It was a fine Saturday evening to have dinner outdoors. For
once, we didn’t have torrential rain that started at 7 PM and ruined everyone’s
evening plans for the weekend. I was invited to Mustard and Cress at the Biere
Street in Whitefield. I’ve been meaning to head there for the longest time
ever, but thanks to the distance and traffic, I never really got around to doing
it. I’ve heard so much about the ambiance of the place which resembles the
streets of London with cobblestones and stores on the side. I wasn’t disappointed.
Even though the lighting was rather dim, the place came across as something
that would be ideal for a lovely photo shoot during the day. Our host for the
evening was Vishal who explained some of the ideas behind the new menu. On the
similar lines of the Biere Club, the menu places a large focus on finger foods
and smaller portions which are convenient to have along with some cold beer.
The first starter for the evening was a plate of assorted Indian
crostini which had mushrooms, mixed peppers and potato. I’ll be honest to say
that while the crostini with the peppers was palatable, the rest of the flavours
did absolutely nothing to make my taste buds take notice. But this was quickly
forgotten by the next dish which was a creamy, cheese and asparagus
Vol-au-vent. Despite being filled with cheese, this particular appetizer wasn’t
heavy. This snack means ‘windblown’ in French, it lived up to its name and went
down nice and easy. We also tried the Potato & apple fritters, with
aubergine salad and blueberry mustard emulsion. This dish stood out for me
because I’ve normally had apple fritters as a part of the dessert. The fritters
were made quite differently from what I’ve experienced as the filling inside
was not a crunchy apple but consisted of the apple being beaten into a nice
thick pulp.
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| Assorted Indian Crostini |
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| Cream, cheese and asparagus Vol-au-vent |
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| The Bloody Mary |
As a part of
the non-vegetarian starters, we had the Spice grilled chicken skewers, green
bean & coconut salad. This had a very chettinad taste to the chicken and
perfectly complimented the stout beer that evening. Next up was a very familiar
taste - Wok tossed chilli garlic crispy prawns. While prawns were fresh and
crunchy, there really wasn’t a new flavour that I was experiencing. This was followed by the Spicy lamb minced
rolls. This particular dish turned out to be something I really enjoyed. Made the
size of dragon rolls, the lamb inside was nice and spicy while the rolls itself
were crispy and light. This was the perfect finger food for the evening. Most
of the other bloggers also fell in love with this particular dish. We also
tried the Japanese style tenderloin skewers, but the previous dish had pretty
much taken all the votes we had.
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| Spicy grilled chicken skewers |
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| Wok tossed chilli garlic crispy prawns |
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| Spicy lamb minced rolls |
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| Japanese style tenderloin skewers |
Before we
hit the main course, we all got a small serving of a soup made out of corn,
coconut milk and coriander. At the risk of sounding like a teenager, but …..
aaaaawwwwmyyyyygawd. This soup was simple brilliant. The taste was largely like
something you would have with Thai cuisine, everyone fell instantly in love
with this. We all shamelessly requested for a second helping knowing very well
that this was going to fill us up. But …. YOLO! (I’m going to hate myself for
using that term). This was accompanied with a Crispy Bang Bang chicken, glass
noodles, cucumber, spring onions, satay sauce salad.
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| Corn, coconut milk and coriander soup |
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| Crispy bang bang chicken |
The main
course began with a Madras curry inspired green vegetable risotto with organic
red rice, crisp okra, parmesan which was perhaps the most disappointing dish of
the evening. To me it was pretty much the local favourite bisi-bele bath with
aroborio rice. One spoon in and I was done. There was no love to be found with
the Thai style charred pumpkin & red capsicum risotto either. What I did enjoy as a part of the vegetarian dishes was the pizza. But then again, anyone who knows me knows how much in love I am with pizza.
While the
staunch vegetarians might accuse me of being biased towards non vegetarian
food, the saviour of the main course came in the form of a Panko crumbed blue
cheese butter stuffed chicken over spinach, creamy mash. Folks who are not
accustomed to the taste of blue cheese, stay away from this dish as it is the
very first taste that hits you. The flavour of chicken is very mild in
comparison. At this
point, most of us were quite full. ( A lot of you just thought,” Obviously…. What
were you expecting?”) I just sampled the Indian style lamb lasagne, masala
garlic bread and a little salad and the Kashmiri style spiced lamb & beetroot stew. I’ll be honest and admit that I don’t remember much of the taste
as I was well beyond my capacity at that point.
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| Panko crumbed blue cheese butter stuffed chicken |
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| Indian style lamb lasagne |
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| Kashmiri style spicy lamb |
We all requested that we be given a break to allow the food to settle
before we made space for dessert. Yes…dessert. How uncivilized do you think we
are by skipping dessert? Dessert consisted of a platter of seasonal Mango Panna
cotta, Mishti dahi with red velvet cake and Chocolate & orange mousse with
pillows of rasmalai and biscuit. The panna cotta and he mousse were nothing out
of the ordinary. Now the mishti dahi
with red velvet cake combination was something else. These are two very
distinct flavours that one would not put together. However, in this particular
instance it seemed to work well. While the red velvet cake wasn’t mind-blowing,
the combination did find good favour with the bloggers at the table.
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