Chai Pakoda Week, Viviana Mall, Thane
The Chai Pakoda festivities continued with a week long celebration at Viviana Mall, thane with 8 restaurants participating in this festival with specially curated menus for the same!
From Hitchki to SodaBottleOpenerwaala to Tea Trails and D:OH!, all of them were participating in the same!
This also was the first time I believe a mall has celebrated something of this sort and having a lot of restaurants within the mall partner for the same too and I was more than happy to be part of these celebrations!
It was a pleasant thursday morning when I found myself driving towards Viviana, glad it was sunny and the drive would be smooth and the moment I reached, it started raining, just in time to set the mood for an afternoon filled with pakodas!
We decided to visit two of the participating restaurants, Tea Trails and D:OH!
Tea Trails
At tea trails we were in for a treat with the large variety of pakodas on offer! From the staples like aloo pakoda, pyaaz pakoda and bread pakoda to fusion pakodas like cheese chilli pakoadas, the menu was varied!
We simply loved the bread pakoda, aloo pakoda and pyaaz pakoda, the pyaaz pakoda deserves special mention because it immediately took me back to my childhood when chaiji would make often and had them waiting for me when I would return from school!
The cheese chilli pakodas were pretty okay to be honest and a little raw in the centre!
The highlight of a pakoda chai meal has to be the chutney that accompanies it, and the one at tea trails was phenomenal.
D:OH!
Our visit to D:OH! had a uniques experience awaiting us!
From the tea to the variety of pakodas, everything was different. D:OH! had a special monsoon menu going on with a large vegetarian and non vegetarian variety. We opted for the Bombay Bhajia Company which were bhajias made of green chillis, bhavnagri chilli, bottle guard, zucchini, squash and the likes. Very different from the usual lot! The also had something called the Chop Chop Slider which the menu said were sliders made with Kolkata style Aloo Chop but what actually came were Gujarati style Batata Wadas, nonetheless, we were happy!
They also had this thing called Blue tea that came two ways, hot and cold, and would turn purple when lime juice is added to it!
Overall, a lovely experience and I can’t wait to see malls take more efforts to get the community to celebrate, just like Viviana did.