Toit Bar & Restaurant in Indiranagar, Bangalore

Food: ★★☆☆☆

Ambience: ★★★★☆
Service: ★★★☆☆

So... this is not really the place I would recommend to eat out, but the building has its own charm and is a great place to hang out with your friends to have a couple of beers (and the wine wasn't bad, either!).  We were there around 8;30pm, and the place was pretty packed. The downside is that there are some huge party groups and boy... they are very noisy. So, if you can tolerate the noise, go for it. They also have their own brewery (not yet ready but will be at the end of July they said), so maybe you can check it after August.

  

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First Hookah experience in my life in Bangalore!

I missed the chance to experience Hookah when I visited Dubai last December, and I have been wanting to try it. Guess what? Hookah is pretty popular around here in Bangalore as well. And, according to the wiki, the initial trace of Hookah has been found not in an Arabic country but in the northwestern part of India!

The other day was a gathering of my hubby's college alumni here in Bangalore, and I piggy backed on him to enjoy a couple glasses of wine at the sky bar in downtown Bangalore. And, there it was! Hooka! So we tried :D

Btw, I HATE cigarettes. Well, I smoked for about 3 years when I was working in Tokyo (approx. 20 years ago), but ever since then I have been avoiding (or more like hating) smoking. In fact, I get some kind of allergic reaction when I am around lots of smoke. So, I was a bit worried that I may not enjoy it after all, but hey you need to try new things, right?

Hookah comes in a whole bunch of different flavors. We chose blackberry, and it was the right selection! The smoke was not as strong as cigarettes (maybe 70% lighter). You enjoy the aroma and flavor and that's it. You breathe in and breathe out - just like when you do yoga :-)  The whole experience was GREAT. If you haven't tried Hookah, I would highly suggest trying it at least once even if you don't smoke cigarettes.

Btw, I also enjoyed the conversation with my hubby's almuni folks. They gave us all kinds of tips on India. Fun to talk with someone who came back to India after exploring the western culture. It was also fun to see my hubby who graduated in the early 1970's talking with folks who just went to the same (but probably much different) school more recently. Well, my hubby was also very young when he went to college (he is one of these genius kids in the US who skipped grades, and he was out of college at the age of 19), so the whole experience he had back then must had been a lot different. Anyway, it was lots of fun!

A quick visit back to Japan

Just got back from a 10-day trip to Japan (thanks to my hubby and Babu for picking me up so late at the airport!).

Japan was just great as usual despite the post-311 anxiety (they are now calling the March 11th earthquake as "three-one-one") and incredible humidity and high temperatures (it was above 35C degree almost every day while I was there!!). People are still concerned about the nuclear plants and also have to conserve energy and thus limit the usage of air conditioners (in that heatwave!), but 311 definitely restored positive energy in Japan. Oh btw, all my Japanese friends that I met were flabbergasted when I told them how Bangalore was much cooler than Japan. And yep, it is much much cooler.

Anyway, after living in India for 2 months, I appreciated the modern infrastructure in Japan. Sorry India, but I know you know, and I also know that you are on top of it by looking at your great "12th 5 Year Plan." Way to go India! I also enjoyed the variety of food, and most of all the clean sidewalks and streets in Japan.

Bangalore is fairly great in terms of food variety, but still you can only get certain kinds of western food (mostly Italian) and Chinese food. Japanese food, such as Sushi, is hard to come by in this town as well as other goodies like all kinds of noodle dishes (ramen, udon, soba), Don-dishes (katsudon, oyakodon, unadon), tempura, or any other basic Japanese food. I explored 2.5 Japanese restaurants here in Bangalore so far. Why 2.5? Because the one called "Shiro" in UB City sounded Japanese but was not at all Japanese except that they did have not-so-fantastic-sushi. The other two were authentic, but yet there is a limit to the ingredients they can get here, especially sake. So, I was happy to explore all kinds of food in Japan.