Kurries & Burries – Café Mex-Asian: À la canteen

The blocks around Metro Motors Lane, as we have noted before, are 100% vegetarian. And so Kurries & Burries offers vegetarian Asian and Mexican food — with many Jain options — across from an all-vegetarian Starbucks.

WHAT: Kurries & Burries – Café Mex-Asian

Kurries-amp-Burries-is-aimed-at-deliveries-with-just-a-handful-of-bar-stools-and-tables-Shakti-Yadav-HT-photo

RATING: ** 1/2

WHERE: 29/A Jethabhai Govindji Building, opposite Merchant's Club, Metro Motors Lane, Rangekar Road, Chowpatty

WHEN: 12.15 pm to 11 pm

COST: Rs 400 for two people. Alcohol not served

CALL: 3015-0898

The blocks around Metro Motors Lane, as we have noted before, are 100% vegetarian. And so Kurries & Burries (which replaced the year-and-a-halfold Rock Salt) offers vegetarian Asian and Mexican food — with many Jain options — across from an all-vegetarian Starbucks.

It, like Burrito Factory, is designed for deliveries. There are about a dozen low rotating bar stools around granite tables near the self-service counter, and detailed delivery menus offer discounts on larger bills. It's astonishingly well-priced. Five hungry students could get a bill that has only three digits at the bottom, and that's exactly the sort of crowd Kurries & Burries attracts. In the hour we spent there, teens from the colleges and classes around the area stopped by for nachos, Manchow soup and momos.

The flavours are also tailored for them. K&B's Mex-wich is a tortilla stuffed with rice, beans, paneer and nachos, folded, baida roti-style into a sandwich, then deep fried and topped with salsa, sour cream, and cheese sauce. The Mexicana soup is a creamy version of tortilla soup. Crackling spinach comes with a slick of oil and deep fried cubes of paneer. Some of the flavours remind us of an ambitious maharaj cooking at home, and some of them take us back to our college canteen. The tom yum soup, for example, was adequately sour and spicy, but had no galangal or kaffir lime. The grilled veg burrito had a filling with the flavour of a sautéed sabzi we'd have at home.

It's food that works well, if you're a certain age and have a low budget.

(HT pays for all meals, and reviews anonymously)