Miss Wong, Siem Reap

When I travel to a new city I like scoping out where I can get good coffee, bread, and a well-made cocktail.

For cocktails and the odd beer(Stouts, Porters, Belgian-style Ales!) that may have caught my eye, I can't stand loud bars where I can't hear myself think. I much prefer the quietude of these literal Speakeasies where the music is just right, conversations not drowned by loud music or fellow cocktail hounds. And where you're not reminded of the teeming populations on the planet. Elbow-space, anyone?

Miss Wong's located just slightly off Pub Street by New Zealander Radio Journalist Dean Williams was all that and more. Named for a popular post-war portrait by the late Russian-origin South African artist, Vladimir Tretchikoff, Miss Wong finds inspiration in 1920s-30s Shanghai. Think apple-red walls, Chinese lanterns, and dark wood furniture. If you're there, ask for their house infused gins. I stuck to a rose and cloves-infused gin that felt a little like smoking a gudang garam while lying in a Mughal harem's pool. So that’s how it went down: I went to Siem Reap and came back with a mouthful of forevers.

Home is. Heart is.

This was my first home in Bangalore - thinking back, I realise what an apt name it had. Reach for the sky.
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Where I finally understood that Home is not a space, it's a quotidian place. 
And this picture - the orange curtains in the bedroom set ablaze by the Saturday afternoon sun, the smell of fresh tuberoses permeating the afternoon heat is what I see in my mind's eye when I think of Home.
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I read this somewhere, I don't remember where but it needs repeating. (Even when I'm writing this on a Monday evening, where the accompanying picture is of a Saturday afternoon.)

Sundays are for Lovers:
There is a particular tenor to a Sunday. There's laziness, cooking breakfast, comfy-clothes, time spent in bed, wandering the neighborhood, sitting in a café, house-work, yard-work, making out, art projects, meeting friends at the pub, a last chance to get shit done before the work-week begins and then of course the end of something ... the beginning of something.

If you're reading this, I trust you're doing well. That you're in your happy place: 
Where the heart is on fire, in the warmth of a million blazing suns.

Foooooooo! the Indian Summer

This is what the heat and sweat does to the skin in a car with leather seating even when the windows are rolled down but you're stuck in traffic. Prrrrrrr. When the back is now finely imprinted with the map of the seat that you were slumped against and you move slowly tearing yourself away from the seat to mutter with added effort 'Uuugghh the heat!'. Prrrrrrr. When the sweat trickles from your forehead and collects in pools in the grooves of your collarbones, or it snakes down your ample cleavage and soon a wet spot appears where the black halter top meets skin.

You catch him laughing as you contort your face into cranky and then pouty, irritable and then some. What happened, chocopuffs? Why are you making faces? Before you can even catch your breath to think of the sun-dried words, form coherent sentences and begin to explain that the heat makes you cranky, the yellow cab and its driver is proving to be annoying with the music blaring and before you can dissolve away somewhere anywhere, a mash of sweat and angst, Foooooooooo! Not in the sound but in the shape of his lips as the draft of soft breeze-a mouthful of air- finds your neck.

Foooooooo!

JJ's Blues

I love JJ’s Blues - one of the nicest Blues Bars in all of the Bay Area. Also the best thing to have happened to Sunnyvale after my friend Sidkid.
Update in 2018: I'd written this in March 2010 when I was a heartbroken unnecessarily maudlin young person listening to John Lee Hooker's album Face to Face. I still intensely dislike anything Blue but I'm more forgiving of its takers.

~

The skies can look as blue as the peppermint candy I love to hate but they are waiting for their blue to be licked off: Stick tongue out, one long swoop of the tongue across the icy blue and off the blue should go. But but…blue is one color I intensely dislike. Blue as the Pacific Ocean, Blue as the clear blue skies, blue as the mint candy, blue as the cupcake frosting, blue as the argyle vest? It fills with me so much distaste that it makes my eyes well up and soon the iciness of the blue freezes the tears to icicles that prick. Blue is death and rigor mortis and the heart shaped vein on my chest. Blue is the lady in the cigarette smoke on the heavily guarded Thursday night. 

Turquoise and Aquamarine(I can’t tell the difference) is charming, but charm is not something that can be inherited or passed on to the rest of the Blue family. Teal is of upholstery and woolens and carpets and curtains in old women’s houses and Rexine seats in diners that you only visit in a town outside of nowhere, when you’re going nowhere. Azure is of the Indian Ocean where the tortoises walk and the palm trees shade; Azure is the Arabian Sea and the dhows and the ocean mist outside my bedroom window in an age gone by. Kingfisher blue once flew by when we were kayaking on the slow-slow rapids. It’s also the night when tandoori chicken red is licked off the fingers and lager is counted out in pitchers. Majorelle rocks the Casbah. It’s the clash when midnight blue meets Sunset Boulevard. Indigo is ink and the color no one talks about. It’s overshadowed by blue even in the rainbow. But sometimes I think Indigo is Blueberries like Blueberries are indigo. Blueberry blue, now I can be partial to that.

Yes, Blue is selfish.

Prussian Blue reminds me of the Second World War and who would think King of Prussia is in Pennsylvania. It sounds like a Blue state but it could be Red and White striped too. Cobalt is the chemistry lab assistant’s voice screaming, what salt gives you a cobalt blue colour? But then cobalt blue makes you think of canary yellow. Canaries and coal mines we will leave for later. Cornflower blue is Laura Ashley’s catalogues of cowslip yellow wallpapers with baby blue trimming and cornflower blue flowers and mint green leaves. Salad. On the Wall. Sweet Carolina Blue is the sunshine on the people in the shirts on the clothesline. St Patrick’s blue is the drunken stupor bile of the green beer. Persian is mosaic on mosques in Iran, evil eyes on the Turkish merchants. Navy blue is sailors and balls I never attended and hickeys the young lads left on lasses they’ll never see again. Baby blue is for cribs of babes with diddly-doos and Ceil is the matron in the labor ward. 

But blue? Blue is my nightmare

from last night

Where I was wearing a hideous blue sari (gasp!) and being dragged to an engagement ceremony. Mine. I was pushing and shoving and screaming and crying. Inside a Maruti Omni that is the Volkswagen Transporter’s third world cousin. Ten times removed. Then right there in the middle of the fuss in my nightmare I remembered I had loved the man but the thought of marrying the man was an oddity and so something is amiss: Why did I agree to marry the man, Why did I not want to marry the man? Cold Feet. Blue. I realized it was a nightmare and he could wait at the altar till the nightmare was recycled in someone else’s head, someone else’s life. I then continued to fret about the hideous blue sari that I was wearing with a green blouse. Ao and Shino. 

Blue were the streaks in his hair and his hair and oh my god, his hair was Beatley Blue. Not his in the nightmare, he wouldn’t do that to himself. Blue is Blue Lagoon that cocktail in the forgotten Mangalore bar mixed by the bartender so half-heartedly. He’s in a blue funk. Blue da ba dee if I were blue I’d die too.

Blue gives me the blues. The cold blue sky is shedding its frosty stare, it’s cloaking the misty air tonight and it is creeping up my feet, it’s leaving a blue imprint everywhere it pricks…I’m just feeling the blues.

Table Mountain, Cape Town

Now that quizzing is back in fashion with HQ Trivia, LocoNow  I remembered a quizzing story that involved this damn mountain. I was an eager-beaver 14-15 year old in school and one of the highlights for the nerds was the annual Indian Association Quiz. Mum usually couldn't attend these because of her schedule but this one time it was held on a weekend, she was there. Questions flew, answers were rapid till we tripped on a question about a mountain with a cloud cover that looked like a cloth (or something to that effect). None of us on the team cracked this, turns out no one else on stage could answer it either.

The question goes to the audience, I scan the audience and I hear a loud booming voice unmistakably my mother's: "Joy, it's Table Mountain in Cape Town. How hard was that!" I may have wilted in my seat. We went on to win the quiz but jeebus, I wasn't able to live that down. Till I hiked up Table Mountain constantly telling myself "how hard was that!," that is. This is the pic I sent my Mom from that Table Mountain of Cape Town.

Smart mamas build character. 

Faced with the dodo’s conundrum

There are good ideas like violets, dark chocolate beers and gummy bears with a drop of acid. And then there are particularly bad ideas. Like turning up unannounced at someone's door.

What if you find them standing at their doorstep still in their boxers buying milk. Or brushing their teeth in a bathrobe unwashed for weeks. What if you hear the furniture squeaking with the television on loud and the cat yawning outside.  Would you rub the cat's belly, leave a post-it on the door? Would you wander around the neighbourhood, stopping by red green and blue doors to listen to the sounds and silences left behind in the haste that are early mornings? What if you find flowers left behind by someone who came before you or a book lying face down? What if you found shoes of someone with too big a foot size? Or baby shoes. Or a single red stiletto. What if you found a beer bottle unfinished or someone's dinner, regurgitated. What if you found a sign that read "Do not Disturb" or spiders spinning cobwebs or an unloved dog pawing at the paint. What if you found a blanket frayed at the edges or a little girl's Love in Tokyo's. What if you found a stack of newspapers bleeding ink into the sidewalk or forgotten shopping with oranges gathering furry fuzz.

What if you didn't find what you were looking for. 
Told you, there are particularly bad ideas: Turning up at someone's door unannounced is just one of them.
~
 I'd written this after I'd turned up at someone's door having flown halfway across the country sometime in 2012. Ghosting wasn't a term then. 

"Why don't Americans love Mexicans?" asks Anthony Bourdain →

When I lived in LA, the downtown neighbourhood I lived in was full of Hispanics. It was most parts Americans and at the same time some parts, what Americans call, “ghetto-ish.” In that so much like India: litter on the street, street food stalls, mothers and fathers and children all talking loudly, aromas from the kitchen, and an abundance of quotidian gaiety. The aged were taken care of and the young got yelled at quite regularly. The younger generation however seemed caught up in the dichotomy of being Mexican and American. ABCM, if you may. 

Which is ok so long as they preserve the art of making Carnitas. 

Americans love Mexican food. We consume nachos, tacos, burritos, tortas, enchiladas, tamales and anything resembling Mexican in enormous quantities. We love Mexican beverages, happily knocking back huge amounts of tequila, mezcal and Mexican beer every year. We love Mexican people—as we sure employ a lot of them. Despite our ridiculously hypocritical attitudes towards immigration, we demand that Mexicans cook a large percentage of the food we eat, grow the ingredients we need to make that food, clean our houses, mow our lawns, wash our dishes, look after our children. As any chef will tell you, our entire service economy—the restaurant business as we know it—in most American cities, would collapse overnight without Mexican workers. Some, of course, like to claim that Mexicans are “stealing American jobs”. But in two decades as a chef and employer, I never had ONE American kid walk in my door and apply for a dishwashing job, a porter’s position—or even a job as prep cook. Mexicans do much of the work in this country that Americans, provably, simply won’t do. 

We love Mexican drugs. Maybe not you personally, but “we”, as a nation, certainly consume titanic amounts of them—and go to extraordinary lengths and expense to acquire them. We love Mexican music, Mexican beaches, Mexican architecture, interior design, Mexican films.

So, why don’t we love Mexico?

We throw up our hands and shrug at what happens and what is happening just across the border. Maybe we are embarrassed. Mexico, after all, has always been there for us, to service our darkest needs and desires. Whether it’s dress up like fools and get pass-out drunk and sun burned on Spring break in Cancun, throw pesos at strippers in Tijuana, or get toasted on Mexican drugs, we are seldom on our best behavior in Mexico. They have seen many of us at our worst. They know our darkest desires.

- Anthony Bourdain rips America a new Mexico-sized hole in an epic rant

Under the Mangalorean Sun

Mangalore looks like one giant fractal when seen from the skies. Each smaller fractal unraveling itself as we get closer to the runaway. It’s coconut trees as far as the eye can see, dried up river beds and mud roads that no one drives on.

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The menu for the week ahead has been decided on Sunday evening. Monday, stingray and dal with bimbli. Tuesday, shark. Wednesday, squid. Thursday, mango curry. Friday, shrimp. Saturday, chorizo. Sunday, pork offal. 

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Monday morning, I understand first-hand why the parents are wary of the BJP in Mangalore. At the grassroots, BJP hasn’t distanced itself from their communal agenda that’s exclusively biased towards the Hindu voter.

BJP’s local wing came around to distribute voter’s slips but ignored our house. Mom called out, “We vote as well!” The nextdoor teen who was part of this brigade came by later to hand over the slips. His macho BJP gang would rather not woo Christian voters. 

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Monday evening, there’s a light breeze but the stickiness of the Mangalorean heat never leaves. A choir of young girls accompanied by an amateur violinist are practising for the upcoming Easter mass, the hymns dotted with the staccatos of a piano being tuned. The leaves rustle, it’s the two birds that have made their nest in the shrubbery of the orange trumpet flowers coming in at the end of a long day. The air is filled with the distinctive aroma of a Mangalorean Chicken Curry being cooked. It’s an overwhelming mix of chicken fat, coconut milk and bafat powder.

In this tiny little neighbourhood, It’s hard to not drown in the “archipelago of tongues.” The incessant chirping of the birds that visit Dad’s garden only adds to this cacophony of languages.

It’s a Catholic neighbourhood there’s Konkani everywhere. Konkani is the tongue of emotion. Of love, prayer, anger, disgust, indignation and outrageous gossip. In the early morning rush of kids running to school, in the lunchtime menus and recipes exchanged over fences, it’s the evening rosary that’s a funereal wail.

Kannada is for the underlings and the strangers who deserve politeness. I can hear the househelps’ Bagalkot Kannada meet the local dialect. It’s the sound of delays in the housework, of risky propositions - clothes being hung out to dry when the sky is overcast with rain bearing clouds. It’s also the neighbourhood gossip cloaked as conversation. The polite stories of those who don’t matter are heard in Kannada. These will soon be repeated in Konkani. 

Tulu is for the overlords, the powerful and the friends from the alley when you’ve thrown back a few drinks and confidence has made way for arrogance. In its street avatar, it’s taunting and mocking. My untrained ear associates it with drunk men on the road. It’s brawn and brusque. Perhaps that’s why it’s also the language of comedies on Mangalore TV, those that are so reminiscent of PTV in the early 90’s. Its rough edges can only be softened by the kori roti that Pallavi and her Mom discuss in their sweet lilting Tulu.  

Wednesday evening, I can feel the smoke stinging my eyes before I can smell it. The neighbourhood is burning incense to ward off mosquitos. The next evening, the priest will burn it during mass and then wave it in the general direction of the crowd. Who said the Catholic rituals aren’t paganistic in their origin and intent?

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We planned to get to the polling booth at 7 am. A neighbour tells us there are long queues and these well-laid plans are promptly pushed out to a less humid hour. We make it to the booth at 10.10 am. In under seven minutes, we’ve voted, got our fingers inked and made our way back to the car. If only this efficiency wasn’t limited to the national elections…

We soon find ourselves at Big Bazaar which is giving away 10% discounts to anyone who turns up at the counter with an inked finger. Wonder how many went in to vote just so they could avail this offer.

For lunch, the mother has made mango curry. No guessing which party she voted for. The mango is sweet, the gravy thickened with ground urad dal. Are warm sickly sweet mangos to be eaten in peak summers? I know I’d prefer a cold glass of mango juice. I can’t say these things out aloud lest they offend Mom who’s relishing every last drop of that gravy.

Keeping with the tone of the debates (outrage! outrage!) on Times Now, the dinner-time conversation moves towards the controversial handouts. One Christian lady in the neighbourhood brings home 10 kgs of rice for Rs 100 from the ration store. She feeds it to her dogs. Somebody else is buying dal and rice from teachers at schools that serve mid-day meals. 

Local entrepreneurship at its worst, we’re at our outraged best. It’s been less than 10 hours since most of my family voted for the Congress.

All through the week I’ve been babysitting the grandmother. It’s an easy sell: The parents don’t have to be embarrassed by my absence at church. It’s replaced by a sense of pride, the grand-daughter is caring for the grandmother. They use the word “saakri” to describe the simple act of spending time with my grandparents.  Saakri elevates care-taking to the level of dharma and karma. It’s what disciplined people with a conscience do - it’s a good deed and penance rolled into one.

Grandpa had stories from the time of independence and I had stories about food, alcohol and travel. I prefer Grandmother’s stories to the sermons delivered by sanctimonious celibate men in church. Unlike my grandpa, she would rather not use her intelligence when deferring matters to God. But that’s ok. I enjoy her company - my time with her is peppered with coffee, loads of delicious Mangalorean food that my Mom doesn’t make and lessons in Kannada. 

By Sunday evening, I was impatient to get back to Bangalore and stuff my face with ghee cake from Cochin Bakery. It will be 3 months before I visit Mangalore again. By then it will be monsoon and the rains fix everything. Almost.

Cape Town, in watercolor

Painted by #Waterlogue

The Flower Sellers of Bhopal

Flower sellers at Peer Gate, Bhopal

Here florists do a lazy job of making jasmine garlands - they string them together using a needle. I remember my Grandma doing it differently with more finesse:  the flowers in bud stage placed diagonally and woven together. Here, this is what it is and this is how it shall be; the florist ignores us, chattering away on his Nokia and deftly piercing flower with needle and string.

The streets are unbelievably clean. People quietly sweep the streets gathering flowers, leaves in newspapers. I don’t see where they dump this waste, a vegetable seller with a cart brimming over with greens impatiently kept asking me to get out of his way. I am a clumsy ladki in places like these.

Remember Monsoon Wedding where Vijay Raaz chabaos a single sunshine yellow marigold? There are gendaphool garlands piled up everywhere. Weddings indeed look better in shades of orange, gold and marigold. 

Delhi dur ast

I hadn’t been to Delhi till October this year. When I went to pitch at the Global Impact Award, that was my first time and then in a matter of 2 days, I was back for the Inaugural Janaagraha L C Jain Memorial Lecture at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. Both of these were amazing experiences and deserve posts of their own. Will get to that later.

When I went to Delhi in the last week of October, Delhi was sunny. There was freshly mowed lawn, primary colored bean bags, endless cups of coffees and friendly geeky people in the nook that was the Taj Mansingh and Taj Ambassador.

A gap weekend of Diwali and so much had changed. Everything was jumping out at me - loudly, unabashedly. I was in Dally. 

Smog veiled the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the trees, the planes, the people, everything. So much like the polyester grey dupatta aunties wear over their nighties when dropping kids to school - so boring, it’s not even a distraction. But that’s a pity because (New?) Delhi is a mesmerizing city - there are rich people, famous people, armed people, babu people, safari suit people, politician people everywhere; there are barbed wires and red sandstone buildings; there are regular people lazing in lawns in roundabouts; there are people afraid of cops who will pull them up for not wearing a seatbelt, there are people who are driving and taking notes on their hands. CAPITAL City.

I felt severely underdressed, even for walking down the street. And then when I did get to the street, I felt undressed. The unstopping, penetrating gaze of the regular Delhi man never left me: The cab driver, the hotel staff, the shopkeepers, the pedestrians. Rupali at one point told me I’d stop noticing it. Or maybe she meant I’d stop feeling so naked. Or maybe that with time I’d forget that all-consuming sense of violation. Inviolate City?

If I squinted at the rows of sparkly lights in Khan Market, all I could see were shiny, happy, angry, powerful cars. A corner restaurant that smelled of freshly butchered meat served the softest Kakori Kebabs that I’d ever eaten. My bar wasn’t too high, I’d just eaten the most bastardized version of mutton biryani the previous evening. Plump bush-tailed dogs kept guard, children with sun-bleached hair burst firecrackers on pavements. So many white people smoked on the streets, so many young Indian couples tottered around hand-in-hand. Lal battis with black caps had young girls with scrunched noses who drove away without paying for parking, attendants banging on their tintless rolled-up windows. Segregated City!

At the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, signs in varied fonts - a Times New Roman here, a sans serif font there - asked you to keep quiet. Monks walked around, activist people in handloom clothes asked for free books to stuff into their swinging jholas. Someone mistook me for someone else. Monkeys swung from tree to tree, a noisy bird had no takers for its mating calls. Mrs Prime Minister was given 6 different options for tea - with milk, without; with sugar, without; with milk & sugar, without. All she wanted was a separate saucer to place her teabag. Vrinda Grover kept introducing her daughter to everyone around, someone air-kissed so loudly I jumped. Socialite City, Socialist City,

Dally. Batter than Bangalore? Batty-er than Mumbai.

Cupcakes - Then & Now

We had cupcakes from Cupcake Company for lunch today. Bangalore has come a long way from that day in 2010 when I had an unbearable soul-destroying cupcake craving.

I woke up on the 1st weekend of October 2010 with an unbearable cupcake craving. This was also the time I’d just returned from the Bay Area where I was spoilt almost every other weekend with Kara’s cupcakes, in all flavours, colours and sizes. K decided he was going to be the knight in shining armour and buy me cupcakes. I don’t know how many bakeries and confectioneries he called up asking, begging, pleading for cupcakes. No one had cupcakes.

Spoonful of Sugar decided they’re going to give cupcakes a shot. At 8 pm, I was presented with a box of 4 ‘cupcakes’ - 4 dense muffins topped with chocolate and hundreds & thousands sprinkles.

The next day we drove to Pondicherry and dug into some soul soothing Darjeeling Tea flavoured macarons.

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Here’s where you can find some ridiculously good cupcakes.

What I'm Lovin' This Week ~ Sufi, Koramangala

Sufi at Koramangala is our Happy Place
Located above Empire near JNC

Eating at Sufi has now taken on shades of a ritual. We seat ourselves comfortably on the diwans and order a large pot of Persian Tea and in preparation for the dessert that they always seem to run out of, ask them to keep aside a couple of bowls of Sholezaad.

Persian Tea is served in little tumblers that have portraits of the Shah and comes in a blue ceramic teapot. So Iranian. This is followed by a bowl of Haleem Bademjan with a Naan. (They don’t have the Taftan unfortunately.)

Sometimes I’m a boring non-experimental eater unlike K. I came upon the Chenjeh Kebab(Boneless pieces of lamb) and have been faithful to it for 2 years or so now. K’s standard order is the Logmeh Kebab. All of this had with platefuls of Chelo and at least 4 little sachets of Amul Butter.

Two weeks ago we had a friend visiting and that was an excuse to try out something new on the menu:

Kebab-e-Shishleek
Lamb chops and spareribs 

Kebab-e-Negindar
Grilled minced meat of beef and lamb topped with chicken

Followed by the usual order of Kebab-e-Logmeh
Juicy pieces of minced lamb 

In typical Persian style, all of these meats are skewered on swords so they come to the table all flattened out and served on blue ceramic plates.

We go to Sufi because it’s our happy place. We go there when we want our “creatine fix” or we’re craving butter and rice and kebabs or because we’re suddenly hungry at 5 pm on a Sunday.

Sometimes the charming owner Dr Karimi is around, telling us stories about Iran and India when he moved twenty years or so ago. One of those Sundays when we landed up at 5 pm and there was no one around we met a group of folk singers from Rajasthan who then went on to sing for the better part of an hour while we sat around on those diwans digging into meat.

Sublime and spiritual.

Bo Kaap, Cape Town

Bo Kaap, Cape Town

“Famously known as a Malay neighbourhood (it is sometimes referred to as "the Malay quarter”), the Bo-Kaap has always been racially and culturally diverse, first housing Europeans and some Asians in the 18th century. After slavery was abolished in 1834, many freed slaves made the area their home. Islam was brought to the Western Cape in the 17th century and the Bo-Kaap soon became a hotbed for its teachings. The religion was attractive to former slaves, who rejected the Christianity of the British and the Dutch. South Africa’s oldest mosque is in the Bo-Kaap.

Although it is predominantly Muslim, historically up to 40% of the neighbourhood was Christian. The area remained racially and culturally diverse until it was designated a Malay area under the Group Areas Act. It remained one of the only sections of the central business district (CBD) that housed nonwhites throughout apartheid.

But the Bo-Kaap is changing. Booming demand for prime real estate in the CBD has made the neighbourhood increasingly appealing to outsiders. Its famous cobbled streets, coloured houses and homey atmosphere, coupled with relatively low house prices compared with other parts of the CBD, make it especially attractive to young creative types who want to get off the beaten track but still stay close to the city hub. In some parts of the Bo-Kaap, you are now as likely to meet a young, blonde German-born filmmaker, a skinny-jeans-wearing, soya-cappucino-drinking fashion editor or a Jo'burg business executive as you are an imam or artisan at one of the neighbourhood’s many corner shops.“

What I'm Loving' This Week ~ BiteMe Cupcakes, Bangalore

BiteMe Cupcake Company
100 ft Road, Indiranagar

I’d seen Divya’s recipes for cupcakes, had heard about Bite Me’s cupcakes and pupcakes when she started her home bakery and now that Kingsley and Divya have started a store on 100 ft Road, I knew I had to try it.

Wonsaponatime - October 2010, to be precise - K attempted to get me cupcakes. He couldn’t find any so he convinced Spoonful of Sugar to bake chocolate muffins and add sprinkles on top. That was the first and last time I ate “cupcakes” in Bangalore.

Till last night, that is.

K and I hopped over to the beautiful little store located opposite Chroma on 100 ft road. Kingsley was around, upping the geeky quotient of cupcakes? :) And there they were: Butterscotch and Blueberry and Cookies & Cream and Dulce de leche and Red Velvet and Orange Marmalade. Nope, not my helpful elves. Just little bites of yumminess. 

So! No more muffins pretending and aspiring to be cupcakes. Yay!

Moist (maybe a tad too moist?) and light, the cupcakes are delightful. The flavours aren’t overwhelming and being perfectly bite sized, you don’t have to worry about flavour boredom. They also hit the sweet spot of being well-priced - Rs 100 for 3. Is that a steal or what?!

Kingsley mentioned that they would start serving coffee soon so that’s a bonus. If you’re looking for plug-points because you want to hang out at a place that’s “startup friendly”, fret not - they’ve got it covered too.

Be warned, there’s also a downside to all this awesomeness: You start off eating one and before you know it, you’ve got fingers sticky with 4 out of the 6 flavours in the box. Many a slip between the cup(cake) and the lip and all that. Heh.

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They’re open from 11AM to 9PM every day. (Except Tuesdays, I think)
You can reach out to them on Twitter at @BiteMeCompany

Delux Coffeeworks, Cape Town

Delux Coffeeworks, Church Street, Cape Town
I thought I saw Leonard Cohen in the window.