Sunday, September 21, 2014

Hungry vampires fueling up @ EPULO, Mysore Road

There are certain things in our life that we love to do, so do I; one such thing is food. I love eating, and maybe that's why the ratio of gaining weight to losing weight, in my case, is always more tilted towards the former. But I don't care as long as I do what I love, but that doesn't mean you keep putting on weight, coz then it will lead to a lot of health issues too. Back to the track, so where was I, haa, love to eat part, yep that's true I love eating and I like to try new things, doing something different from previous day or from the previous-previous day, I love to try new cuisine, new recipes, new places, new dishes and the list goes on and on....

If I am planning to go out, I always prepare my itinerary for that day, I check out nearby eatery joints or sometimes I just go to places to eat from a particular joint. One such day was this one, I, with couple of my friends decided to go to this place on Mysore road for wine tasting. This whole plan was set for the 2nd half of the day, which meant, by the time we reach our venue it would be lunch time and each one of us would be crazy hungry. So I googled out places on Mysore road to eat which supposedly is near to our main venue . Surprisingly, the same wine yard had a small quaint eatery joint. I zomato'ed this place and checked for ratings and reviews and menu.




Ratings for this place were average and Zomato just showed one review for this place, and apparently he rated this place as 4/5. Rating can sometimes mislead you, as it happened to me once in the past, coz sometimes when ratings are provided by reviewers, they get a little tipsy and tend to give more ratings unknowingly, coz of the emotional aspect involved. May be he had a good time there with his friend after a really long time that shaded his judgments or maybe she was on her first candle light date here with her fiancé and the list goes on and on. Well, I am not against this system, coz even I, sometimes tend to give half a rating more just because I had a very good time, but care should be taken to mention why one provided this heck of a rating if the food was terrible. Anyways, moving on, I checked there menu and it looked quite alright to me. So solely based on this review, few ratings and the menu we decided to lunch here.

We started around 1 in the afternoon to this place. If you need the exact location please use google maps, it will provide you apt information and directly lead you to this place. This joint is named as Epulo which in Latin means sumptuous food. Like I told earlier this place is situated on Mysore road around 60 km from Bangalore on a wine yard named heritage wine yard. There menu offers both North Indian and Continental food. I am a die heart fan of conti food, weather it is Veg Strongoff or Pasta Arabiatta or Veg Bolognese, I equally love each one of them, may be Bolognese a little more ;).

 Around 2.30 we reached this place. Plans were to enjoy the wine tour followed by a scrumptious lunch from Epulo. Our plans changed as each of our stomach was grumbling and lurched for food. As we entered this wine yard we straight away hit the restaurant. We were as hungry as an unfed vampire, ready to pounce on any human (metaphor for food) we can lay our hands on. As we were comfortable seated a friend of mine made us order food like a king.

The ambience of this place was cool and calm. It had a ceiling area, arranged with few tables and chairs. One end of the room had a tiny kitchen, passing along yummy attractive dishes and on the other end they had washrooms, which was quite clean against all odds. They also had an open area, right under the sky which had 3-4 tables arranged and they were made of stones. Our hunger had blurred our vision, so, Initially we dint c this place, else we would have opted to sit here. They also have a small park with swings and sea-saws for kids to play and run around when there mommies and daddies were busy ordering and wine tasting.

As we were comfortably seated, our waiter for the noon provided us with couple of menu cards. Like I told u before I was prepared to order continental, but I was a little reluctant; my past experiences with such eatery joints on highway roads has been a disaster. So I had no guarantee these continental dishes would taste the same as I had in Bangalore, moreover these highway joints struggle to get an Indian dish right, continental was just out of question. So I decided to go with North Indian food.

I wanted to order this mushroom creamy soup, mushroom being my fav, but unfortunately they dint serve any mushroom dishes on that day. So I went with my second choice of chicken soup. I am a pure vegetarian, very recently turning into a non-vegetarian, all thanks to my friends. So, I am no connoisseur when it comes to chicken or in that case any non-veg food. Chicken creamy soup that we ordered was thick and creamy, but frankly, I dint like it, and to be frank I dint know what to expect, but from the taste of it I dint like it, it could be my tasting issues or it could be that the soup wasn't great! And from what I gather from my friends they seemed happy with it.



Next we ordered a couple of starters. Potato and cheese croquettes and Andhra Chicken. Potato and cheese croquettes was something similar to fried hot sausages, where potato is boiled and crushed, after  which a piece of cheese is stuffed in and fried. This was paired with tomato sauce, and they served around 7-8 pieces. The croquettes were good, potato was crushed and seasoned well. I had only one problem with this dish; instead of tomato sauce I would pair it with green chutney, that would bring out the flavor more.



Andhra chicken was a total disappointment. I had expected something and they got me something else. My expectation was fried chicken topped with andhra spices to bring out the spices in the food, but what I got was not very appealing. They served boiled chicken in huge dough of fried green chillies. Offcourse one think they did right; the chicken was very spicy, but not a good spicy; a spiciness coz of the green chillies which is bizarre. Moreover the chicken was too sticky while chewing and all it had was salt in it. This particular dish was a total disaster.

Moving on, we ordered parathas and chicken Hydrebadi. Luckily this chicken curry tasted good unlike others and paired well with parathas. I just had one complain here, why name chapathis as parathas and make the customer expect an actual paratha. By the end of 2nd paratha we realized we were still hungry, so we went ahead and ordered for peas pulav.



This dish was the best among the rest to me. I would call it the dish of the day. Peas were boiled properly, the rice properly mixed with the veggies. As I started off with my first lump of pulav, it tasted good. It had a crispness blend into it which made me like it even more. By the time I was done with pulav, I was full, completely fed, tummy popped out and most importantly a sense of satisfaction.


All this dishes were paired with drinks respectively. I ordered for a wine rise, which was supposed to be white wine added to pineapple juice with a dash of strawberry syrup topped with soda. Well, I don’t think I got this drink per se;  actually I dint understand what it was, it has crushed ice cubes, something reddish which I assume might be strawberry that tasted like pulpy grapes and some a layer of juice, which I think must be either pineapple, soda or white wine, I yet to find out. I was completely disappointed with the taste, quantity and cost of this drink. I would not recommend this drink to anyone.


Another friend of mine ordered an aerated drink and another one asked for Virgin mojito. Virgin mojito was a super success and it became a huge hit among all of us.
Overall I would give this place a 3/5. But I must say, even they dint have high standards like many other joints in Bangalore, this eatery place is much better than a lot of other joints I have been on highways, but i personally feel they could do much better job.




I am yet to try there continental food but I won't keep my hopes high.

There goes a saying, u either live to eat or u eat to live. I clearly fall in the former category, I wouldn't miss a chance in the world to experience new things or try new stuffs. If u want to try a new place to eat and want a companion I am game. With this it's me Manju signing out with a promise to come back with more blogs. Ciao amigo’s!



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