Of farewells and new beginnings... Yellow Tree Cafe

So the Girl Gang met up on Sunday, with respective husbands and boyfriends in tow, to bid adieu to Dipanwita and Avijit, who are moving back to Kolkata. On D's request to try out a new place, we settled on Yellow Tree Cafe in Bandra, a deceptively tiny- looking restaurant en route to Pali Hill.

Well, to be honest, I had anyways fallen in love with the place after listening to glowing reviews from a host of friends. And then when my favourite food blogger wrote about the restaurant in a positively loving tone, and then again, AND again, that sealed the deal for me. And that is how, at the first given opportunity, after having gently cajoled D into trying out Yellow Tree, a motley group of twelve came to occupy a large part of the first floor seating area of the restaurant.

What struck me as soon as I entered the place and then wound my way up the stairs to the first floor was the completely distinct ambience on the two floors. While the ground floor had a cosy, cafe-like feel to it, the first floor, with its whitewashed walls, turquoise blue lanterns placed randomly around the place and colourful seating arrangements seemed a lot more restaurant-y, if there exists such a word, albeit a really laid back one at that. The multi coloured sofas running along the walls with colourful throw cushions placed haphazardly around the place immediately perked up my mood, and set the tone for one of the best Sundays I've had in recent times, a Sunday marked by lots of animated chatter, a leisurely and really good luch spread over four hours, fond memories of college and an announcement from R about her impending wedding!

The icing on the cake was when Vittal, R's fiance joined us as well; though he was almost immediately overwhelmed by the sheer volume of our conversation; which of course was compounded by the fact that the poor guy understood almost none of it, given as most of it was in Bangla. The conversation flowed almost non stop, fuelled by the trays of antipasti that kept making appearances, within remarkably short periods after orders being placed. I must say, I was very impressed by the service and efficiency of the place. Another heart warming observation was that the waiters here seemed to actually know the whole menu and provided useful inputs wherever required.

Food, when it was finally ordered about three hours after we entered the place, also lived up to the hype generated by all my friends so far, though, as a friend pointed out, all the dishes looked almost the same - covered in brown sauce, with plum sauce decorations on most of them - the only exception being in the case of a pesto - sauce based preparation (Thankfully, I would say!) The taste of each of the dishes ordered, of course, was another story altogether - suffice it to say that the till-then boisterously noisy table fell absolutely silent as all of us dug into our food with great gusto. And then when we did surface for air after non-stop glottony, it was largely because the portions were really large, and it required a fair amount of effort to be able to finish each portion. Unfortunately, we were all so stuffed by the end of the meal that all of us, rather unwillingly, had to pass dessert by. So, a return to the restaurant is guaranteed, if only to sample the desserts I have heard so much about.

When we finally staggered out of the restaurant, it was early evening, something we realised with some amount of shock once we looked at our respective watches - time sure had flown, and the best part was that the waiters at the restaurant had not mentioned this to us even once. This was such a welcome contrast from horror stories of places which shoo one out (politely of course) the moment one's time in a restaurant extends beyond an hour or an hour and a half at best. Brownie points to Yellow Tree Cafe on that one for sure!

All in all, this lunch and Yellow Tree Cafe will surely form part of fond memories for a while to come. Though the occassion for which we all met up in the first place did temper the mood of the afternoon a little, R's announcement did make up for it a fair bit.

I wish D and A did not have to go back - they'll be sorely missed. But as they say, it's a small world...and one never knows what tomorrow brings. In the meanwhile, here's wishing them love and luck!

Update on attempts at cooking and allied matters

In my last post, in a bid to eat healthy, I had resolved to cook for myself on a regular basis and avoid ordering in or eating out. Sadly, I must admit that I haven't been very succesful in my attempt, with the grand schedule going for a toss within two weeks. Ah yes, I did survive two weeks, so pat on my back anyways. :)

Not that I did not cook at all in the past month...in fact, in the past one month, I have whipped up some fairly fancy food that brought back lovely childhood memories - chicken mince cutlet just the way Ma makes it, the traditional Bengali pulao to go with doi machch (fish cooked in a curd based gravy) and chholar dal on one occassion, which was a farewell lunch for a friend; phulkopir dalna (traditional Bengali curry made with cauliflowers and green peas) and porota on another. I even tried making mishti doi on one occassion. It didn't turn out exactly the way I expected it to be, but it wasn't all that bad either, so maybe there's hope yet.

Mighty excited about my succesful attempts at cooking the traditional stuff, in addition to my regular of roti, sabzi, pastas and salads, I was recounting all my successful experiments of the culinary variety one of these days in a conversation with the Mother.

The Mother too, was suitably thrilled and made all the right noises of encouragement at the right times. And then she said, "Tui to puropuri expert hoye gechish - fancy khabar ranna korte parish, eka eka eto bochor dhore okhane achish, shob shamlachchish...shudhu ekta bor jutlei to hoy!" (You've become such an expert - you've learnt how to cook fancy stuff, you've been staying alone there for so many years, taking care of everything...now all you need is a husband!)

Err?