Friday, September 21, 2007

It was more like Vashi Blues!

Imagine going all the way to Vashi for a weekend dinner with your friends and ending up with a disaster like this. Oh well, may be it’s a bit of an exaggeration but yes, nonetheless it was something that was unexpected.

There we were, a group of six friends all set to enjoy our weekend away from Mumbai, on the outskirts, though geographically we were still inside it! I had been thinking for a while now that whenever someone talks about a long drive why do most of us think of going to Cchurchgate or a Worli seaface? Is there no other place in and around Mumbai which is as pleasing as those places? Do we always have to go ‘townside’ for a enjoyable experience!

So I came up with this thought of going to Vashi for dinner that weekend with my bunch of hooligans. Well, we do not act like one, just that I like referring to them by that name. Anyway, getting back, we were all awaiting this weekend and this long trip to Vashi. One of the most well planned suburb of Mumbai, this place is like another country. Divided into sectors, broad roads, clean pavements, no hawkers, it was like we were in America.

About 95 minutes later we finally reached Centre one, the new mall in Vashi. We were hungry by now as it was a little past regular dinner time and thus we rushed to the restaurant, ‘Bombay Blues’. We had no idea what lay in store for us. We started with onion rings, the desi starter. We were surprised to see the waiter get those rings on a steel rod not accompanied with a plate, and on inquiring we were taken aback by his statement. “ This is how we serve to all our customers, sir! You find this weird is it?”

Definitely not expecting such an answer we went ahead and ordered for some nachos and cheese and a fresh lime soda. The waiter was on fire and the service was top notch. The cheese tasted as if it was rotten and the our Mr.Sympathetic got us fresh lime soda without any soda. Well if that wasn’t enough, the Pepsi we got was completely fizzed out! We then started to wonder whether coming all the way to Vashi did make sense or not, or was it just a small tiny winy mistake!

A restaurant with such a good reputation, well at least outside Vashi, could falter so badly and did not even have a good excuse to fall back on! We were all very disappointed with the service and only after a little convincing by the Manager of the Restaurant did we think of paying them a little amount for the onions rings and Pepsi.

But having made up our minds, never to go back to the same place ever again. At least I would not dare to think of such plans as I was made to bear the brunt of everybody’s anger over the food. Although, we had a bit of a relief the next time we visited Bombay Blues near Andheri. We were not met by the same kind of service and food. And faith was eventually restored back in a restaurant which used to be one of my favorites at one point of time