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Reise All Day Bar & Kitchen review: More misses than hits
The travel-themed eatery seems to be a place with lofty aspirations, but very little substance to actually make the journey.
What: Reise All Day Bar & Kitchen
Rating: **
Where: Oriental Aster Hotel, Chakala, Andheri (E)
When: 7 am to 1 am
Cost: Around Rs 2,500 for two, with one cocktail each
Call: 3312-6886
An eerie cackle assaulted our ears as our eyes tried to adjust to the dark, cavernous basement of the Oriental Aster Hotel. Remnants of Halloween – faux jack-o’-lanterns, witches’ hats, gnarly brooms – were still strewn about, as ghoulish tunes piped in.
Reise is a new travel-themed, all day, multi-cuisine restaurant. We tried to imagine the space as it originally was, hints of which peeked from the exposed brick walls as travel keepsakes and framed postcards. Tufted brown leather couches and tables inlaid with sepia-tinted maps lined the mirror-clad wall of the inner section, imparting a cozy, relaxed vibe.
Read: It’s the right mix of flavours at Mumbai’s KOKO Asian Gastropub
In a valiant attempt to showcase as many foreign cuisines as possible, the six-page menu seems a tad all over the place (pardon the pun!). Segregated by continent are plates from Europe, Asia, America and Africa, and a separate, larger section dedicated to Indian fare.
We tried the kundan tara, robustly flavoured paneer-stuffed tandoori button mushroom caps atop a small kulcha, served with carrot and cucumber ribbons, sauces and a couple of deep-fried crackers. The cheesy meat eclairs with a molten mozzarella belly, though conceptually interesting, were let down by dry, mealy minced lamb.
Among the mains, the prawn gassi with steamed basmati rice stinted on its promise of fresh prawns and would have benefited from some sort of acidic hit, a tamarind pulp, perhaps. Ditto for the bland herb-roasted chicken, which was low on taste and presentation with an unappetising-looking blob of garlic mash. The only saving grace to the meal was the generously portioned mutton biryani, morsels of tender meat enrobed with fragrant long-grain rice and fried onions.
The two cocktails we tried were abominations. The celebration planters punch was cloyingly sweet – we’ve ingested tastier cough syrup. The hot spiced cinnamon rum had a tepid, rancid feel and taste.
With only one of three desserts available, we called for the brownie mousse pave. Four ungainly slabs of dry chocolate cake sat higgledy-piggledy atop each other, every other layer sandwiched with salty butter cream icing in lieu of mousse. It came with a side of gritty, ice crystal-laden vanilla ice-cream and a splotch of vile non-dairy whipped cream. Epic fail.
With more misses than hits, Reise seems to be the kind of place with lofty travel aspirations, but very little substance to actually make the journey.
(HT pays for all meals and reviews anonymously)
