Sigh, it’s dif­fi­cult being a foodie, I say. Firstly, there’s just so much wait­ing there beck­on­ing to you say­ing “eat me” and sec­ondly, you’re always fight­ing a los­ing bat­tle with the weigh­ing scales. I have com­pletely lost mine, espe­cially since I real­ized (much to my dis­may, might I add) that I will never come close to look­ing like Ms Natalie Gleb-drop-everything-dead-Gova, the cur­rent Miss Uni­verse and decided to go ahead and just enjoy being a food junkie instead.

And I sim­ply hate sit­ting at the table and count­ing calo­ries when I am eat­ing a good meal and work­ing up a mas­sive guilt com­plex as I have seen quite a few peo­ple do. It annoys the liv­ing day­lights out of me. What is the point of all the guilt when you are eat­ing. Might as well enjoy your meal, get over with it and then die of guilt later. That way, at least you’ll get some enjoy­ment out of the whole thing before dying!.

Any­way, get­ting back to my story, it’s been a while since I ate Ben­gali food, so when Deki raved about the fare at 6 Bal­ly­gunge Place in Indi­rana­gar, I was wait­ing for an oppor­tu­nity to try it out.

The two other Ben­gali restau­rants I’ve tried in Ban­ga­lore are Ban­galiyana (Kora­man­gala) and 36 Chowringee Lane (Wil­son Gar­den). The food is decent and worth try­ing though some­one had rather bad reports about the kitchen con­di­tions of the former.

Last evening, I got a chance to try out Bal­ly­gunge Place along with a few friends. The place is quite nicely lit and well done-up. There are 3 seat­ing areas in all and each area is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent in terms of the colour scheme. The inte­ri­ors are quite warm and pleas­ing to the eye.

We started with a prepa­ra­tion of crispy fried fish (small fish called chi­tal), which was really very yummy (and which you only get in the ponds in West Ben­gal), mang­sho (mut­ton, though some of us got tough pieces), and gravy that was rather good; a deli­cious yel­low dal, potato fry and baigan fry (in small round size pieces). We had this with the typ­i­cal Ben­gali prepa­ra­tion called loochi (a bit like phulkas), which is also a spe­cialty back home in Assam.

For the main course, we had Bhapa Elish (a nice prepa­ra­tion in mus­tard), Rohu in an onion gravy and fish dumplings curry with gen­er­ous por­tions of rice. Each dish had a nice dis­tinc­tive taste and to get the most out of the dishes, it’s a good idea to try them one at a time and not mix them when eat­ing with rice.

If you’re a foodie, fishi­tar­ian, or/and don’t mind try­ing other cui­sine, I’d rec­om­mend this place. The wait­ers are also very help­ful, in case you need help with what to eat and the quan­ti­ties you need to order if you’re in a group. A meal for two would cost around 600 bucks, with dessert, which I think is value for money for the kind of food they serve. The restau­rant is sit­u­ated on 12th main in Indi­rana­gar, above Café Cof­fee Day.

We ended the meal with dessert (roso­gol­las). The sandesh is also sup­posed to be quite good, though every­one was too full to try it. And so we walked out of the restau­rant, a sat­is­fied lot and def­i­nitely quite a few kilos heavier.

Since we’re talk­ing about food, let me take you on a lit­tle gas­tro­nom­i­cal adven­ture of some recent inter­est­ing food that I tasted / ate / gorged on dur­ing my recent trip! Warn­ing: Please view only on full tummy, else might cause hunger pangs :)

Jag, Sun­rayz and I spent a pleas­ant after­noon at Ori­en­tal City in a Lon­don sub­urb. I have never seen so much food in one place, I must admit. There must have been 50 odd stalls with all kinds of Ori­en­tal cui­sine : Malaysian, Indone­sian, Burmese, Thai etc. — and it took us a good 20 min­utes to decide what to eat. Finally, I went with Malaysian and couldn’t resist order­ing some chicken dumplings on the side. Jag decided to go for Japan­ese food and what­ever he ate looked pretty good from where I was sitting!

The night I arrived in Barcelona at Romain and Emma’s place, Romain cooked up these deli­cious stuffed pep­pers. I had no idea what he put inside, but they were absolutely deli­cious. Romain is one of the rare breed of men who can cook while Emma enjoys herself :)

I couldn’t leave town with­out tast­ing the tra­di­tional Span­ish paella. So we made our way to a place called Frague, off the Las Ram­blas for a meal. The Bangladeshi waiter claimed they served the best san­gria in town. We weren’t sure about that claim, but the paella (seafood for me and veg­gie for Romain and Emma) was cer­tainly a treat to olfac­tory and the­gus­ta­tory senses.

This is at Café Vau­dois in Lau­sanne, where I so was fam­ished, I could eat any­thing! We’d just done some shop­ping and the cold weather had increased my appetite. With two food­ies for com­pany, life couldn’t have been bet­ter. I had this really yummy dish (and of course, I have no clue what it was called) with Vrinda and Steph for com­pany. And of course, some nice red wine to go with it.

At a Swiss restau­rant afford­ing a gor­geous view of the Lake Léman, Steph, Vrinda and I ate a deli­cious meal. What I have on my place are mush­rooms in a deli­cious sauce and bread buns. It was as yummy as it looks and made me feel like a stuffed potato by the end of the meal. Espe­cially, since we’d had a really late lunch.

The Swiss and the French eat cheese like it’s going out of busi­ness. Steph, for exam­ple, eats cheese at every meal (and not just one type of cheese!). I tried tast­ing sev­eral of them and realised you need a strong con­sti­tu­tion to digest so much cheese. But some of it was truly tasty and I would have prob­a­bly devel­oped a taste for them with time (which would have been pretty bad news for my scales).

At the Sun­day mar­ket in Lau­sanne city cen­tre, these beau­ti­ful bell pep­pers and toma­toes made for a colour­ful sight.

After hav­ing many sand­wiches on the move in Paris, on my last night I got a chance to sit on the pave­ment and enjoy a meal! Bump­ing into Shruti, Param and Mahesh was a bless­ing in dis­guise as we found a typ­i­cal French restau­rant and decided to eat out­side, sip wine and cham­pagne and basi­cally feel really deca­dent! The pasta I had was hor­ri­ble, there was so much cheese, I couldn’t taste the pasta. But the nice spir­its made up for it. Photo cour­tesy: Mahesh.