Bella Ciao

Bella Ciao is an Italian restaurant near the Thiruvanmiyur-Kottivakkam beach in Chennai. I had heard a lot about it from my colleagues but finally got a chance to go with friends only yesterday.

After dining in many of the open-air restaurants in Pune, I always look forward to dining in such places anywhere. Bella Ciao is one of them. However hot the day would be in Chennai, the evenings near the beach are always comfortable and ideal spots for an open-air restaurant.

The Italian menu was mouth-watering. Unfortunately, we didn't have much time to spend and we regretted that we came here since we had to leave in a hurry to catch a movie.

Bella Ciao is a place where you can spend a lovely evening with friends and family and indulge in some great food. Another plus point that we noticed was we didn’t have to wait for the food for long. We had Italian pizza which had bacon, eggs, cheese and tomato sauce on it...and it was yummy! It was a good change from the usual pizzas from Pizza Hut and other fast food corners. We also had lamp chops with mashed potatoes. Finally, we had a desert that was just out of this world. It was called "Black and White Mousse"...I hope I got the name right. It was so heavenly and it could make you the most selfish person on earth since you wouldn't want to share it with anyone else!! :-D

(Picture courtesy - Internet)

Cheese Dosa at Juhu

During one of my mad ventures of “sightseeing” in Mumbai, I had the privilege of having dosas of a different kind with a different ambience.

It was one of those days when news channels warned citizens to stay indoors because of the possible monsoon fury of Mumbai. It was raining “cats and dogs” or rather buckets of water were being poured from the heavens above on that day.

Oblivious to all the monsoon commotion, my cousin-brother and I started off for a Mumbai Darshan, while colleagues of my cousin-sister thought we were out of our minds to even think of venturing out in the rain.

At Juhu beach, I couldn’t help but smile at the people who were enjoying the rain, running towards the waves and just having superb fun. The sea was quite rough but people didn’t seem to mind that.

We chose to watch the fun and meanwhile decided to try out dosas that were being made at a stall or rather “snack cart” (if I may say so). It was quite amusing to see one person in charge of holding the asbestos sheet (the official roof of the snack cart) with all his might during the heavy downpour.

We tried out “Manchurian Dosa” and “Cheese Dosa”.

Manchurian dosa had a different flavour altogether and I could not really make out exactly what it was. But it was yum all the same.

As I ordered the cheese dosa, I was sceptical because usually, Cheese Dosa means cheese will be smeared such that one has to chew, ponder and chew while we figure out: “Is there really cheese in this??”

But when I saw them lavishly spread a thick layer of shredded cheese onto the dosa, I realised that I was in for a treat. Wow, it was soooo rich with cheese, I felt dazed. ;-D

Gorging at a chocalate cake......

Yesterday, my roommates got a homemade chocolate cake. Awesome was just not the word to describe it. As I was busy gorging at it, I closed my eyes for a few seconds and what I felt next could be what one could state as "close to heaven".

Never thought that chocolate could really make one forget, at least for a few seconds, and make one feel that the world is a nice place and every human being is an angel. No wonder I felt I was in heaven. The moment I finished my chocolate cake piece, I opened my eyes, and I felt myself shot back to reality!!

So the next time anyone says, "Hey, that chocolate cake was heavenly!", don’t be surprised, it is definitely a heavenly feeling.