Mint Masala

I visited the 'new' restaurant near Bhashyam Circle, Sadashivnagar, Mint Masala is supposedly housed in the same building in which Shanti Sagar earlier was. The occasion was to celebrate one of my good friends Chandra joining the Electrical Engineering Dept in IISc as faculty. He had been evading treats all through his PhD, so we were keen to extract a big one! I was recommended to this place by a colleague, we had to visit a 'veg only' restaurant(some ppl are very insistent, not me!), I was warned it might be on the expensive side though. So full of expectation at the good food, we headed to Mint Masala.

I loved the decor and the interiors, the whole thing looks very contemporary and aesthetic.

For the soup, I chose a Sweet and Sour Szechuan soup (half) and the portion was generous. The soup was decent, nothing too great, but then not bad at all. My friends tried other soups, cream of tomato, potato and leek and Mint Masala special veg soup, everybody seemed reasonably happy with their soup. The soups are in the range Rs 90 - 120 approx.

For starters, Chandra suggesed we choose Cheese Cherry and Pineapple Sticks, a very nice contienental something light to eat acc to him, which according to me was a rip-off, pieces of plain cheese with a piece of pineapple pierced on a toothpick like thing. Better avoid this, there are much better starters here. To get a better sampling, we decided to order a platter which was very nice. The Veg Seekh Kabab was great. Hara bhara kabab was nice(though I prefer the one in Raaga which I think is a bit better). Paneer tikka was disappointing, a restaurant that looks as fancy as this does should have really soft and fresh paneer, it was not bad, but then it was not that great either. In addition to the platter, we ordered Veg Seekh Kabab since it seemed to be the favourite among items in the platter. We got some masala papads as well.

For the main course, 3 of us decided to stick to Indian fare while the others decided to go for contienental. The menu for contienental looks small, but appealing. The Indian fare gang decided for methi rotis and Achari Dum Aloo, they were both very good, people did not want paneer and after the rather pedestrian Paneer tikka, I was fine with it.
The bread selection for North Indian food and the curries look great, I hope to go again sometime when am more in the mood for hogging and sample the others.

For contienental main course, we chose baby corn/mushroom gratin, vegetable moussaka with aubergines/egg plant and something else which I dont remember. The gratin was quite nice, I quite liked it. The moussaka was the big hit, this was basically garlic bread with the moussaka which is something like a salad, it was out of this world, the flavor, aroma, taste, seasoning was out-of-this-world. I usually am a very hard-to-please person before I dish out the good adjectives, but this was great, and Avinash had ordered this and was requesting everyone to finish it, and I was glad I listened to him!

Desserts easily were the most exotic part of the whole menu. Several of us had dates pancakes with ice cream, this is a date pancake(duh!) coated with caramel, served hot with ice cream. One should eat it with the ice cream and it tastes great. The honey noodles with ice cream were not exactly great according to Pramod who had ordered it and was greedily eyeing others' desserts. The shahi tukda also looked good, though I did not taste it.

The dates paan given at the end of the meal was something totally new, I do not eat paan, so had left it, then someone told me that it was not the usual meetha pan and that it was something different. It was nice.

Coming to the bill...this is where it hurts a bit, it cost on an average 500-550 per head for the meal I just described. It was a tad on the higher side, but since we knew of this, the shock was'nt too bad (or it was maybe because i was not paying ;-)).

Sumamrizing, it is a good restaurant, will whole heartedly recommend it, worth atleast one visit, I liked it. But it is not exactly economical, so it is unlikely that I will go there whenever I feel like eating out, it seems to be more of a place where one should go to celebrate an occasion, an aniversary, a birthday, etc, then we'll not feel so guilty about the bill!

Directions: From Malleshwaram side, come on Sankey road adjacent to the Sankey tank, when you reach Bhashyam circle, take the extreme left (not 90 deg left) and the restaurant is almost on the junction itself. There is plenty of parking in the roads nearby.