Monkey Bar – One Bowl Winter | Currylines

Be prepared to be Bowl’ed over as Monkey Bar, our favorite gastropub, is helping Bangalore (and New Delhi, Bombay and Calcutta) celebrate winter with their One Bowl Winter’ promotion.

Of course the Bangalore November has so far been a No’winter rather than a Now’winter but shussh, no one needs to tell them that !!!

The concept of this food fest is to take one back on a nostalgic trip to old memories of familiar foods, enjoyed with families in the cozy environs of home.

12 hearty one bowl meals offer a blend of food and emotions and the good people at Monkey bar urge us to – ‘sometimes just eat your feelings’. This of course poses no problem for us foodies, since … well we are willing to eat anything 😀

The 12 meal bowls have been thoughtfully created, keeping in mind the sentiments of folk across the nation and then some. Hence we have meals from the North, South, East, West of India and a few from across the Eastern and Western borders too.

This photograph belongs to Monkey Bar

From the dozen options, we rather unpatriotically chose the Korean Bibimbap, Seafood linguine and Prawn pad thai 😀 but made up for it by also paying due attention to the Wild mushroom khichdi, Yakhni pulao and Goan Xacuti.

The Bibimbap with its spicy gochujang steak, pink sticky rice and fried egg was my favorite. I do not eat egg, so that was passed on to my companions. The pink rice was delightful.

Though I am not a great fan of pasta, the linguine was chosen only because of my affinity for seafood … Likewise with the Prawn pad thai 😀

The Wild mushroom khichdi was the only veg item that we tried and the creamy mung dal and rice concoction was flecked with Shitake and button mushrooms, with ghee, papad, pickle and curds alongside. The Shitake could have been sliced a bit bigger though, because the bits were too tiny to add meaningful texture.

The Yakhni pulao was delectable with its tender morsels of mutton cooked in yogurt and served with a saffron pulao.

I loved the Goan Xacuti too, mainly because the chicken was served on a bed of barnyard millets and my love for those grains is well known.

Some of the other combinations that we will go back another day for, are the exotic sounding Moroccan Vegetable Tagine with mixed veggies, chickpeas, prunes, almonds and olives, served with za’atar sprinkled couscous and also the Nagarjuna Inspired Chilli Chicken served with Malabari parotta and plantain chips, which will hopefully be nice and spicy. We expect that the tears here will be part nostalgia and partly due to the spice 😀

The Panch phoron and kasundi maach also sounds like it could pack a real Punch !!!

A Virgin Manga – the green aam panna, my usual Caiprioska and the smnashing Hipster Smash – with vodka, cucumber, elderflower spritz and watermelon, kept the throats lubricated.