Bay of Bengal (the bay where they should throw the food)

All my blog followers and supporters have been pestering me to write a stink review for some poor restaurant. My constant rebuttal to them is that as a reviewer I have to be totally unbiased when I walk into a restaurant, with a mind as open as a hippie ! So there I was.... walking along Church Street past Java City and Empire, and I see Bay of Bengal, a restaurant that I'd been meaning to try for ages, since the reviews had been reasonably nice to them in the past. I look at my friend Narendra, he complies, and before you knew it we were ordering. Oh the horror of the lunch that followed ! Now I mean this more than ever - read on for a bite of insight.

The setting of Bay of Bengal , is simple, minimalistic and comfortable, quite inviting to say the least. We were seated at the table right next to the AC, which was perfect for this unusually hot weather that we've been having. When we looked at the menu, we were pretty unsure of what to pick from the vast array of dishes for offer. We settled on the Paneer Orley and the Mutton Kabiraji kabab as our starters.

Before I start my plethora of opinions, please bear in mind that this review has no pictures of the food, as I don't feel you're missing anything by not seeing them.

The Paneer Orley was the first to arrive, and it was basically just a plate of 2 medium size, incredibly oily pieces of batter-fried paneer served with cucumber and a smile on the waiter's face (WHO by the way did NOT serve us water until we were there for a half hour !!!). Completely lacking flavour to say the least, and the dominant taste was oil and rubbery-textured paneer. Not the best of starts ! The Mutton Kabiraji kabab arrived next looking like a small mutton tikki SURROUNDED by these little fried-batter balls (that resembled Boondi but tasted nothing like them) and topped off with a wafer thin layer of egg stuck to the tikki. Narendra described it as a weird carnival on his plate ! Unfortunately it didn't TASTE like a carnival. The taste of meat was overshadowed by a whole bunch of pepper and chilli, which was also stuffed inside the tikki. About 6 bites later, we were done.

Hoping that we could be a little easier on the chef while ordering main course, we ordered the Chhanar Kopta (Cubes of fresh paneer cooked in a gravy of onions & nuts) and the Doi Bhindi (Ladies finger cooked in Yoghurt & Khuskhus gravy) with some Lachcha Paranthas. The Doi Bhindi was a really small plate of like 6 bhindis with a boiled onion gravy(or what was left of a gravy) with NO sign of yoghurt in the taste. The Koptas (koftas) were soft but soggy and were too sweet with not enough savoury flavour; but still edible enough to finish. The Lachcha Paranthas looked like the Kerala Coin Paranthas, and were not half bad, but for INR 70 for 2 small pieces took all the fun out of it.

The saving grace of the meal was the beverage that we ordered called the Ampora Sorbet. It was basically raw mango roasted to make into a delicious sorbet and flavoured with jaggery and other spices. Highly refreshing and totally addictive. For 35 bucks, it was easily the favourite of that meal. The total meal cost us about INR 600 and we didn't feel it was even nearly worth it.

Bear in mind, that we didn't order the fish (Maccher Jhol) or the Lucchi Aloo Dum which are nothing short of signatures of Bengali cuisine, but in my opinion a chef should look beyond his signatures and take the entire menu seriously. I have a ton of friends who are Bengali and I've been eating Bengali food ever since my mom's Bengali classmates would invite us home for dinner. It's one of my favourite cuisines in this country and in my opinion it epitomizes the variety that Indian food is so famous for. So after that kind of opinion, it was pretty shattering to eat Bengali food that was this bad and prepared with that little thought.

The best Bengali food that I've ever had in town (apart from at my friend Avik's house) has been at Oh! Calcutta. Bay of Bengal has aeons to go before it can be in the same league. If any of you would like to go to this place anyway and give me a second opinion, I'd be more than open to hearing from you.

Bay of Bengal can be found at : 48/1, St. Marks Road, 1st Floor ( Above K.C. Das)
Bangalore.