Not quite foggy-food-for-thought

Hello Bengaluru - home for the next four months!! I'm going to *try* and blog about my culinary adventures in this city that is touted as India's Silicon Valley.

So far I think I've made a good start - I had Rajathani thali at Rajdhani, Chinese food at the very overpriced and over rated Ping, and some good Italian food at 100 Ft. Not bad, in my first 2 weekends here :)

So lets start with Rajdhani - one of the things that you miss the most about India is the food. I was looking forward to eating an authentic Indian thali after several years, and a little scared about whether I would have the room in my little tummy to try all the delicacies they would put on my place. Turns out my fears were well placed - I lost track at some point of the number of dishes on my plate. At last count there were 4 kinds of sweets, 4 kinds of rotis, about 6-7 sabji/dal combinations, dahi wada, farsan, 3 kinds of rice... you get the picture... enough food to send anyone into a food coma. To add to the amazing variety of food, Rajdhani is located in UB City - an over-the-top designer brand name mall in Bangalore! Defintely worth a visit - but definitely not for the calorie-conscious or the faint-stomached.

Ping - the less said about the place the better. To me, this restaurant embodied everything that could go wrong when one person's awesome vision for a high-class Asian eatery in India is reduced to dust because of the lack of vision and quality in the wait staff. There was nothing really wrong with the food at Ping - it may have been way to spicy and garlicy (if that is a word) for me, but hey, my stomach is no longer an Indian stomach so who am I to complain about that. There was a time when I used to find this food yummy, and maybe in 4 months I will again! What was wrong was the the wait staff - who did not let us know about specials, did not answer our questions on what was good here, and made us order way more food than necessary. It makes you wonder... maybe India can boast of fancy restaurants and world food, but are they really doing justice to it?

Thankfully, 100 Ft made up for the Ping disappointment... the bruschetta was comparable to what I would have had in a US restaurant. The pasta was creamy, and had a smattering of Indian spices, but stayed true somewhat to what a penne primavera should be. We skipped dessert because we were full - but turns out dessert is not to be missed here. Definitely going back!