately forced my legs to take the right turn from my house instead. and there i was walking that hot stretch of road to some Andhra restaurant on the way (another state-eatery where i tried my luck yesterday, was as horrendous as always). on the way I saw a pizza hut delivery boy whoosh by. that made me thinking about the so called food connoisseurs paradise; Bangalore. In reality Bangalore is a paradise for people who cant recognize taste or food. either you have the posh star hotels with all the fancy roof high priced cuisines and  all-you-can-eat buffets or you have the mediocre darshinis, sagars and messes that bloat the place with the same kind of food. if your idea of different dish is 4 kinds of sambhar prepared in 4 different ways, i wouldn't blame you- you are made for India by India. people here are so traditional even with food - they cant taste anything different on which they were bought up. vegetarians remain so their entire life eating rice, curd, rasam and papad their whole life not out of choice but out of compulsions and the way they are bought up; the marginally better non vegetarians get to eat chicken as part of biriyani or as kebab and remain chikki-tarians or eggi-tarians.

i know the choice in Bangalore is limited because i was out of this shit-hole thank God, for once. I've been to Dallas,Tx for almost 3 months where i was almost alone and i didn't felt it because each days food was its own adventure and a discovery. a varied cuisine there means having a platter of Japanese, Chinese, Indian, American, English, Mediterranean, Italian, Lebanese, Vietnamese, Thai and everything under the sun that's imaginable. i was not limited by beef or pork, in fact i first tasted pork in my life during this stint in the US. the barbecued pork that my uncle served me was so delicious that i almost ate a pound of it. and i had the opportunity to taste turkey and cranberry on the foodie day of the hemisphere, "Thanks Giving". the sheer kanjiness of the Indian cannot be described better when some people I know who where in other parts of the world (not India) were busy preparing the usual "kanji" for their breakfast, lunch and dinner. Oh God, thanks for delivering me from those predicaments.

i would give anything to have such a choice here. that's why even though a little hard on the valet, i enjoy going to places like Pizza Hut, Thulps (these guys in Koramangala have the best beef burger in Bangalore) or Barbecue Nation once in a while. to many of my friends who were seeing Bangalore for the first time i remark, the only choice for a real food connoisseur in Bangalore is whether to have it or not.

PS: i know and recognize that for a lot many Indians, having some kind of food is a choice of yes or no; my views are harsh transgressions upon the reality faced by many of my countrymen. in no way do i mean to hurt their feelings; all i want is a nation where everybody can worry about the cuisine rather than about the yes/no aspect. I AM A HYPOCRITE!!!