What: Newly launched Challah bread at The Baker’s Dozen, 9 Jayant Apartment, Appasaheb Marathe Marg, Prabhadevi, call 08655331313.

Why: This Jewish bread, braided and sweet, rises to the occasion of World Baking Day at The Baker’s Dozen tomorrow. Pick up a loaf of this moveable yeast or get free samples with other purchases.

When: Buy now and keep walking. Challah challah, pudhe challah.

Food Bulletin

During a walk around Kala Ghoda, we noticed the board for Chao Ban, the new restaurant that will be replacing Joss in about ten days. A quick peek around revealed interiors as simple as its predecessor - all wood and white.

From the guys behind Serafina and Irish House, we're told that Chao Ban will not be a Pan Asian restaurant but only serve Chinese cuisine, so Joss hopefuls, no more Thai Curry and sushi. Expect traditional Chinese cuisine with a contemporary twist, a separate dim sum menu and no famous chefs.

We'll let you know when it's up and running. Pak joy!

Getting there: 30, K. Dubhash Marg, Next to Chetana Restaurant, Kala Ghoda

After a big night of drinking in Hong Kong, this writer remembers climbing many, many stairs, long and winding, which finally led to a 24 hour neon canteen-like space, where revelers were grabbing a bowl of noodles before heading home.

We were reminded of this strange Murakami-ish place when we went to check out Pallette, The Urban Kitchen last night, a self service restaurant located at Kamala Mills. With all white interiors that are perhaps too bright on the eyes for a post work meal, the restaurant offers a hygienic set up with numbered tables, no fuss cutlery and a medium sized menu.

Juicing It

Armed with a perpetually hungry friend who works in the area, we got straight down to ordering. The peach iced tea and a freshly squeezed watermelon juice were prepared while our eyes adjusted to the interior and scoped out the rest of the menu. The juice was just the right amount of sweet, but the watery iced tea was a disappointment with no real taste.

Slurping on, we checked out Pallette's list of options that offers mainly snacks like burgers, wraps, sandwiches and salads, but also caters to the afternoon rush with Indian, continental and Chinese meal combos. Here's what we ordered: a smoked salmon bagel, a crispy chicken hamburger, a pepperoni pizza and a chicken mint wrap.

Patty Smith

The generous serving of fresh salmon was cause for great excitement, but the bagel was a little too doughy for our liking. This six inch pizza with a thin layer of cheese and pepperoni, was tasty, arrived quickly and at Rs 149, was good value for money. The crispy chicken hamburger came next, served with a bag of Lays chips. Your regular burger, it had the usual suspects: mayo, lettuce, a slice of tomato and a juicy patty. While the first bite into it tasted pretty good, we were disappointed to note that it featured a pre-frozen patty. Finally, the chicken and mint wrap was a fancy kathi roll with diced bits of chicken and onion in mint sauce that was full of flavor and fancily presented on a plate with chips on the side. We finished the meal off with some caramel custard that was yum and a very creamy chocolate mousse.

Now Pallette isn’t a place you’d make a trip to Lower Parel for, but if you work in the area and are tired of your office canteen, stop by here for a change. Maybe after dark it turns into that noodle slurping all-night diner where Murakami-coloured characters drift in and out of reality. One Hard Boiled Wonderland, please!

Getting there: Trade World, C Wing, Kamala City, Senapati Bapat Marg, Lower Parel, call 6749700, 10 am to 11 pm, Rs 850 for a meal for two(without alcohol).

bpb reviews anonymously and pays for its own meals.

As the week inches by, slow and so hot, here's something to look forward to at the end of it: alcoholic ice popsicles that only surface at a bar on the weekends.

Recently launched at Woodside Inn, these have so far been available in two flavours - Green Apple and Beer and Watermelon and Mint - but will be rotated on a regular basis.The colour of leaves and flowers, Sitting in wine glasses, look how pretty the popsicles are! Freeze frame, please.

Getting there: Oriental Mansion, Wodehouse Road, Opposite Regal Cinema, Colaba, 022 2287 5752.

Available on Friday, Saturday and Sunday for Rs 250 plus

If you look closely at your Mumbai snapshots, you’ll find that a kathi roll has been quite an intrinsic part of your friend circle. Pull out that Polaroid of you all sitting on the hood of the car post partying; picture your quick meal before a movie; go back to that Instagram of last Sunday’s comfort food. The Roomali wrapped snugly around chicken has been rolling with your hommies for a while now.

We had both, Instagram and friends ready when we went by Roll in Goll, the latest entrant to sign up for Carter Road’s culinary chaos. On a Saturday night we went to this week old establishment next to Maroosh, to find plastic stool seating outside the kitchen area and a menu offering kebabs, rolls, sandwiches, pizza, milkshake, juice and many many typos. Slightly cheaper than the other high roll-ers down the road, we thought this would be a great place to line our stomachs before Saturday night drinks.

Asterix and the Golls

A bunch of dishes on the menu were not available, so we ordered what was - chicken malai tikka roll instead of the butter chicken one, paneer tikka instead of paneer kalimirch and the chicken tikka pizza instead of the ham and chicken one. We were also curious to try the chiku-choco-kaju milkshake (mostly because it’s fun to say) and the Zeeny juice, a blend of strawberry, pineapple and lychee.

What: bpb & Jamjar Diner’s Breakfast and Bloody Mary class at JamJar Diner, 7 A and B, Aram Nagar 2, JP Road, Versova, call 26358880, Rs 1,400, to book a seat email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , limited spots available.

Why: Because why wouldn’t you want to spend Saturday in a blue house by the sea where book shelves slope and a juke box sings for you while you learn how to mix and drink alcoholic Bloody Marys and virgin apple-beat-bell-pepper juice. After this, in a hands-on session (two people to a work station) you’ll learn to whip up eggs Kejriwal, plus classic as well as ricotta-citrus pancakes from scratch.

When: Get egged on Saturday May 25, 9.30 am to 11 am.

What: Dairy Don, opposite Mithibai College, Vile Parle (W), sandwich ice creams are priced between 50 to 80.

Why: Now we love the paan ice-cream at Pali Bhavan, but if you’d like a cheaper version, we scoped out this one at the month-old Dairy Don: a cold betel nut leaf with crunchy tutti fruity and a malai ice cream centre. We suggest you skip the synthetic-y ice cream sandwiches and try the thandai and blueberry flavours instead.

When: You want summer to paan out in a certain way.

Postcard from yesterday’s hot Scouting trip: The sun might sear. Still, wish you were here.

During one particularly sweltering scout in Bandra’s Union Park area, a cheery green board with promises of fruit juice appeared in waves like a mirage, triggering off hallucinations of tall glasses filled with jewel coloured juices, squiggly straws and pretty fruit crowns.

We walked past Nido (the new restaurant from the guys behind Aurus that is currently conducting food trials), Olive Bar & Kitchen, and got to Apple A Day, a tiny new sliver of a takeaway place that sells fresh fruit juice, health shots, soups and salads.

Doctor’s Orders

Apple a Day has the usual list of fruit and vegetable drinks - fresh squeezes, juice blends, smoothies, diet soups and salads. We visited a few hours before it opened, so all we could try were the juices and shots.

We got the tomato-watermelon juice blend, a karela shot, and to keep the doctor away, a freshly squeezed apple juice.

What really got our juices flowing was how fresh everything is- the ingredients are chopped up and tossed in a blender right in front of you, so you’re not left wondering how long it might have been sitting out for. The tomato-watermelon blend was nice and pulpy, but warm and the freshly squeezed apple juice had chunks of apple that left this writer with a clogged straw. The karela shot is exactly what it is, with no other ingredients to offset the bitter taste, so be prepared. Also, no sugar  is added to any of the juices unless the customer asks for it. We’re going back for the banana-basil juice blend, papaya yoghurt smoothie and sprout bhel.

Semla, Simnel, Sambhals.

While this sounds like a set of music instruments or wildlife reserve sightings, these are really dishes you are most likely to find on Mercy Nayagam’s dining table.

A Malay national who came to India more than twenty years ago and fell in love, Mercy runs a catering service that focuses on Malay food, and most recently, Eastern European goodies. Party of four for Prague? Czech!

While traditional Malay food like Sambhals (spicy chilly pastes) Rendang (meat stews) and fingers foods like chicken satay remain her forte, Mercy is willing to experiment with a recipe of your choice, no matter how adventurous. So if you saw a dish on Masterchef that you don’t have the time to try out, this home caterer will perfect it and whip it up for your next dinner party.

Sweet Angel of Mercy

Inspired by her daughter’s travels in the region, Mercy added some unusual European treats to her menu this Easter - Russian Kulich (yeasted bread cake) Swedish dessert Semla (traditional marzipan and whipped cream pastries) and Simnel cake (a light fruit cake with marzipan).

Mercy runs this entire operation from her home in Andheri West and can cater for up to fifty people. If you’re in the area, she will deliver the food to you, but be prepared to make an Oshiwara run if you don’t live in the neighbourhood.

Disclaimer: We were recognized by the proprietors of Mamagoto when this review was being conducted, but paid for our own meal. Also, Mamagoto is on the Coup Card in Mumbai so remember to score your 15% off food and alcohol when you visit! 

We are starving as we write this review, fueled only by a listless dinner eight hours ago and with no breakfast in sight. So excuse us, dear reader, if we end up fetishizing our last big meal, which happens to be Saturday dinner at Mamagoto, the Pan Asian chain that (finally) made the crossing from Delhi to Ghatkopar and Bandra (where we visited) this weekend.

Sweet Creams

Not that the fat, juicy pork spare ribs here need any embellishment: they shone all on their own, arriving at our table glamorous and glistening, coated in “secret sauce” and their own juices, amongst the best we’ve eaten in recent memory. They also made a nice contrast to the sunny appetizers that had come before, crunchy rock shrimp tempura that tasted best with an extra dash of salt and lots of the accompanying chili mayo; and basil vegetables in little lettuce cups, spicy and complex, with an underlying funk you rarely find in vegetarian dishes.

Finish these off with a two Bangkok gin and tonics from the bar and a slice of caramel cake, elegantly restrained except for a jubilant smear of intensely sweet icing, and you’ve got a meal worth dreaming about on a breakfast-less Monday morning.

Reality Bites

That’s the good stuff, but we did have some misses as well. Mamagoto takes special pride in their bowls, meals of noodles, rice, veggies and meat thrown together into sticky, messy, often delish mixes. The night we visited, however, our khausway was strictly average, overtly soupy and lacking the textural variety that comes from adding in onions and peanuts, too much fried garlic. It is a dish for the lazy diner. Chocolate mud cake was similarly disappointing, accompanied by a small scoop of vanilla ice cream, more Birdy’s than Bourdain.

The service, too, was cringingly chaotic – we had wine we didn’t order delivered to our table, long lags and much prodding between courses, even a painting that slid off the wall. To be fair, the restaurant hadn’t officially opened over the weekend, but they were accepting walk-in guests, and we wish they had been better prepared for the deluge.

End Notes

Mamagoto Mumbai is identical to its Delhi twin in most respects including menu and motif, which means you’ll see huge, intricately limned, brightly coloured graphics of a fierce Asian ninja and yellow striped tigers splashed all over the space and stationary here. The Mumbai décor is a little more evolved though, with glimpses of industrial-chic and large, plush chairs that vastly improve the large space on Hill Road, formerly occupied by Nature’s Basket.

We suggest you go, taking along a healthy dollop of patience as they work through the teething problems. As for us, we’re going to hunt up some breakfast.

Getting there: Gazebo House, ground floor, 133 Hill Road, Bandra (W), call 26552600; and T-34, 3^rd Floor, R-City Mall, Ghatkopar (W), call 66401860, approximately Rs 3,500 for a meal for two, 15% off food and alcohol for Coup Card members.