Here’s another entry for your black book – Gourmet Town, a new Italian cuisine delivery service operating out of Babulnath and servicing all of South Mumbai, from Colaba to Mahalaxmi. Run by a former manager at Little Italy, Gourmet Town is purely vegetarian (not surprising, given the general demographic of Babulnath), and features some surprisingly innovative dishes along with ho-hum pizzas and pastas.

Hey, You Basket!

Listen up, and you’ll eat well: get the Potato Baskets, tender baby potatoes bursting with artichoke cream and parmesan cheese, especially perfect for when you’re breaking out the whiskey. More dainty and almost as delish is the bruschetta, topped four ways with herby chopped tomatoes; springy asparagus over cheese; mushrooms; and our favorite, honey and walnut, which works insanely well with a dab of goat cheese from your fridge. Caesar’s salad is nondescript and worth ordering only if you’re on a hardcore diet.

Are You a Dough-do?

Next in line should be pizza, preferably Sicilia, a crisp 11-inch pie made feisty with onions and mushrooms, garlic and basil, piquant sun dried tomatoes, all drizzled with an over-enthusiastic amount of chilli oil. Ask them to go easy on the last ingredient, unless you like your pizza greasy.

Avoid at all costs the Arrabbiata pasta, a usually safe dish that Gourmet Town manages to mess up completely. Ours arrived pressed into a too-small plastic container, tubes of penne (we’d ordered spaghetti) macerated in a coarse sauce that tasted different with every bite, ranging from faintly Chinese to distinctly bhaji-like, none of which were pleasant.

Shameful Dessert-er!

The tiramisu was just as bad, with a pleasantly airy texture but mouth-puckeringly vile taste. Expired vanilla essence, MSG, motor oil – it could have been flavoured with any of these, but we’re willing to bet all the lovely (and mostly borrowed) art at the bpb office that there wasn’t a drop of coffee liqueur in there.

A disappointingly bleak ending to a meal that wasn’t half bad. Fortunately, we had some leftover crumbs from the abovementioned potatoes and that whiskey to make it a little sweeter.

Getting there: For delivery call 9167666282/ 9699767610, operates daily from 12 noon to 3:30 pm and 6 pm to 11:30 pm, approximately Rs 500 for a meal for two, free delivery with a minimum order of Rs 500 for Colaba and Mahalaxmi.