A good measure of whether one likes a place is whether one goes back to it again or not.
When it comes to restaurants some such obvious ones for us are Candies, Out of the Blue, Oh Calcutta in Bomabay, Infanteria and Brittos at Goa and Mocambo (for the Fish a la Diana and stuffed crabs) at Calcutta.
I think the Tea Centre qualifies right up there. The sad thing is that the management is changing there.
The wife and I made an impromptu trip to the Tea Centre on Saturday. There was this Last Supper like mood which shrouded us as we knew that this was probably the last time that we were going to enjoy the Tea Centre experience which we had grown to love.
We had a lovely brunch. This time the wife had a ‘Lady Marmalade (marmalade flavoured ice tea) while I had a Grappa. The Grappa is an ice tea made with fresh grape juice, lime and tea liquor. Very nice and peppy. We then had ‘prawns on toast’ – lovely, juicy chopped prawns in a thermidor like sauce served on toast – unique and very tasty. Next was cheese chilly corn toast – soft grated cheese, with tiny fiery green chilly pieces and corn on toast. It tasted as awesome as it was sinful. It was the wife’s idea to order the corn version as she felt that the sweetness of the corn would break the saltiness of the cheese. She was right. The third thing which we had was a ham open faced sandwich which had tiny strips of ham and cabbage and bell peppers on toast – again very tasty and it had very good quality ham. We finished our brunch with, what else, scones and some Earl Grey.
We stepped into the Tea Shop on our way where we bumped into our friend Bakul. Bakul manages the team which runs the Tea Centre currently. However as I said earlier, the Tea Board did not renew their contract. Hence, our desperate attempt to savour the experience on Saturday before it shut.
We picked up some interesting teas before we left – Chamomile Orange flavoured green tea and Honey Ginseng Green Tea. I also wanted to pick up some green tea bags to have at office. Bakul directed me to some where the tea bags had actual tea leaves. I am quite looking forward to trying that.
