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| We were happy with fresh lime water salted and fresh watermelon juice at Woodside Inn |
Woodside Inn, Bandra, opened in our neck of the woods midway through the Covid 19 pandemic as far as I remember. This is at Pali Naka, opposite where we once had an apartment.
Our only interaction with the restaurant till recently was when the restaurant had sent burgers over through their PR agency. I don’t remember anything else about the burgers. Which I guess tells you the story. I would not be that harsh on them though. Burger brands (pizza, dessert, etc) get too excited at launch and send multiple products home in hope of a social media shout. The unfortunate truth is that a person can’t form a genuine opinion on the food and what follows are platitudes such as ‘welcome to the neighbourhood,…’ ‘congrats on..,’ ‘best wishes,…’, ‘proud of…’ etc etc. Ambiguously worded statements that say nothing about the brand and do nothing apart from building reach. This post is not a lesson on brand marketing in case you were worried.
We never considered going to Woodside Inn till recently even though it is located close to home and we pass it by every other day. There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, one thought that it was a pub. Given that we do not drink anymore, it did not make sense to go there. Secondly, both of us are breakfast people and 90 per cent of our restaurant outings are for breakfast and Woodside Inn was unlikely to be one, given it is a pub.
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| With Kunal Vijayakar at Woodside Inn |
My opinion changed when I went to a private event there a few days back. My dear friend and mentor, Kunal Vijayakar, launched a month-long ‘Gymkana 2.0’ with Woodside Inn, Bandra. A menu featuring classic club dishes, presented in a slightly contemporary style. He had invited us to the launch preview. I realised that evening that apart from having a well-stocked bar, there is a fair amount of focus on food at Woodside, Inn. They open at 11am which is well before our, and most of Bandra’s, breakfast time. They do not have a breakfast menu per se but they do have omelettes, egg royales, salmon toasties, avocado toasties etc plus coffee and juices. Which is all that one wants from a breakfast place.
K and I went there for brunch on Sunday. To start with, both floors were fairly full with only bar stools available. The seating was quite comfortable, to be honest, and as promised we were moved to the older people’s (my phrasing) table which had seats with backrests. It is important to me that a restaurant should not be empty. Especially if it is my first visit and that too on a Sunday. That makes me very uncomfortable. No such problems here. A glance across the table told me that apart from cocktails and beers, a fair bit of food was being ordered too.
We had no complaints about the three dishes we ordered.
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| Spaghetti carbonara (less cream) Woodside, Inn |
I went for the carbonara. The menu specified ‘creamy.’ so I requested the waitress for the chef to make it ‘less creamy,’ which is par for the course in Italy but not in India. What was delivered was just what I wanted. The optimal amount of sauce. Seasoned just right. The spaghetti done al dante, the way I like it. I had not specified this. The meat was a mix of crisp bacon and soft (presumably) pancetta. Perfection.
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| Salmon Toastie without cream cheese, Woodside Inn |
K wanted a salmon toastie without the cream cheese (she wanted to skip the cheese). The quality of the salmon was top-notch and not too briny.
We ordered a Greek salad and enjoyed the crunchiness of lettuce leaves interspersed with the right amount of kalamata olives and feta cheese with a vinegary dressing
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| Greek Salad, Woodside Inn |
I thought hard to come up with negatives and this is what I came up with.
1. It took them a while to take our order. I later spotted bells on the table and I guess we were supposed to ring that for attention.
2. I really wish they had served the salad at the start as we’d requested and not at the end as our dietician has advised us to have salads at the start of a meal.
Please keep in mind that none of these are game changers and we can say with conviction that we had a good time at the Woodside Inn and the service was pretty good overall.
