I had a looooong day at work yesterday, I reached home after an excruciatingly long drive thanks to bad traffic only to the knowledge that I would have to work late into night on a case study.
So, on a whim, I told Kainaz that we’d go to Cafe Basilico which is just across our house at Pali Naka, Bandra.
The original Basilico was at Colaba. The one at Bandra is at Pali Naka. Pali Naka is peppered with restaurants. There is a traffic snarl at most hours here. But Basilico has a nice airy feeling with its clean and modern decor – spartan wooden tables, simple yet inviting chairs and an open portico too with lot of plants, the lighting is pleasant. The crowd is relaxed, a counter point to the mad rush outside.
The menu started off as being continental. Though yesterday we saw that they had introduced Sushi and some Mediterranean options too.
We began with a pesto penne pasta. This was very tasty. The pesto was well made and dark in texture. It had a nice, deep, solid taste which was nice given the damp weather. I didn’t find any pine nuts though unless it was crushed. Overall a good start to the meal.
We followed this with a Moroccan lamb broth. The lamb was very tender. The broth was slightly tangy and had some very fierce, spicy bites thanks to an abundance of crushed coarse black pepper. It was served with a white pilaf rice while Kainaz had it with a nice, warm garlic bread basket. This was a nice, sunny African, contrast to the woody European taste of the pesto pasta.
We followed this with an old favourite of ours at Basilico, their sugar free gooey chocolate cake. This is so moist and gooey that you can almost sip it! It is extremely tasty and the taste really lingers in your mouth. Frankly I wasn’t too hungry but I wanted a bit of energy before I started work after dinner. And Kainaz kept moaning in pleasure as she had it.
One more thing which I like about the food at Basilico versus, say Out of the Blue, is that there is a certain aesthetic appeal to the way they serve their food.
The service is friendly and we were served by a cheerful young man called Ronnie. He made it a point to tell us his name before giving us a feedback form but yes, we were well looked after.
We had a good, unplanned, meal, crossed the road and came home.
The 2 main courses, one dessert and one fresh lime soda cost us Rs 850 or about 21-22 USD.
