Theobroma at Peddar Road: Three’s Company

The popular dessert and sandwich shop opens its third outlet at Peddar Road this week, a tiny, two-floor storefront with a takeaway counter on the main level; a rather claustrophobic seating space upstairs; and a charming crystal chandelier. The branch is slated to have the same menu as the other two locations, along with a few new sandwiches, which they will begin to serve only next week. The seating area too, isn’t open for the next ten days at least, and when we visited on Tuesday, the coffee machine wasn’t working. But they have brownies and the best orange juice cake on the planet, so if you’re in the neighbourhood, make sure to swing by.

Getting there: A5 Poornima, near Jaslok Hospital, off Peddar Road, call 2351225, open 8 am to 11 pm daily.

bpb Review: Smooch

Even though the signboard was up as early as March, Smooch, Juhu’s third yogurt shop, took its own sweet time to open; a little late in the day we have to say, as Mumbai’s dessert map is now over-populated by frozen yogurt. Ice age?

Self Service (and Self Pleasure)

Walking into Smooch, we feel like we’re inside our favourite dessert, with the shop’s thick shiny-white acrylic walls twisting and twirling like swirls on a softee. These feature sprinkle-esque bursts of colour and graphics pasted with random words like ‘lickaliscious’ and ‘smooch yourself’. Um, no thanks. There’s also a small seating space and Beavis and Butthead playing on the telly!

Like a couple of the new fro-yo entrants, Smooch is self-service, charging customers by the weight of their cup, one standard size with a capacity of 400 gms. Dispensing our own yogurt from the shiny new machine is weirdly thrilling but ultimately expensive, we discover, as we shell out extra cash for swirls that we added just because it is fun.

Taste Test

Smooch plans on serving six flavours daily, which will change every week. When we visit, on offer is sweet-sour strawberry cheesecake; passable Oshkosh frozen custard; passé chocolate foudine; innovative carrot cake and ginger mango zinger that just doesn’t work as a yogurt flavour. Our favourite, however, is biscuit-laden original tart. Toppings are the usual lot- approximately twenty varieties of chocolate and sprinkles, fruit toppings and compote. You can also get smoothies and starting in a few days, icy slushes in flavours like passion fruit and kiwi.

Pulp Fraction

With a Cocoberry next door and Yogurberry down the street, until we master the skill to dispense only as much yogurt as we’ll actually consume, Smooch promises to be a pricier affair. On our first visit, at Rs 0.84 per gram of yogurt and Rs 1.12 per gram of toppings, we end up paying Rs 170 for 130 grams, and that isn’t even a third the capacity of the cup! So we suggest you take along your will power when you visit, and also brush up on fifth grade math in order to deal with all the decimal points.

Getting there: shop no. 2, Sagarika building, Juhu Tara Road, opposite Domino’s, Juhu, 26144481, www.iluvsmooch.com, Rs 0.84 per gram of frozen yogurt.