Foodie Jaunts

When I started this blog, I did not want to restrict it to just recipes, which is why I occasionally went on some Foodie Jaunts. Some days back my brother Aroop Bose - who is a foodie besides also being this blog’s designer and photographer - offered to contribute to the Foodie Jaunts section; I had no hesitation in accepting his offer. So let’s join my brother on this foodelicious journey. 

Lunch at Mainland China

by Aroop Bose

Among my favourite eating places is Mainland China which is a well known restaurant chain. The first Mainland China restaurant opened in the 1990s at Sakinaka located in the western suburbs of Bombay and had raised quite a few eyebrows for this place was considered unsuitable for a high profile Chinese restaurant. The restaurant became popular for its good quality Chinese food and today Mainland China outlets are spread all over Bombay and also in other cities as
well.

Recently we visited Mainland China’s Bandra outlet located on Linking Road for lunch. When we were told by their staff that they have a buffet we were tempted to try it and are glad that we did so. The meal began with seemingly unending servings of starters – vegetable salt and pepper, grilled chicken, potatoes fried, fried wantons, diced chicken, chicken dim sums and lemon coriander vegetable soup. It is not possible for me to describe each item but all I can say is that every item was a delight and the soup did not taste like anything I tried before and was really good. They also had jasmine tea and iced tea, we requested them to serve the iced tea with the main course but it never came for reasons unknown to us, despite the fact that about half a dozen members of the staff were attending us. 

While eating the starters one can easily get carried away and keep eating, after all they were yummy; we had to bear in mind that the main course was waiting and after that were the desserts waiting to be devoured. The main course comprised Yuling Hot & Numbling chicken (whatever that was it tasted superb), crab in butter garlic sauce, shrimp in pickled chilli sauce, fish in black pepper sauce, mixed vegetables in Chinese parsley sauce, tofu & mushroom in soya garlic sauce, four treasure vegetables in spicy hunan sauce, sweet and sour vegetables; all this to be eaten with fried rice and hakka noodles. The advantage of being a non-vegetarian is that you can try out both veg and non-veg items. Shrimp in pickled chilli sauce was very mildly hot (I mean not temperature but what is called ‘teekha’ in Hindi) and the flavours were quite balanced, nothing overpowering and tasted great. Fish in black pepper sauce was delicately flavoured and was delicious. The crab dish had a slight fishy smell which was a bit disappointing.

When you have a spread like this you have got to eat wisely if you wish to try every item that is being served including the dessert. The items in the dessert section was far too many for me to remember; there was caramel custard, soufflés, mousse, tarts, ice cream in four flavours, pastries and some more items whose names I do not recall, and these were just too many to taste. For Rs. 664 (including taxes) can I say that we got value for money? Certainly, it was surely a great experience and I would like to do it again before they decide revise the prices upwards. If we were big eaters it would have been better value for money but alas, we eat small portions and have to be satisfied by that.