NEVER GO TO THE LEMP BREWPUB, GURGAON!!!

Read the horrendous experience some people had at Lemp, Gurgaon! It's shocking, disgusting, saddening and frustrating!!!

http://lempexperience.blogspot.in/

Nestle Dark Chocolate - Yumm!!

Hey everyone! Hope the new year's going well for all of you! Mine just got better with some yummy dark chocolate! Now if chocolate doesn't make things better, what will?!? ;)

I spotted the Nestle Dark Chocolate at a Nescafe store in M-Block Market, G.K.- I (Delhi) and being a chocolate lover, was tempted to try it. And I loved it. It's not too bitter (it has just 37% cocoa solids) and has a sweet touch to it. For those of you who enjoy really bitter chocolate, this might not even qualify as dark chocolate! But for those like me who love the sweeter milk chocolate more than dark and occasionally enjoy bittersweet chocolate, the Nestle Dark Chocolate is lovely!

Just one issue, it doesn't seem to be easily available yet and I can find it only at the Nescafe stores. Hopefully the neighbourhood store will start stocking it soon.

While I run out and get more for myself, you guys give it a try too. Even those of you who aren't very fond of dark chocolate! Enjoy :)

Price: Rs. 20 for a 23gm bar of chocolate
Nutrition information (Per 23g) : 0.9g protein, 12.5g carbs, of which 10.7g sugars and 6.4g fat. (Nutrition? Really??)
Calories: 111 kcal (only!!)

It's Greek to Me - Great food, Nice decor, Value for money :-)

I recently visited 'It's Greek to Me' for dinner, and as expected, I loved the food! My parents had visited it a couple of times and recommended it to me and I gotta say, it was a really good recommendation!! The chefs have been trained by Greek chefs and serve authentic mediterranean cuisine.
Here's what we ordered:
The veg mezze platter
The non-veg mezze platter
Santorini fish fingers
Non-veg greek pita pizza
Spinach and ricatto ravioli
Domatosoupa Me Zimariko (Greek tomato soup with noodles)

The platters were fantastic, very tasty and enough for two people!! The platters come with three dips - hummus, tzatziki and eggplant dip, all of which were delicious and we ordered extra dips. The dips go very well with the pita bread which is tasty yet light. The fish fingers were grilled, not fried, so they were a healthy option and tasted delicious. The pizza was quite different from the usual dominos-type pizzas we usually eat, came in four pieces stacked beautifully on top of each other and tasted pretty good!

For drinks, I ordered a virgin mojito. Simple drink, but made really well! Loved it.

Coming to the desserts, we ordered their special home made fig ice-cream, baklava, greek walnut pie and the blueberry cheesecake (yeah, I know what you must be thinking - that's a lot of desserts!!) While all the desserts were excellent, the baklava and the cheesecake were to die for!! I thought fig ice-cream would be kinda strange, but ordered it on my dad's insistence and was pleasantly surprised! Different but good. But the star was the blueberry cheesecake (baked) which was absolutely the best cheesecake that I have ever had!! (I will go back just for the cheesecake :-) ) We actually ordered another piece because it was so good!! Definitely a must try!!

Cuisine: Mediterranean
Location: Commercial Complex, Safdarjung Enclave, New Delhi
Cost (excluding taxes): Approx. Rs. 1500 for two (without alcohol)
My overall experience rates: 4/5
(If you are interested only in good food and don't really care about the ambiance: 4/5
 If you are interested  in the ambiance as much as the food: 3/5 for the ground and first floor, and 4/5 for the Santorini lounge on the second floor.
If you care about the service as much as the food, which most of you would: 3.5/5 )

The restaurant is slightly on the expensive side, but the amazing food makes it value for money. Highly recommended!!
ENJOY!

P.S. You will enjoy the food and the place whether you are 25 or 65! I was so surprised when my grandparents liked the food as much as I did! :-)

An !dea can change your life.

Well, yeah, like the title says, an idea can change your life. But this change isn't always positive, specially if the idea you are referring to is !dea, cellular service providers. Their tagline should be something like "This idea can ruin your life!!" This post has actually been long overdue. I think of writing about how sucky the Idea services are almost every time I pick up my phone to talk to someone. I started using Idea in college coz its call rates seemed cheaper than others at that time and didn't change the number coz too many people had this number (Not that I am the Prime Minister of India and something so urgent will come up & then people won't be able to locate me if I change my number, but I, like most of us, thought that it is more convenient to stick to the same number!) Now mobile number portability is here but I think some of us are just lazy and also, its a pain to go another operator and submit docs, n wait for hours, and deal with the so called "customer care" execs who are hell bent on selling some stupid service to u!!

Coming back to Idea, the service is terrible!! The call gets disconnected and goes blank so frequently that u don't even remember what it is you were talking about!! (& this is for people with awesome memory - like the girlfriends who during a fight remember something that happened 10 months ago!) And this happens as soon as a new minute begins, so they make some extra money too! Then they cut your balance for some foolish service like bollywood masala/love quotes/some nonsense that u did NOT request for! (and obviously u never  see that $$ again.) Then they will send idiotic msgs like 'when and how will u meet your soulmate?' about 100 times a day!! You fools, how am I supposed to find my soulmate if I spend all my time reading n deleting your dumb messages??!?!?  Even more annoying than all this is calling up customer care - you will get to talk to someone if you are lucky, and get your problem solved only if you have some magic powers. And if you have a lot of patience!!! I guess they hire people and then teach them to annoy you intentionally just so that you bang the phone out of irritation or sheer lack of ability to tolerate nonsense and let some stupid service (such as love shayari, ladki patao tips, bollywood dhamal - who comes up with these corny names anyway?) continue to prevent tearing all your hair out.

My phone has an option of blocking calls from certain numbers and the list if full of Idea numbers from which they call to make you hear songs, have girls talking seductively- reaallyyy trashy, offer some random useless service etc.) Thank God for such inventions! Maybe it was the result of bugging telemarketing calls.

And the amount of advertising they do (their advertising team seems to be the only good thing going for them coz as trashy as their services might be, their ads are actually pretty creative and terrific!)....if only they spent all that money on improving their services, this much advertising wouldn't even be required!!

Try, try, try to get through to the other line till you run of out patience and give up on the idea of talking to whoever it is you were trying to call. I think these service providers are the ones responsible for making us more and more asocial each day.....What do you say?

P.S. I just got a call from them telling me about some special chat service on September 29th. Guys, at least check the dates before calling!! Or maybe we r the ones who are stupid, it must have been for the coming year!! :D :D 

The Feast of Roses

I picked up a copy of 'The Twentieth Wife by Indu Sundaresan' while travelling around U.S.A. in September 2008. What first attracted me to the book were the title and the cover photograph. Plus the description given at the back of the book (I always read that!!) said that it was a Mughal love story. How fascinating, I thought. It was a wonderful surprise that the story was even better coz books with fancy titles and pictures often turn out to be boring! Once I had started reading, I couldn't put the book down. The protagonist is Mehrunnisa, who would later become Empress Nur Jahan and rule the Empire like no woman ever had, or ever would. 

When I had finished reading, I couldn't wait to start reading the sequel, 'The Feast of Roses' and it was a fitting sequel, as magical and captivating as the first novel. The first novel ends with Mehrunnisa getting married to Emperor Jahangir, and the second talks of her journey thereon, how powerful her love for Jahangir was and how it gave her everything she wanted. 

The Feast of Roses tells the magnificent tale of how a woman managed to succeed in a man's world, not being content staying quiet and hidden behind the veil, making enemies for this reason, losing the love of many, but always managing to maintain the love and trust of her husband, Emperor Jahangir. She was beautiful, ambitious, intelligent and courageous, and the only person the Emperor trusted blindly. She had the power to make the most important decisions, command armies, and run the Empire from behind the veil.

Brilliantly detailed, many a times I found myself lost in the book and felt as if I had been transported to that era....the absolutely fascinating and splendid Mughal Era. The characters were human yet fabulous. I could picture the jewels, the palaces, the wars, the punishments, the feasts, feel the grandeur and the lavishness of their lives! The book gives an insight into the lives of the royals in the 17th century, the court proceedings at that time, the rituals, the harems, the romance. I felt as if the story unfolded in front of my eyes and I remember some of the details vividly. 

The only not-so-interesting parts of the novel (not boring, just not very engaging or alluring) were the ones about the Portugese and the English trying to make connections with the Emperor, and the trade treaties, but all a part of history I guess. The author suggested mid-way that Mehrunnisa's actions would eventually lead to her downfall, how she would be erased from the pages of history, and how the only Mughal woman who would be remembered by posterity would be her niece, Mumtaz Mahal (because Shah Jahan would build the Taj Mahal for her) and not Mehrunnisa. (I don't agree. Nur Jahan is one of the best known women of her time.) This sort of giving-away-a-bit-of-the-story was quite interesting and made me want to read on to find out what exactly happens and how. 

In all, beautiful and brilliant storytelling!! Undoubtedly, these are two of my favourite books! 


(Penguin Books India, 497 pages, Cover price: Rs. 499)

Body Scare Spa!

Hey!! My first post! And it had to be about a horrendous experience I had!!

I found a deal on one of the numerous deal sites promising me a host of treatments/services for just Rs. 500!! Woohoo what could be more reasonable?!?! I thought, wrongly of course! The deal was for Body Care Spa, Lajpat Nagar II, N. Delhi, offering hair spa, manicure, pedicure, threading, facial, shampoo, haircut and blowdry. All this in Rs. 500!! Too good to be true, I should have known!!

Super excited, my best friend and I headed to the "SPA" after finally managing to get an appointment. I walked in and was kind of disappointed, but decided to not pass such quick judgements. We were told to wait for 2 minutes, and after 15 minutes, these 2 minutes had still not passed on their watches! We waited, and after waiting some more, started with the hair spa. The guy almost pulled out my friend's hair and i saw a troubled (physically and mentally) look on her face :-(  Aww....we had expected to have so much fun!! A bit disappointed, we decided to give the other treatments a chance (which we were going to regret in the next 10 minutes)...

The facials came next.....average at best! And a bit annoying too coz even after being told not to touch the eye area repeatedly, the woman rubbed the scrub/cream over the eyes, resulting in our vision getting blurred! Yeah, that actually happened! At one point, I was scared of losing my sight!!! 

The manicure and pedicure: absolutely the worst ever in the history of the world!!! Both were over in 10 minutes flat, with the woman using as much pressure as you would on a new born baby (or maybe the babies are given much better massages.... sigh) and the most shocking: the women used the same scrubbing brush for the hands and the feet (yuucckk!!). Now could it possibly get any dirtier??? Well, unfortunately, YES! So I had to get my hair rinsed with water, and the guy brought a towel to cover my back/shoulders...and guess what, it was wet! When I asked him why it's wet and who's it is, he said "Shaayd se aap ka hi hoga" (Maybe it's yours). Unbelievable man!! I was shocked beyond words! After fighting the urge to get the bloody hell out of there with my hair messed up, I told him to get a fresh pair to towels. Another wait ensued....5, 10, 15 minutes, no towel in sight. Finally he showed up with a dry towel (whether it was clean is questionable) and well, rinsed my hair. 

We were way beyond disgusted by this time and decided to not get any more damage done to ourselves. Our final words there were "Lets run!!" Literally. 

Now, next day, our hair is messed up and skin is not very nice but at least our eye sight is back to normal :D :D 

So guys, beware! Don't get fooled by the seemingly good deal. 

DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS PLACE!!! Instead, go buy yourself some yummy dessert with that money :-) 

P.S. If you still decide to go to this "spa", please carry your own towels. Coz these guys will use one towel for hair, facial, manicure...and whatever else they can get away with! Oh I almost forgot, on asking for some cotton, I was given a piece of cotton the size of my finger nail (or was it smaller???) :S