THE INCURABLE FOODIE: Pizza Hut

Location: Phoenix Market City, Kurla West

The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of pizzas is Dominos. What can beat their goeey, cheesy, full of flavour, and CHEAP pizzas right? But one fine day, when it came to quenching our pizza thirst, my foodie buddies and I decided to be a little magnanimous and give Pizza Hut a fair shot.

So at first sight you quite like the ambiance  with cheery red couches and some large semi-circular tables. The menu is well designed and made me feel like maybe Pizza Hut would be able to compare with Dominos after all. They have a good variety of beverages and appetizers, a fine assortment of pastas and sauces and impressive offerings in the pizza space- a host of crusts and toppings to choose from and the best thing being a Gourmet Thin Crust Pizza section for the indulgent types. But wait a minute, why couldn't any of this taste as good as it looked on the menu?!

So we started with a Cheese and Jalapeno Poppers served with a sweet chilly dip and Onion Rings. The poppers were satisfactory and the dips were particularly zesty, I'll give it to them. The onion rings weren't, they were too oily, bland and needed some flavour. No problem, just the first dish we thought. But keeping up this composure was becoming difficult because the service there was pathetic. At first I thought maybe they were understaffed but clearly it wasn't so because I could see 2-3 of them wandering aimlessly here- there. The young girl serving us seemed joyful and likeable at first but when she repeatedly forgot to show up to take our order or clear the table it was getting a bit tedious to sit there and wait for her.

For the main course we ordered a Pasta and Bread. The pasta completely lacked flavour, was unusually dry and required generous amounts of tomato ketchup, tobasco, oregano, and salt to go down. The next disaster was a stuffed crust veggie pizza, you can't go wrong with a stuffed crust pizza right? If nothing else, you'll enjoy it for the cheese. How wrong was I?! It was stuffed only at the edges, the part of the pizza I usually never eat, and I wouldn't have minded had it been melting gooey cheese, but theirs was lumpy, thick and could only be seen, not tasted. The toppings weren't that great either! I could only take this much, especially after we were joined by a group of 10-12 children on the next table celebrating a birthday, you know what I mean?

We walked out quite disappointed and thinking how Pizza Hut could manage to serve food this quality when its competitors were upping their act so finely at every stage! Gross lack of ambition I must say! While it's a very moderately priced place, with a meal for two costing about Rs.600- Rs.1000, hey don't make me feel robbed of even that much! It's time the place realizes that their typical target group is more than willing to shell out good bucks to get a good meal. I'd any day prefer having overpaid for food that I loved than paying anything for stuff like theirs!

THE INCURABLE FOODIE: An Introduction

"So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all your problems for the time being."

          -Franz Kafka


As the title says, I'm an incurable foodie. I live to eat. Comments about my small appetite do not deter my love and I look forward to every weekend to try something new and exciting. Thankfully I live in a city like Mumbai, where every street offers a few dozens of restaurants and searching for good food joints is a treasure hunt. You will find the most delectable bites in the most unexpected places. And while I am on my journey, why not share it with you?

In this series I review some of my favourite and some not so favourite eateries and make my experiences more meaningful!

Revelations of the year 2012

The year 2012 has not been one of my favourites. But they say, tough times make tough people and so I am thankful for everything that happened because I'm a wiser person today.

This year proved to me how constant change is. You may be on top of the world now but it takes a mere second to change that. It's taught me to appreciate every single thing that I have been blessed with and not take anything for granted. It is very important never to pass up an opportunity to help others. Because we live in a karmic universe and karma is fast. There'll be plenty of times when you will need somebody to help you out, however safe and secure things may seem right now. You should feel deserving of that help when it is extended to you. 

Our professional lives and personal lives are very very different. It is crucial to realize this fact and keep them separate. I'm friendly, cheerful and a very straightforward person. I do not like to put on a face. But to succeed professionally you need to play a whole different game. The key to creating the perfect workplace environment for you lies in the following few things I learnt, very early on in my career thankfully. 

1) Never participate in office gossip. Smile and nod along but don't join in. Never take sides. You cannot take back your words and they are sure to come bite you at the worst possible time.

2) Build a wall around yourself. Do not allow anyone to walk into your personal space. Chatter about your family, marriage, friends etc are best left outside office doors. I do not imply here that you walk around as a stuck up snob who will not talk to anyone. The trick is in making people feel comfortable around you but never getting too comfortable yourself! Go figure ;)

3) If you sense bad feelings in your relationship with a colleague who matters, talk about it, communicate. Very politely, ask him/her, "Is there a problem? I would definitely want to get it out of our way if that's possible."

4) Never ever get drunk at office parties! You do not want your boss seeing you swaying uncontrollably or dropping things right? :D
(P.S. All the above rules become invalid if you're among the lucky ones who have found a best friend for life at work. Be very sure about that though :P)

And the most  important thing. Your life is your own, you belong to only you and are not answerable to anyone but you. So be brave and take decisions to change that which makes you unhappy. Even if it means that some people are going to be displeased. Whatever you do, there will be one set of people who will make you doubt, fret and worry and another that will quietly support you and help you in every way they can. Ignore the former, hold on to the latter and go for it! After darkness comes the morning, it's the law of life. 

BOOK EXCERPT: Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert

Then he went on to explain in a mixture of English, Italian and hand gestures, that every city has a single word that defines it, that identifies most people who live there. If you could read people’s thoughts as they were passing you on the streets of any given place you would discover that most of them are thinking that same thought. Whatever that majority thought might be- that is the word of the city. And if your personal word does not match the word of the city then you don’t really belong there.

Giulio asked, ‘What’s the word in New York City?”

I thought about this for a moment, then decided. “It’s a verb, of course. I think it’s ACHIEVE.”

(Which is subtly but significantly different from the word in Los Angeles, I believe which is also a verb: SUCCEED. Later, I will share this whole theory with my Swedish friend Sofie, and she will offer her opinion that the word on the streets of Stockholm is CONFORM, which depresses both of us.)

I asked Guilio, “What’s the word in Naples?” He knows the south of Italy well.

“FIGHT”, he decides. “What was the word in your family when you were growing up?”

That one was difficult. I was trying to think of a single word that somehow combines both FRUGAL and IRREVERENT. But Guilio was already on the next and most obvious question: “What’s your word?”

MAGAZINE EXCERPT: THINGS GIRLS DON'T KNOW ABOUT GUYS from FEMINA, DECEMBER, 2006, by VARDHAN KONDVIKAR

OK. This list is a bit self-defeating because girls know much more about guys than we ourselves do. Frankly we’re not that complex. We’re like dogs – give us food, a cozy place to sleep, walkies every day and a few belly–scratches and we’ll chug along fine. But, like dogs, we have a few secrets, some as smelly as the dead rat under the bed and some not. And finally, let me stress that this list (I have picked the ones that I enjoyed most) was compiled through a fairly limited poll, and there aren’t strict rules for male behavior, but then there are always some weird guys who won’t agree with me…

We don’t lust after every second girl. We lust after every third girl.

We really really love our cars. More than you’ll ever know. And saying “You love that heap more than you love me” isn’t a good course of action, trust me.

We do get pissed off when women are mistreated. We aren’t often vocal about it, but rape, wife-beating, dowry deaths and female infanticide infuriate us. You don’t need to dominate women to be a man.

We don’t drive our cars that fast to show you how macho we are. In fact, most of the times, when there are girls in the car, we actually drive more carefully and gently than when we’re alone.

We don’t like cockroaches either. We may not scream and flap our hands at them, but that doesn’t mean we don’t find them dirty and annoying. Please regard any squashed cockroach as a favour worth repaying at some point, not a constitutional right.

We actually do find swearing funny. Really! We swear when we’re totally upset and then have a big belly laugh over particularly imaginative curses afterwards.

We don’t all love Keira Knightley. She’s pretty, yes, but she’s also dreadfully skinny and simpers too much. If you’re tempted to lose so much weight that you look like her, you’re an idiot.

We will not run screaming if you have pimples or frizzy hair or have put on one half of a gram overnight, so don’t believe the ads. And most of the times, we won’t even notice.

We do gossip. We love it, in fact. Bitching about our colleagues is immensely entertaining and we do it every chance we get.

We don’t care that much if our boss is a woman. If she’s hot, by all means let her stay!

We don’t think all pretty girls are stupid. Frankly, we know the female of the species is deadlier than the male, and we just need to feel we have some sort of chance of survival.

We will never grow out of playing computer games. They’re part of life. Accept it. And trying to wean your man off them is a very bad idea – you’ll just end up with a depressed, moping bore who weeps for his Playstation in the middle of the night. Now you don’t want that, do you?

We like babies too. We also think they’re cute and cuddly and generally smell nice. We just don’t get the point of getting all gooey over anything that’s bald and wets its pants.

We don’t really like going up against big muscular guys that you pick fights with. We can feel our teeth being loosened and our heads kicked in, and however much we love, just pipe down, okay?

Our messes are not messes. The way clothes are carefully piled in seemingly random order, the books lying around in unsteady piles, all make sense to us, and our delicate sense of orientation can be disturbed horrible if you try and tidy up for us.

We really aren’t listening when you talk about curtains. Even the ones who appear to, and can actually give coherent answers, are operating completely on autopilot. Any such coherent responses stem from the same survival instinct that causes us to freeze when we see a lion and avoid the dark.

Guys do cry. It takes a lot to do it, but it happens. And oh, if it does, never ever remind a guy of that. No, not even when you’re telling him how cute he is.

We love it when you dress up. Sure, it takes a long time, but the results are generally worth it. More than anything, that’s because we like it when you’re proud of yourself.

We’re really, seriously, terminally terrified of asking a girl out. At least, if she matters and this isn’t just for a date. So give us a break, huh?

We don’t know jack about girls. Girls are, on the whole, complex, thinking creatures, with more coloured wires than the average bomb. If we don’t get it right, don’t explode, okay?

http://www.mid-day.com/news/2009/mar/070309-Pramod-Mutalik-Shri-Ram-Sene-Oscar-awards-A-R-Rahman-pubs-dating-Gandhiji-western-nations.htm

Check out this interview of Pramod Mutalik, Shri Ram Sene, by Anil Thackraney, Mid-Day, dated Saturday, 7th March (Pg.6).

I can’t decide if I was more saddened or amused when I read it but I was definitely not surprised. Read it and you’ll realize that now is the time, more than ever, for us to shake off our stupor, sit up and really take notice.

WEIRD IS NORMAL

I was waiting for a bus at the bus stop the other day and there was this girl there, who would cross her fingers every time a bus came along. I was at the bus stop for 20 – 25 minutes and she did this for every bus that stopped there. Initially I thought it was the anticipation but she did it more like a habit. Her face remained expressionless. Only the fingers would cross and uncross. It’s my favourite pastime observing people like this and getting to know the quirks of their personalities.

I have a friend who hates it if you fold your arms across your chest while talking to her. Before you even realize you have done it, her forehead starts forming creases. This other friend is so terribly petrified of lizards, she freezes if she sees one and the discomfort is beyond normalcy. You can see the disgust forming within her and pouring itself onto her face. My 10th std. Math tuition teacher can wake up at just about any time without ever needing to use the alarm. Yet another friend is always fidgeting with something or the other, always. I don’t think he can stay still even if it were to save his own life.

I am nobody to talk about other people though. I am full of quirks myself. The weirdest of them all is my unreasonable attachment to my old stuff. Old jeans, tees I’ve brought years back, hair clips, watches, books, bags, accessories, anything. I can’t bring myself to get rid of these things, however useless their existence seems. I lost my stationary pouch last month (I was using it since the 8th std.). It was mourning day for me. I have this pair of pajamas that I really really love. They are cool pink and white Winnie-The-Pooh pajamas. I have worn them every day of my life since I- don’t- remember- when. They have gone threadbare and colour drained but I still love them. My mom gets particularly disgusted with this. When she can’t get me to lose my old clothes, she discreetly hands them over to our housemaid. Usually, if I fume and fret or go on a hunger strike, I get my things back, but sometimes even that does not work. I’m sure my pajamas are going to meet the same fate one of these days. :(

I am very superstitious about my amethyst- replaced- by- sapphire ring. I will not be caught dead without it.

I eat very slowly. I am famous for this, ask anybody who knows me. For this reason I avoid socializing over lunches and dinners. Doing so would make me hugely unpopular and I’d understand :). For this reason also I am extremely grateful to all my lunch buddies, right from school time. They have never complained (not on my face at least). Thanks you guys! I am trying to kick this habit; have not succeeded much so far. I’d rather skip my meals than rush through them.

Almost all the nightmares I have ever had have something to do with tigers. I am fascinated by lions. I love watching them on TV and have even seen quite a few real ones but the very thought of tigers freaks me out completely.

I cannot stand people biting their nails. Try it in front of me sometime and you’ll know. By the way have you heard the village version of the Rocking and Reeling track from Billu? (Imagine the plight of SRK over the name his movie was finally reduced to! Billu! Ha!) In the song, there’s this part where he romances the action of his lady-love biting her nails and skin and what-not!! EWWWWW!! EWWWWWW!!!

I never have playlists when Iistening to music on my PC. I choose one track and then play it in the repeat mode. The track keeps looping, sometimes for hours and sometimes for days together. My latest obsession is a track by Rihanna (‘I hate that...’). Its queued up on my WMP since last Tuesday I think.

I’m terrified of the rockets they burst during Diwali. Every time I hear the noise of a rocket taking off, I fear it’s going to land in my house and the curtains are going to catch fire or something. And when that does not happen, the relief is nothing short of what you would experience if you near-missed a gunshot, I’m not exaggerating. Diwali is a high- stress time for me.

I can go on and on but I’d also like to know about you. What are your quirks? Tell us a little about them (in the form of a comment, since that’s the only interactive tool I have as of now). It will make for some great reading material.