No mirchi @ Mumbai Mirchi

Mumbai Mirchi
Burrp page: http://mumbai.burrp.com/listing/mumbai-mirchi_chakala_mumbai_bars-pubs-restaurants/1761338633

Place: Chakala, Andheri (E)

Food:  - 4/10

Menu variety:  - 5/10

Service:  - 3/10

Ambiance:  - 5/10

VFM:  - 4/10

In our quest to try a new place to eat (read drink) at, we had to choose between the supposedly expensive, newly re-opened Sai Palace and the much talked about Mumbai Mirchi. The odds went highly against Sai Palace when their website showed Courtyard as one of their restaurants, with its font style exactly the same as the Courtyard in Veera Desai Road, Andheri (W). I’ve eaten there once many years back and thought the food was strictly average. So Gayatri and I quickly chose to go to Mumbai Mirchi instead.

Food
We didn’t really have any main course here, because we stuck to our focus on drinking. We ordered for chicken crispy and fish fingers with our first round of drinks. I was disappointed to see that the chicken inside the crispy batter was almost non-existent. The fish fingers also did not taste of anything but bread crumbs and/or rawa. Next on the list was prawns koliwada which was, again, just tasteless prawns batter fried. The vegetarian people ordered for some vegetable pokhri which was a dish with fried cups of some type of dal and batter, filled with some creamy spinachy mixture. Again, no taste.

Free chakna consisted of some good peanuts and cheese lings (thank god for that). Funny thing was that when the waiter got us the peanuts, we asked for more chakna varieties. He said peanuts were all they had. We asked if they had chakli, he said no, peanuts were all they had. Then we asked if they might have cheese lings. And he said yes, I can get you cheese lings! So if we hadn’t asked explicitly, he didn’t want to give it to us?

Menu variety
The place has tried to be a little innovative with a lot of new sounding names in their Indian menu, however going by the pokhri, looks like they really under-deliver in taste. The Chinese menu is standard, no great shakes.

Service
We were a big group and since we were drinking, we were noisy. The restaurant does not play music, which led to a lot of people being bothered by us. Now I’m usually one to condemn such behaviour, but I couldn’t help but think – aren’t people gonna be loud in a drinking joint? I looked around and everyone was drinking, not eating. We were the biggest group and so ended up being the loudest, resulting in people giving us bad stares. And I’m sure some music in this bar would solve this problem.

And instead of the waiter politely asking us to keep it down, he stood and breathed down the back of our necks! He just stood there behind two of my friends, until we noticed him. When we asked him why he was just standing at one place, he said that other tables were having problems with our noise. We couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t say that to us straight instead of just standing and listening to our conversation!

Ambiance
I like the look of this place. It has a nice big mural of Worli (I think) across their biggest wall. Alternating blue and red lights on the ceiling are not too over the top and give just the right ambiance. However, the extra chairs (the seating is otherwise bench-type) are made of red plastic and do not go with anything in the place (except for the colour red). The toilets could have been paid more attention to, as well. Doors are rickety and made of plastic again.

Value for money
Starters were Rs. 200 on an average, with fish and prawn items bordering at Rs. 300. With the disappointing taste, it’s really not worth it. A pint of Kingfisher costs Rs. 110, which is at par with some much better places.

Location
Convenient to anybody in Andheri. Right at the Chakala highway junction.

And in conclusion...
All in all, it’s an okay place to go to and I’d probably re-visit it only because it’s a convenient location, right at the Chakala junction, and probably the only bar in the vicinity where women can go to with comfort.