Pepper Cafe
9, St John’s Road, Bangalore 560042.
Ph: 41130000.
Meal for two: Rs 1,500
Pepper With Tomato...Presto!
Take a gamble with Pepper Cafe: you could just end up a winner.
T
ill about four months ago, an empty fridge on a rainy night would have caused residents of Bangalore Cantonment to fall back on a mediocre delivery service. On such a night recently, we drove 10 minutes to Pepper Cafe, an ambitious ‘Eurasian food’ eatery that takes you by surprise.
The newly launched summer menu is impressive by any standards, both in range and detail, but we found ourselves trying to match the printed word with the plated dish, and failing frequently. My grilled fish with a pomegranate summer salad with a sun-dried tomato pesto (Rs 285), for instance, was supposed to be accompanied by pepper foam. The generous serving of fish came dressed in a rather unappetising looking brown sauce that definitely contained sun-dried tomatoes and pepper—but fell short of the promise of the menu. The summer salad was excellent, but we’d already had a helping of it with our starters of Thai fish cakes (Rs 165).
We were all excited about the lamb chops with tabbouleh and mint coulis (Rs 319), but it turned out to be closer to a Karim’s dish—superb kababs with a pudina chutney—than a continental one. The Chef’s Salad (Rs 159), a chilled medley of watermelon, olives, buffalo mozzarella, jalapenos and salad leaves in a tangy, spicy dressing, on the other hand, was unequivocally applause-worthy. The pizzas, which we sampled on an earlier visit (Rs 175 for a basic margarita to Rs 325 for a chicken-seafood-veg Chef’s Special), use a special Italian flour, called Tipo, with dusted semolina: definitely worth a shot. Take a gamble with Pepper Cafe: you could end up a winner.
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