Food Lovers Gourmet City - Mitchell Dudani's Experience

Food Lovers Gourmet City is an event that celebrates signature dishes across Bangalore’s finest restaurants. An initiative by Food Lovers Magazine, the event collaborates with the restaurants featured; to bring you a special menu of their best dishes. Opt for a tow-course meal or three-course – you have multiple cuisines to choose from such as Indian, Asian, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, European, Spanish, Mediterranean and many more. There is a fantastic array of restaurants on offer here, to suit every possible mood and budget.

When this year, Food Lovers Gourmet City happened, one of our own foodie Mitchel Dudani visited ‘Alba’ restaurant; one from many options given. She shares her views with us -

“Finally I visited Alba last evening for the Food lover’s gourmet city festival - very long awaited in my list to visit.

The staff were very received us warmly and I got a chance to meet Met Chef Bruno. He was such a sweetheart; talked nicely; cracked jokes, never giving a feel that we have just met him. After looking at the place, meeting the team and chef we choose our table. Loved the seating arrangement; the stair kinds and every step has a table. The first table was covered with long curtain for the special dinner and in the center was the live counter.

After we were settled, we saw the menu for the festival. Options were less but keeping in mind there were signature dishes we were fine. In fact the food lovers website had already published the menu, so no complains.

The person was able to explain the dishes and what it contains etc. He was able to suggest on what should we try which, was good as the names were very difficult to pronounce for us. He requested if we could decide on all dishes for the 3-course meal, we won’t have to wait for the food. And exactly as he said, we were served just on time; perfect service co-ordination!

As we were waiting for our 3 course meal - arrives the fresh assorted breads with olive oil which was followed by 5 types of cheese. Both bread and Cheese were very nice and fresh and we relished them!

In starters, we had ordered Parmesan cheese balls in tomato sauce and Zucchini flan with sauce and cream. In main course, we had the very famous spinach ravioli pasta in tomato sauce and Gnocchi potato and rivotti cheese with veggies in tomato sauce; followed by deserts Tiramisu and Sillican cassatta.

Both the starters were good very different in their own way. We have never had these dishes earlier but it had some peculiar taste to it. Then follows our main course just in time and we did not have to wait (as promised earlier) the dishes looked relishing.

Spinach ravioli pasta was just perfectly done, soft and nice. The pasta and cottage cheese filling was great and went well with tomato sauce. I loved the gnocchi potato and cheese with veggies. The cheese / potato would just melt in our mouth and flavours were just perfect.

Main course was better than starters and we hoped the tradition follows. It did happened as after our main course we were served our deserts. We were confident about tiramisu; however the cassata was an experiment and glad we ordered.

Thick rich ice cream with choco chips and some dry fruit if I correctly remember on a base of cake, which had strong flavours of elaichi or coconut, was difficult to judge and was covered with goey fondat and topped with green fondant. It was plated with some milkmaid cream.

I am soon visiting the place for the some amazing pastas and pizzas.”

Service: 5/5

Ambiance: 5/5

Food: 4.5/5

Mitchell Dudani is Manager Talent Acquisition with Coffee Day Group. Based in Bangalore, she is a foodie and loves to experiment at home too.

Inputs from:

1. Mitchell Dudani

2. www.foodloversgourmetcity.com/

- Complied by: Nikita Dudani