Bangalore Diary

Where do you take friends for dinner if you are in a city you do not know very well? In my case, there is an added complication: the people I have to take out are often the world’s best chefs. They are either people I have conducted events with or just friends, eager to get a taste of India. In Mumbai and Delhi, it is not so hard. We took the Spanish chef Dani Garcia to Bukhara and he loved it. A few months ago we took Massimo Bottura to Mumbai’s Soam and he was fascinated by the paani puri. (Puchka or gol gappa to people who don’t live in Mumbai.) I once took Gaggan Anand and his team of chefs to O Pedro in

Mumbai and they were delighted

Sometimes it is even easier. After my event with Alain Ducasse we had lunch at the Ish/ecole Ducasse complex, eating food prepared by the students. Ducasse had eaten all over Delhi, but he seemed particularly fascinated by Indian Accent, where he had been the day before.

I once had a lazy, wine-fuelled lunch with Heston Blumenthal on a balmy winter’s day as the sun poured down on a terrace at the Maurya. The Dum Pukht chefs served him their greatest hits. It was, he said, one of the best afternoons he had ever had. And it certainly was one of the most memorable meals of my life. But then, everything about Heston is special.

I mention all this to explain the quandary I faced when I did an event with the Suhring twins in Bangalore. The Suhring restaurant in Bangkok has two Michelin stars and they have been to both Mumbai and Delhi before. So, where could we take them to eat in the five days they were in Bangalore?

I asked around and I got very little joy.

The responses all went something like this:

“Oh why don’t you take them to Vidyaarthi Bhavan/ctr/brahmins?”

FLAVOURS FROM THE NORTH

The Suhrings liked Kababs and Kurries so much they went back with their team

Me: Yes, of course. But, is there anywhere beyond those obvious places?

“What about one of Manu Chandra’s restaurants?”

Me: Manu doesn’t have a restaurant at the moment.

“There is this place called Farmlore. It is very good.”

Me: Oh great. What kind of food?

“Actually, I have no idea. I have never been. It’s too far, na.”

TWIN STARS

The Suhrings with Chef Vishal Shetty of the Bengaluru Oota Company

After having versions of this conversation many times, I decided to take my chances. I called Farmlore, which was one hour away from the Suhring’s hotel. A man answered the phone and seemed astonished that I had called.

“No, no,” he said firmly. “We are completely sold-out. In any case, if you want a booking, you have to go to our website.”

So, that was that. Eventually, I went with a mixture of the adventurous and the predictable. The Suhring team went to

Vidhyarthi Bhawan and were impressed. We took over the Bengaluru Oota Company, a small but unusual restaurant run by Divya Prabhakar and Vishal Shetty which serves a daily set menu. Divya is from the Gowda community so she serves Gowda food. Vishal is from a family of Mangalorean restaurateurs and her food is fabulous.

The Suhrings liked that this was home food and that you had the sense you were eating in somebody’s dining room. All of it was delicious and largely unfamiliar to people from outside Karnataka and though the Suhrings seemed a little bemused at having to eat with their fingers off a leaf, they recovered quickly.

After my media event with the twins at the Ritz Carlton, we went to the ITC Gardenia for a quiet room service dinner. I ordered all the North Indian classics: galouti kabab, dal Bukhara, Nihari, butter chicken, chicken tikka, Dum Pukht biryani etc. They were blown away.

Then, the Suhrings had to cook their dinners and were otherwise occupied. I went to one of their dinners (easily the best food I have ever eaten at a popup in India) where I sat with Manu Chandra who was as impressed as I was with the food and confirmed that his new restaurant would open in late October.

My wife and I looked around for new places to try. Everyone recommended Wabi Sabi, the new Oriental restaurant at the Oberoi. I booked under a false name, kept my mask on for as long as I could but was rumbled halfway through the meal. To be fair, it made no difference to the quality of the food which was actually better before I was recognised.

My wife thought the restaurant was wonderful and I mostly agreed, though I thought that the poor quality of the sushi let the place down. (But perhaps that is how they like sushi in Bangalore.) Almost everything else was very good: superb kara-age, excellent tempura, wonderful dumplings and an outstanding chilli chicken. The menu’s emphasis is on fun Japanese and Chinese rather than on authenticity. It is a lovely restaurant and we ate lunch looking out at the beautiful garden.

The Leela Palace is too far from the parts of

Bangalore I usually hang out in, so, I don’t go as often as I should. But, this time, I made the journey to eat the

What does one say about a TV show about matchmaking in which the only couple who do get married don’t meet through the matchmaker? Well, I guess the only thing one can say is that the new season of Indian Matchmaking (on Netflix) doesn’t really make a great case for matchmakers.

Don’t get me wrong. Sima Aunty—or Sima from Mumbai, as she persistently introduces herself— is a great character, full of vim and vigour and the occasional devastating put-down. When it comes to matchmaking, though, she doesn’t exactly have a stellar success rate, going by her clients who feature in this series (maybe, in all fairness, she has better luck off screen). But despite the fact that none of her matches seem to take, Sima Aunty sallies forth in every episode, confidence undented, folio of biodatas in hand, with unalloyed optimism in her heart. Bless!

It is her clients who worry me, though. There is an endless stream of strong, confident 30-somethings who have stellar careers, beautiful homes, loving families and supportive friends, who nonetheless feel that their lives are not complete unless they have a spouse in tow as well. And that’s just the men—the women are, if anything, even more desperate to ‘settle down’. And for some reason, all these sentient adults seem to believe that the answer to their dreams lies in the biodatas that Sima Aunty brings to every meeting.

It’s telling that it is the matchmaker herself who tries to lower their expectations. After asking them to list their criteria for a match, she shakes her head and says that nobody gets a 100 per cent match. They will have to compromise and adjust to find a match (or what her clients refer to as ‘settling’).

The lists of ‘criteria’ give us an insight into the minds of these clients—but not in the way they were hoping. They all claim to be open-minded but they all want to be matched with someone within their own community. The partner has to be Indian, sometimes even specifically from one particular state, and one client even asks that her match be fluent in her mother tongue (because otherwise he may not get the family jokes!). One guy—who strangely enough, remains unmatched until the end—wants a girl who is extroverted as well as introverted (no, me neither). And oh yes, she must know how to make pakoras like his mother.

SIMA FROM MUMBAI

Sima Aunty—or Sima from Mumbai, as she persistently introduces herself— is a great character, full of vim and vigour and the occasional devastating put-down

The list of demands ranges from the impossible to the improbable, with a specificity that is mind-boggling. So much so that by the end, you develop a sneaking sympathy for Sima Aunty who has to deal with everything from a desire for man buns and tattoos to rustling up a man who is into sky-diving. As she bleats sadly, only 60 per cent to 70 per cent is possible.

But never mind all these demanding clients. It is another character entirely that plays a starring role in the series. And it’s called Karma. (Look away now if you don’t want any spoilers.)

The first victim is Nadia. The show opens with her inviting her match, Shekar, home to meet her family. You would think that things were getting serious between them. But then she meets a younger man, Vishal, and before you can say ‘Nick Jonas’ she is snogging him on the dance floor in front of the mortified Shekar. To make matters worse, she drops him on a Facetime call, ending it by saying that she has to go because she and Vishal have ordered dinner—and Shekar walks off into the sunset in tears.

Cut to a few weeks later. Vishal flies in to have dinner with Nadia, and announces that he doesn’t feel ‘that spark’ with her and that it’s over. It is now Nadia’s turn to dissolve into tears.

And then, there is Vinesh, who turns down Mausam because she is not hot enough for him, only to be turned down by his next match. The pneumatic nurse, Meena, purses her filler lips to dismiss him as one of the frogs she has to (metaphorically) kiss before she finds her Prince.

As they don’t say, Karma is a dish best served by a hot girl!

CURVE BALL The i4 gets a new curved display, with a 14.9inch touchscreen and 12.3-inch digital dials

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BMW is fashionably late to the EV party but that hasn’t put it at a disadvantage. Hindsight is foresight in the car world and the Munich-based luxury brand has the benefit of learning from the past mistakes of others. The biggest one? Entering when the market is not yet ripe for the picking, which is what rivals Mercedes and Jaguar did. And BMW is all set to cash in on the nowgrowing trend, largely driven by other global brands. In December 2021, BMW kicked off its EV innings with the launch of the ix. Now, less than a year later, comes the far more affordable i4.

The i4 isn’t ‘born electric’, a new term for EVS designed, ground up, for electrification only. It is the all-electric derivative of the 4 Series Gran Coupé with which we are not familiar because it’s not sold in India. So, the styling will be fresh and the coupé-like body style the first on an EV in India. So, unique the i4 certainly is. But before we get to the styling, let’s look at the power train. There’s only one power train option, the lower edrive40 variant, which has sufficient grunt to keep you smiling.

A single rear 340hp motor producing a punchy 430Nm of torque and driving the rear wheels is enough to make the i4 feel like a BMW. But the talking point with EVS isn't power but range, and that’s where the i4 really scores. A83.9kwh lithiumion battery pack mounted under the floor is good for a range of 590km in a laboratory test cycle, the highest range figure in India until the Mercedes EQS comes along later this month.

The i4 certainly turns heads with its swoopy coupé-like styling and the long bonnet which certainly hints that this car was originally designed to house an engine. My test car kitted out with the optional M Performance spec gets jazzier bumpers and 18-inch

KING OF THE RANGE

With an appealing price point and the highest range in India, the BMW i4 is a sweet deal alloys which look great. And you just can’t miss that massive loveit or hate-it kidney grille.

The overall interior impression is that of a 3 Series, but to give you an EV feel there’s lots of blue detailing. The BMW logo on the steering wheel gets a splash of blue as does the start button and the gear level. What we haven’t seen before in previous BMWS is the new curved display, which incorporates a 14.9-inch touchscreen and 12.3-inch digital dials. Crisp, bright, and with high-def graphics, the new infotainment system looks stunning and dramatically lifts the ambience of the cabin. However, in the process, BMW has done away with physical buttons for the aircon, which have annoyingly been moved to settings embedded in the screen.

Cabin quality is expectedly very good and the front seats are nice and sporty, but the rear seat is the car's weakest point. The low roofline, high centre tunnel and a high floor eat into space and tall people simply won’t be comfortable at the back. So, if you are buying this car primarily to be chauffer driven, look elsewhere.

The feature list has hits and misses. You get LED lights, memory seats, a 17-speaker Harmon Kardon sound system and a reversing assistant, but there’s no 360-degree camera or keyless entry.

The i4 drives like a BMW that is sporty, entertaining and sucks the driver into the driving experience, something that’s hard to achieve with an EV. The edrive40 variant isn’t blisteringly quick, but you can use all the power and performance to fullest. Floor the pedal, and the i4 tugs you forward briskly with power building up in a natural and progressive way. The handling is very entertaining, thanks to a feelsome steering and good chassis balance, which allows you to safely push the envelope. However, on bad roads the i4 needs to be handled with care. The ground clearance is pretty low and is an issue over speed breakers.

The i4’s trump card is its very attractive ₹69.9 lakh price that puts it in the same band as the sporty M340i and larger 5 Series. The temptation to go green has never been stronger.

The views expressed by the columnist are personal

Aglib thought recently struck me as my auto crossed Soho House in Juhu, one of the new purveyors of poshness. “What if my impostor syndrome is fake?” I said to myself with a laugh, too lazy to peel the layers of this particular thought-onion. It did, however, make me think about the rampant pretentiousness that sociable living necessitates. Here’s a list of five kinds of pressures we’d do well to shed.

A few days after Geetanjali Shree’s Partition-themed Hindi novel Tomb of Sand, translated by Daisy Rockwell, won the International Booker, I stepped into a hipster coffee shop to buy an overpriced, bitter Americano I’ve developed a disturbing appetite for. I found two young women, dressed alike in pretty, floaty dresses, reading the book synchronously. It was quite an arresting sight, considering the book is 725 pages long; not your regular Tuesdays with Morrie or Jonathan Livingston Seagull kind of café performance staple. Made me wonder about the last time I read a book without posting about it. But then writers are allowed all kinds of vanity in the guise of connecting with readers. Phew.

Is anyone else here afraid to google a film they liked right after watching it? It’s like fiddling with that overfilled shelf in your kitchen cupboard that’s the prototype for Jenga. One tug and the whole thing tumbles over. There is no space for ambivalence in our love/hate world of digital discourse. Woke opinions. Cancel culture. Virtue signalling. A whole new—and useful—vocabulary sprang up when we were busy trying to figure how to make rent. For all the jargon, there’s a glaring lack of nuance in how we respond to an ad, a celeb or an ideology. Everyone’s so anxious about absorbing the most influential ideas available, there’s no time left for an original thought or unadulterated feeling. Ah, the much-missed joys of the tacky, the soppy and the lowbrow.

SOCIALLY YOURS, BUT NOT REALLY

Your social circle likely won’t have any real authority or power over you, but it still dictates too many life choices

Capitalism has a lot to answer for. One of my pet peeves as someone who operates in its outer suburbs—for who can fully escape its jurisdiction?—is the fixation with weekend merriment. I get it. Not everyone is lucky enough to control their own schedule, but that doesn’t mean this TGIF monster should be allowed to stomp all over our lives without resistance. The weekend has a big appetite, typically sated by exotic cocktails, superhero films, frenzied mall visits and supersized meals. As a lifelong fan of staying in on a Saturday night with a good book and zero FOMO, I urge you to consider its many merits. Mostly, a hangover-free morning gives you the moral high ground over your less austere friends. Wickedly satisfying.

Today, Facebook, the keeper of shoddy memories, reminded me about a sandwich I made eight years ago in a toastie-maker that everyone who grew up in the ’80s and ’90s will recognise with delight. Known elsewhere as the jaffle iron, the long-limbed metal contraption, which encloses a butter-slathered sandwich, walks straight into the fire of your stove. How many character-building sabzis of my childhood has this toastie-maker transformed with its cheese-and-ketchup simplicity! The point of the story is this: in our breathless chasing of gourmet glory in the eyes of friends and strangers, we forget the joys of one-pot meals and last-minute hacks. While we’re on the subject, it’s time to restore the humble fruit custard to its former glory. And let’s keep an open mind about Udupi Chinese, too.