Fork Lift

There’s a new place in the city where ceiling-to-floor windows are draped with wispy curtains and stretch across the walls, where wooden tables stand on floors invoking piano keys, where the chatter is festive but never fast enough to outpace the jazz. And where the food is chic, but not without being comforting.  

This is The Table, Colaba’s newest restaurant that’s fancy enough for fine dine, and yet warm enough to welcome you after a long day at work. This split-level restaurant is delightfully bottom-heavy, with a ground floor designed for drinking. Here, wine goblet in hand, you can slink across a loung-y corridor lined with leprechaun green sofas or inch along an extended wooden bar – probably “the table” –a fun stretch to fish for bar snacks and interesting people. Pity they only serve wine, though; we would have loved a JD to go with that jazz. The smaller upper deck is better for quiet diners.

Handpuffs

In the making for a while now, The Table finally opened three days ago with a global menu that serves everything from baba ganoush and truffles to chicken wings and risotto. Our table, set with the Secret Scouters and two subscriber-turned-friends, would soon also have to make room for gruyere gougere (French cheese puffs)and assorted sangrias – port and merlot, honeydew and rose. Yes, we would adjust.

The puffs arrived warm, light, savoury rolls of choux pastry, and went perfectly with the jewel toned sangrias (also a tempting bar snack: mixed nuts with zatar).

Plate-Listed

Happy with the wine and dine so far, not to mention the swift service, we proceeded to our next course of truffle polenta and warm chevre salad. The former, the high point of our meal, turned out to be delicious crispy sticks of polenta bathed in a decadent, truffle-scented roasted mushroom sauce. The cheerful chevre salad with arugula and apple was pretty, but forgettable thanks to the scrimping on walnut vinaigrette. Also, as our French fellow diners pointed out, it could have done with finer cheese and at Rs 400, a bigger portion. But as it was evident by course three, the plated meals here are not meant for sharing.

If Italian is what you crave, try the delish spinach and ricotta cannelloni, laid out on marinara sauce that sparked off a table debate as to whether the tomatoes used were fresh or canned. Either way, the flavourful dish is a winner. Also nice is red beat risotto with mascarpone and if you’re drinking, then chicken wings with chilli garlic sauce.

Stable Table

In spite of having just decimated a large meal, we were ready to order dessert, but not without making plans to go back for the chicken liver pate and lamb shanks. So, how would we end our night? With a ridiculously sinful chocolate tart or a glass of dessert wine at the bar? We went down to that stretch where jazz played and drinks swayed. The tart – with all its complex, bitter flavours, followed. She always does.

Getting there: The Table, ground floor, Hotel Suba Palace, next to Indigo Deli, Colaba, call 22825002, open from 7 pm onwards until further notice, Rs 2,500 for a meal for two with alcohol.

bpb reviews restaurants anonymously and pays for its own meals.