A Vietnamese restaurant that you can go to without saving up for a year to do so. No offense Blue Ginger - you guys are way up there, but then mere mortals like us can't visit you on a regular basis. Now Vietnamese is absolutely new to us. Aside from Pho which we know is from here, the rest of the meal at Phobidden Fruit was going to be a walk down discovery road.
Phobidden Fruit is a sweet white restaurant. The downstairs can make you raise an eyebrow in terms of decor which is plain at best. Get up the spiral staircase and you get to a nice wall-bench and stone table setting. White and brown are the key colors and the sweetest ever dumb waiter complete with a little rattling sound. The table was set with all the essentials in terms of cutlery and condiments. Some pickled carrots and radishes and a spicy sauce I can't dissect.
Steel and glass table setting - nice and clear
We wanted to experiment as much as possible and started with the drinks - an avocado shake and a lemongrass ice tea. The avocado shake was pulpy and hardly diluted avocado. It made for a pretty heavy shake to have before a meal, but different in a nice way from the normal kind of shakes. The hint of lemongrass in the ice tea gave it the oriental touch to the humble lemon ice tea we normally have. A nice set of drinks overall.
Avocado shake (L) Lemongrass Ice tea (R)
For a starter we opted for the Vietnamese Chicken Wings. These were described as batter fried wings that were wok tossed in green sauce and ground herbs. I will be honest here, we are clueless as such about Vietnamese cuisine do not sure if this is the way they are supposed to taste, but they didn't taste much different from chicken manchurians you get elsewhere, with the sliced onions and green chillies. This was the only thing that we weren't happy about or maybe expected something totally different.
Vietnamese Chicken Wings
Junior loves all things peanutty and thankfully has no allergies and so we felt that the peanut sate curry would be a good choice. It is actually a vegetarian dish, but was made in chicken for us. This is served in tall bowls (if I may use that description) with steamed rice and veggies. The peanut curry was creamy in terms of texture and very peanutty and very tasty. Its not something you will get bored with and gives you the right amount of heat and smoothness with each bite. And the fact that Anoushka ate it without argument says a lot.
Steamed rice & Veggies (above)
Peanut sate curry with chicken (below)
And now for the Pho - this is a first for us and the presentation of Pho Bo - Beef Pho was fantastic - a steaming bowl of broth, with slices of beef with coriander in it. On the side was a plate of onions, bean sprouts, basil leaves, hoisin sauce and sriracha, a pepper sauce. All of this to be used for garnishing of your pho. Now for someone tasting it for the first time, I downed the bowl right down to the first drop. Loved every bit of it... garnishing and all. But for those of you who would like a more detailed description of the Pho, I think Suman Bolar of foodtravelbangalore blog says it all here.
Pho Bo with the garnishing (above)
A better look (below)
A better look at the garnishing (below)
Sudhakar decided to have the Chicken White sauce with steamed rice, which looked pretty similar to the peanut curry but was very very different in terms of taste. This too went really went with the rice... was smooth as far as texture goes and was great too.
Steamed rice & Veggies (above)
Chicken White Curry (below)
And for dessert we decided to wing it and go with the one dessert that had all of these ingredients - It had fruits, jelly, green beans, black-eyed peas, coconut milk and crushed ice. In my mind, there was no way this was going to come together properly, but the Che (as it is called) turned out to be quite a revelation. The coconut milk is diluted so no heaviness there. The beans and peas and saltless and therefore give a kind of crunch and pop in your mouth and the jelly adds to the coldness. Overall, it will take some getting used to, but was nice.
Che
The service at Phobidden Fruit is pleasant and unobtrusive. The decor and the seating too are casual and nice. The loo is downstairs and clean enough. This meal came to around Rs 1000 was a pleasant one. If Indiranagar was not too far a drive on lazy weekends for us, we would have got around there more often.
Address: #965, 12th Main, HAL 2nd Stage, Indiranagar, Bangalore - 560025
Phone: 41255175
Cards Accepted: Yes
Parking: Street Parking
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