BookyourTable Blog

Each and every speciality restaurant in India gives in to the temptation of having an Indian section and end look less than perfect to the serious food connoisseur. Not Via Milano. Located in the busy and bustling Koramangala area, they serve authentic Italian food with a capital A. Their impressive four course menu doesn’t have even Indianized versions of Italian dishes, so this is as good as it gets for foodies in Bangalore. A truly gourmet restaurant catering to the palettes of the gastronomically aware, Via Milano has never compromised on either quality or quantity.
You enter to a beautiful 50’s style lounge environment done up in neutral shades of white with some black thrown in. Each table is situated in a cosy nook of its own so you get the privacy that is de rigueur at a fine dining restaurant such as this is. The menu card is gorgeously written in Italian and English- making for a fun time for those interested in languages.

Via Milano is also one of the few restaurants in Bangalore that has a very extensive wine list. So if you are in the mood to splurge, order a bottle of well-aged Chianti, a glass of Moet and Chandon or Proscecco, imported straight from Italy. You can also go for a made to order, customised cocktail that their mixologist will create specifically for you.

As for the food starting with the complimentary bruschetta, going up to the various pastas, and entree dishes, they have it all. The options for vegetarians are a tad limited, but meat eaters can go the whole hog, literally. Most of the meat products and the cheeses are imported and they don’t cut corners in the pursuit of authenticity. Their desserts too are to die for- from the chocolate lasagne to nougats and crème catalana, you have a wide variety of saccharine sins to choose from.
It all comes down to the owners of the place- Carl Ferns, Roger Hessing and Paolo Norino, who have done a great job of understanding their patrons. Connoisseurs of the Italian food experience, thus, keep coming back only so as to experience the originality and uniqueness that is part of Via Milano’s excellent service.

When one thinks of South East Asian cuisine, Malay, Chinese and Thai comes to mind, Burmese cuisine overshadowed by these giants, tends to slip through the cracks. Burmese cuisine is influenced by the cuisines of its neighbours Thailand and India, and still maintains a unique flavor of its own.

Burmese cuisine has been making inroads into the Indian food scene though, mostly due to intrepid Burmese immigrants who moved here during the second World War. They settled into the Eastern parts of India, especially Calcutta, where Burmese dishes are easily available. In New Delhi, Burmese is available at places like The Market Cafe and The Kitchen, the signature dish being the mind numbingly simple Khow Suey.

Now Khow Suey is a dish of such succulence and simplicity with options for innumerable tweaks based on palette, taste and dietary restrictions, that it deserves a paean of its own, but that is a post for another day.

The basic idea behind Khow Suey is that its a one pot dish, with three main ingredients- spiced coconut milk, meat- chicken or beef, and either egg or rice noodles. You finish it off with an assortment of toppings ranging from cilantro to chopped boiled eggs to fried garlic, fried chopped onions and peanuts.

You start with cutting the meat(around quarter kilo) into one inch sized pieces , and marinating for a half hour in lime juice, a pinch of turmeric and some salt.

Chop and fry one large onion, add chilli powder, ginger garlic paste, cumin powder, coriander powder- all to taste, sauté until the “raw” smell goes away. Add the marinated meat to this and cook on a low flame until the meat is cooked and the oil separates to the corners of the pan.
Now for the coconut milk, pour a can of thick coconut milk into a flat bottomed pan, to thicken it you can either add, again based on your taste, besan, or mashed lentils, or nothing at all, if you think its thick enough. Once the milk looks warm enough to not break, add it to the chicken and onion mixture.
While you are working on these preperations , boil a pack of noodles- either egg or rice, thick or thin, all based on your preference in water with a little salt added. Take it off the heat when al dente.
Now starts the fun part. The dish is presented as is, with the noodles in one bowl, and the curry in another. Add various small bowls of lime slices, chopped boiled eggs, fried onion slices, fried garlic slices, chips, fried egg noodles, chopped spring onions, fried peanuts and chips too.
Each person can assemble the dish with various toppings based on personal preference. You like the noodles soggy- add more curry, want more crunch- add more peanuts and spring onions. The options are, as it were, endless.

Enjoy!

Since its the Valentine Week and everyone is busy making n nourishing relationships, we asked one of Mumbai’s well known poet and Relationship Counselor, Deveika Menon, to blog for us.

Hope you love it, because we did too.

One of the finest and intriguing arts is the art to maintain a relation. A relation between loved ones always treads on very strange grounds. While on one hand it is strong enough to withstand storms, it’s also fragile enough to break at the slightest provocation. One needs to understand the areas for strengthening the fragile areas. And each one has one. So the very fact that you might face this with any relation will help you try to sustain the present one rather than consider it inadequate and trying to move on.

We all have seen situations where the partners think that their relation isn’t going great, so its time to move on. But then they face the same incompatibility in the next one. No relation is perfectly compatible. Searching for a perfect companion is a wild goose chase. How can that be? Each individual is born with varied interests likes and dislikes. You might probably find someone with the maximum interests as you have as your perfect partner, but expecting that to invariably get you the perfect partner is a little overestimation

For every relation we are in, we need to work and work hard, nurture, nourish, and cherish every nourishing that is provided. See the relation bloom with your effort is much more satisfying than seeing something that is readymade and given to use.

One needs to work out various areas for this. It’s just not very easy to unless you really want to make this relation work. So before you take any life changing decisions, you need to seriously ask yourself. Is this relation important to me and my family? Is this relation something that I wish to have for keeps ? Is this relation something which I wish to blossom? Would i like to grow old with this person and have him / her as my companion for life? If you think the answer to all this is ‘yes’ then we can work at it together and you will be surprised to know how these small ways make gigantic difference to your relation. Because if your answer is ‘yes’ then you have already taken the first and the most important step in wanting to make it work.

New Year’s Eve has always been a time for looking back at past, and more importantly, looking forward to the coming year. It’s a time to reflect on the changes we want (or need) to make and resolve to follow through on those changes. The clock strikes midnight and people can justify acting like completely not so them … but in a good way.  You welcome the new year and take the liberty to say, “I’ll act like a crazy person just this once and then I’ll resolve to do great things”…

Every year people come up with weird and “so-obviously-not-gonna-happen” new year resolution. Like for instance you get things like world leaders resolving to solve differences with warring countries and then after they sober up they go back to being cranky old psychos who want to blow up the whole world except the part where they are standing. You also get men swearing on their life that they will make every February 29^th a day dedicated to their wife. She gets everything she ever wanted done for her. How difficult can that ever be considering the fact that a day like that comes once in four years!!

But it’s really not a commitment because everybody breaks their resolutions anyway, but it feels good to say that you at least made one.
So we have picked our Top few New Year Resolutions which most of us forget the moment the hangover is done with.

Spend More Time with Family & Friends

Well, who wouldn’t want it!! But then, can we? We are so caught up with work and clients that we have ended up addressing our team workers as family, the office as home away from home and most of us get a better sleep when we put our head down on our workstation. Chetan Bhagat once said: “Work Hard, but spare time for your family and friends. Nobody remembers power point presentations on your dying day”.. How true!..So this New Year, spend quality time with your family and friends, go for a vacation, throw up a party, have at least one meal together or just take them out for a nice dinner.

Fit in Fitness

“Oh let me eat just this time and I promise am going on a strict diet from the first day of new year”!! Heard it before? Must have been from the likes of me Accept it. We not just love food but we passionately adore it. How can we stop eating what we love to eat when that’s exactly is the purpose of life!! Eat Drink Pray and Love. Of Course, with eating come the unwelcomed chunk of fat which denies leaving our body parts and affect our mind and soul. So what do we do? We resolve to exercise regularly or just say bye bye to bad cholesterol. None of it ever works we tell ya! We don’t really have many tips in hand to offer but yes, if you ever feel like eating something healthy, surf through our selected restaurants for diet food. Stay fit, Stay Healthy and Eat if that is exactly what you want to do.

Quit Smoking

If you have resolved to make this the year that you stamp out your smoking habit, we bow down our heads with respect. Good Going Mate!! Even if you’ve tried to quit before and failed, don’t let it get you down. On an average, smokers try about four times before they quit for good. And in case you hit the nail and finally come out 100% clean, please do let us know how. We would like to forward it around in the internal mails around here. Start enjoying the rest of your smoke-free life and breathe the fresh air you have been missing for ages.

Quit Drinking

While many people use the New Year as an incentive to finally stop drinking, most are not equipped to make such a drastic lifestyle change all at once.I mean seriously!! You resolve to quit drinking when you are 4 pegs down?? Still if you have decided that you want to stop drinking, there is a world of help and support available. Fall in love with Water and Wine J and we tell you were the best of wines are available in your town.

P.S: Can wine be really called an alcohol?

Get Out of Debt

Was money a big source of stress in your life last year? Join the millions recession hit humans who have resolved to spend this year getting a handle on their finances. We all go through hard times and sometimes we need more than what we have. Whatever said and done, when you have less supply of cash but loads of valid needs, we all tend to borrow. We are ourselves not the wealthiest of all, or else charity is something we always hope to do. But yes, we will promise to help you find the best dine outs which provide you food and service keeping in mind the best value for money. It’s a promise that will repay itself many times over in the year ahead.

Learn Something New

Have you vowed to make this year, the year to learn something new? Perhaps you are considering enrolling in a new course, want to learn a new language, or just how to do a salsa. Very nice,Very nice. J In case that new thing is about trying your hands on cookery, we shall vow to help you out, Voila!! You will soon find a cookery column in our bookurtable website. Then the only thing left would be for you to invite us for a meal J

Help Others

Awww..! <3 <3 <3 You are our angel. Please stick to this one. Don’t you think our world actually needs people like you? A popular, non-selfish New Year’s resolution, volunteerism can take many forms. Whether you choose to spend time helping out at a NGO or just helping out a dear friend, remember, what goes around comes around. So be confident, go ahead and help the society. We are sure you will reap the benefit someday even though we are sure, being profitable was never the intention.

Only date the right person.

Well Well Well, how would you know it’s the right person until you date them? Aha!!  Stupid Resolution!!
In case you need to find a nice place to take your date, we are all yours and ready to help.

Enjoy Life More

Wah Wah!! Yeh to ek Dum Mast Baat Bola.

Given the hectic, stressful lifestyles of millions of Indians, it is no wonder that “enjoying life more” has become a popular resolution in recent years. It’s an important step to a happier and healthier you! Our tip.. you see all the above resolution? Make it and follow it.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Christmas is a time to give and forgive. It nourishes love and builds the human spirit. Research shows that people who give and give without any selfish desires, are the most psychologically healthy in our society today.

When you give, you reinforce appreciation and acknowledgement of each other. You end up building relationships.. repairing the old ones and creating the new ones. During Christmas, we give ourselves in an intimate way by sharing past and future thoughts. Coming together and openly giving and sharing feelings, experiences and wishes for the coming year deepens relationships as we share and express more of who we are. This moment is an opportunity to express a whole range of feelings such as gratitude, appreciations and thanks, especially if you are not comfortable expressing feelings through words

Through giving we have many ways to create and leave lasting memories. We show our love by going out of our way to do something extra for someone else such as making a special card, buying the perfect gift. These special gifts are a symbol of our love and this are some of the ways we can give and create lasting memories.

We are human and thus that makes us curious. We love the guessing game and if you are a kid, then what Santa has got in his bag  is one of the greatest puzzle of all.Through the predictable act of giving especially during Christmas celebrations, the expectation of appreciations, acknowledgement, love and being made to feel extra special is created by the ritual of giving.

When we give, we put others first for concentrated moments in time. The ritual of giving takes the focus off ourselves and our stresses in life are handled with a more balanced focus. It actually acts as the best stress buster. It creates that magic, that miracle that leaves you relieved and relaxed. Giving brings people together.It reinforces love in all our lives. It creates leverage which creates miracles when together we give for the greater good.

Giving is an expression of our love. Giving is also Giving up for someone else. Sacrificing, going an extra mile, thinking beyond ourselves is the glue that holds people together and is a way to renew our love for one another and create lasting cherished memories!

So ask yourself. What have you given up or gifted, this Christmas season?