White wine and sea breeze.

I have been away from Mumbai for 5 years- which has taken a major toll on my knowledge of it. Places to eat, roads to take and things to check out.  I always depend on my friends to take me to the right places at the right times. And whenever we go I always find myself in Bandra west, consistently like clockwork. Bandra is the ultimate hangout destination. It has the sea, the food and the people.

So this weekend we decided to get a bit posh- how about some wine. I was surprised, wine isn’t exactly the drink for outings. More for classy parties or an exquisite gift that your teatotaling boss cant drink. I was not at all excited.  I was in for an amazing surprise.

We went to Ivy wine tavern in Bandra West, flagship store of Sula wines. On offer were wines not available even in stores. Amazing ambience with a guitar playing singer filling in for the background music, which was really good. Requests for old and new English songs were rendered amazingly well. This might hit the wallet was the first thought that came to my mind. Again I was to be wrong. The prices which I thought would be per glass was actually per bottle! My experienced friend summoned a  white wine – Vin Apple Blanc – an apple infused white wine from the Menu which nicely displayed its offerings light and breezey, fruity, full bodied etc for newbies such as myself.

So how was it? Nice, very very nice. I don’t know anything about Wine, Vintage, Dryness etc etc. It just tasted damn good. The apple flavor was there yet wasn’t overbearing. Foodwise things looked still great. The Menu covered finger foods to full blown meals. All in all its an amazing wine experience. We didn’t realize how quick we finished the bottle – we went for another white twice as expensive, if I remember correctly a chenin blan. But this  one  didn’t quite reach the level set by the first. Not bad though.

Guitar guy came our way and my pal requested November Rain by GNR, I am sure if I brought my date to this venue I would have had a very very happy date.

I usually never dedicate lines to a crowd in a restaurant. But what a crowd! A very very heavy presence of the fairer sex in a very classy crowd. A lot of foreigners and seemingly artsy crowd made this experience very unique. As one of my cohorts rightly said, I fell in love many times since I stepped into this restaurant.

This place is a definite must do. If you are in Mumbai and don’t mind a bit of wine this cannot be missed.  If you have a date and don’t take her to this place, you need to get punched, in the face, by your date.

We didn’t eat our fill because we had to reserve place for Carter;s blue at carter road. Shawarma rules and Carter’s Blue makes it real good. But the most amazing and mindblasting element of this shawarma is eating them while sitting on the sea wall facing the Arabian sea, the tepid humid sea breeze in your face and a wonderful youthful Mumbai crowd having a good time. Its 12.15 am in the night and people still couldn’t find parking along the road. But some of us have to go to Office, I felt lucky that I had a 5 day work week.

One more wonderful night in Mumbai – god bless this city.