Good food ends with good talk
I have to tell start this blog with the long and adventurous journey we took to get here. We meandered our way through what seemed like endless bylanes of Worli driving mostly in circles. We were lured here by the promise of board game night - an initiative by Time Out.
Cool Chef looks very much like a residential bungalow, both from the inside and out. The ambiance is great, very reminiscent of a down-scaled Pali Village Cafe. Surprise, surprise, when got there at a quarter to eight the place was empty - and when I say empty I mean there were no waiters, managers, not a soul. For a second we were worried we were trespassing. We actually had to call the phone to get a waiter to emerge from the kitchen.
Straight from work and starving, we ordered one of everything - which might be an indication of how limited the menu is - a pasta, a burger, a dim sum and a pizza. The meat burger (Rs. 200) turned out to be a mini burger. It was quite adorable, well conceptualized and tasty - good meat with a drizzling of a sauce I couldn't figure out, but was outright mouthwatering. That's about it on the plus side. The penne alfredo (Rs. 200) was average at best and the steamed bao bun (3 for Rs. 150) tasted like flour. As we were leaving the restaurant we saw a bunch of framed reviews hailing the awesome dimsums. Bad day perhaps? Or maybe just wrong ordering. No complaints about the plain cheese pizza (Rs. 100) though - not gourmet from any angle but comparable to a Dominoes thin crust. Having had a good experience with the first mini burger, we ordered another one - this time a barbecue chicken burger. It turned out to be disappointing with large uncut onions (and both quite tiny for the Rs. 200 we paid for them - when I say mini, I mean palm sized)
Relating this experience would be incomplete without telling you about game night. Hats off to the concept! What a great idea of people coming together on Mondays to play board games. Along with a few rounds of the usual Jenga (we almost broke a record!) and Taboo, we tried a variation of Pictionary called Pictionary Man. The variation being you have to draw on a Pilsbury dough boy shaped object. Turns out we were dismally bad at it. (We dint get to play a lot of the fun-looking games since the guy told us the 4 of us weren't enough.)
But game night without alcohol is just not the same. We hope they get a liquor license which could turn game night around - in fact even just wines could turn the whole place around - as a bigger version of ivy and with board games!
All in all, I would say great concept but disappointing execution.
Food: 2.5
Ambiance : 3.5
Service: 2.5
Damage: Rs 1200 for 4
Thadani House, 329/A, next to Indian Coast Guard Headquarters, Worli Village
2430-1127
Other Reviews:
4 out of 5 stars on Burrp
Time Out Mumbai says Cool Chef Café has many things going for it: quiet alcoves for private dinners, reasonable pricing and an eagerness to please.
Mumbaikar lists their favorite on the menu : BBQ Chicken POP2 Burger, Pepperoni Pizza (thin crust) and the Chicken and Mushroom Bao Buns (a difference of taste opinions it seems)
Looking forward to:
One more Monday game night, this time a wine few bottles down at Ivy, playing some new and interesting games, and maybe ordering differently?