One day I will have good, authentic Chinese food in a restaurant in Bangalore….

But till that day arrives, Shitakke will do as well. We went on a whim to Shittake, because it was new, because it sounded interesting on the menu, and more than anything else, it was right next door and we were tired.

So we plodded our merry way to the Bangalore Central (Bellandur) and were skeptical about a fine-dining restaurant in a mall. Much to our surprise, once we crossed the threshold of the firmly padded doors into the restaurant, it was like entering a different world. The decor and ambience at Shitakke is beautiful, though perhaps a little too bright. The Buddha effigy in the centre, the delicate Thai paintings on the walls, the tables by the big glass windows overlooking the chaos of the road below - it all works and works well.

The menu tries hard to be more than just the run-of-the-mill Indian Chinese variety with some interesting pan-Asian influences. Like we do with any restaurant, we decided to try out all the ‘test’ dishes from China (having spent a considerable time there, there are some dishes we know which tell you what the cook is up to) along with Mocktails. I had a Mango Chill which was beautifully blended - I could taste the mango, the orange and the mint, and it was do delicately flavoured that it put a smile on my face.

We ordered four dishes between the two of us - a roasted tofu salad, water chestunuts in roasted butter garlic, a mapo tofu and some jasmine steamed rice. And while all of it was edible, nicely presented, well portioned and served with care, it was, at the end of the day, just another Indian interpretation of what Chinese food is.

The tofu salad was interesting but had a spice palette that was not Asian. It seemed like a regular American China Town fare, though the crispness of the salad and the texture were great.

The waterchestnuts were the highlight of our meal - cooked to perfection, crisp on the outside, juicy on the inside and tossed with a beautiful garlic butter. Unfortunately, it was served with carved carrots and lettuce and other decorative elements which had no place on that plate. If you can’t eat it, don’t serve it is my mantra for plating and so while pretty, it was sad that they couldn’t think of serving it with a korean kimchi or some pickled vegetables.

The Mapo tofu was a huge disappointment. It fell into the usual trapping of “all Chinese food is garlic” flavouring and the sauce came on too strong of the garlic and not enough of the ‘Ma’ that gives it the name. The tofu in itself was a disaster - I was craving for the smooth, flaky, soft caresses of a mapo tofu and instead got something that felt like really good paneer. This is a test dish for me, for any restaurant that claims to have good Asian food - a simple dish that requires so much care and skill.

The rice was another no-no. It seemed like a mediocre quality Basmati when I was hoping for a nice Jasmine aromatic grain cooked to the right consistency of sticky. It was ordinary and unappealing, with not even the pretence of a garnish in its presentation.

We ended the evening on a good note because the ambience is lovely - although it is a little freaky to be the only customers for two hours - and the service was nice and we were in a mood to be happy. But all in all, Shitakke, for all its efforts is a rather generic Asian food restaurant where the chefs are trained, the Maitre De informed us, under the best chefs in China. Unfortunately, he couldn’t tell us which part of China, or what region inspired the menu and the cooking, and that is all that you need to know in terms of tailoring your expectations.

Would I go there again? Probably, considering that it is practically next door and is still better than the chilly-paneer variety of chinese food that the area boasts of. Would I say it is the best Chinese food restaurant in the city? No. And yet, it is a good space to find yourself on a tired evening, to have a peck at what passes of as Chinese food in most of Bangalore.

For more details on the restaurant: Shittake Restaurant: http://www.zomato.com/bangalore/restaurants/south/sarjapur-road/shitakke-52372

Rating: 3 on 5

I am not Wilde, or very wild about epigrams as a form of poetry either. Though Coleridge and Pople and Nashe have all extolled the epigram to make it the epitome of pithy poetic writing, I must admit it is not my cuppa verse.

However, because one must appear smart now and then, here is an epigram poem on my wanderings through cyberspace in the quest of being a poet.

Self-Reflection

If you are spending your time

Desperately searching for an awkward rhyme,

Surfing through thesaurii on the net,

It is safe to say, you want to be a poet.

Continuing with the Japanese poetry that has so taken all my attention, for the 8th day of the NaPoWriMo, I decided to experiment with Lanturnes. Another deceptively simple form, that plays not only on the control of syllables but also on the arrangement of lines, the Lanturne is a playfully beautiful form. A Lanturne consists of 5 lines, with a 1-2-3-4-1 syllable structure, thus arranging the poem to look like the delicious Japanese lanterns.

Doubt

………………..“LOL”

………………He said

…………….On chat. Not

…………….Sure if he did

………………..Laugh.

Resolving the question

………………….Macs-

………………..Machines

…………….Not Scots,Should

…………….Be flung from high

………………..Windows.

Keeping in tune with the Japanese forms I am immersing in right now, here is an attempt at one of the simplest (but also the most interesting) form of poetry writing called Gogyoka. A Gogyoka announces freedom from the syllabic structure that other forms like Haiku and Tanka demand and instead, just invites the poet to capture an image, emotion or thought in 5 lines. No other rules.

Digital Absence

The bot spiders across the web,

Indexing names

Traversing locations

Crawling through six degrees of separation;

You are nowhere to be found.

If there was a form that was ever made for the attention economy nature that microblogging has produced, it has to be a Haiku. The ability to capture a mood, a scene, an ambience, a vision, an image, a thought… all in 17 syllables, is almost like a prelude to the Twitterified world that we seem to be hanging out in.

Here, to play around with the idea of space, of the inability to get the thoughts across, and the zipzap nature of cyberspace writing, here are 3 haikus 4 Twtr.

One size, fits none.

 Serendipity

Is not meant for a haiku.

It needs too much space.

…

So much for fame.

 Twitter trended her -

A sudden death: A big star.

No one I’d heard of.

…

On the problem of a title longer than the whole Haiku, like this…

 The problem with it-

Title longer than haiku-

Is, you write it, and…