1/ Wow, sobriety is really picking up in B’lore, huh?

Went to Practically Sobar, India’s first sober cocktail bar today.

📌 It’s nestled in the lush premises of Green Theory, Convent Road (close-ish to Cubbon Park)
2/ Vibes were 💯

Lush green, tropical vibes, intertwined with twinkling fairy lights.

Calming ambient music & sound levels at just the right level - where you can actually hear the other person speak.

Immediately felt like I was transported to a paradise in Northern Thailand.

1/ The next time you go to Mysore - make sure you visit this BEAUTIFUL bean-to-bar chocolate factory!🍫

Naviluna is in a 120 year old heritage house, 4 mins from the Mysore Palace.

The founder, David Belo, was born in Cape Town & (cont.) 2/ Restored this bungalow with help from INTACH & crowdfunding through Kickstarter

They used traditional techniques like crushing oyster shells for the lime plaster

I ❤️ how they kept the:

- exposed wiring
- old switchboards &
- stained glass windows

of this heritage home!

1/ Dil Se is a dark film which deals with a lot of moral greyness

Against this backdrop, we have the colourful song Satrangi Re.

While the song drops at exactly the 1 hour mark..

The 7 min song song sums up SRK's slow descent into madness & foreshadows the ending

⚠️Spoilers⚠️ 2/ In the book "Conversations with Mani Ratnam" Mani Ratnam told @baradwajrangan that

He gave @arrahman a very specific brief to compose a song abt the 7 stages of love

While stumped at first, the Mozart of Madras composed the banger song.. in 1 hour 🤯

1/ Was waiting for my auto when I saw this funky AF signboard outside a dive bar.

LOVE how the J in the neon sign starts with a trumpet 🎺

Intrigued I walked in for a quick look.

📍 Koramangala 2/ The walls had old vinyl records
and peeling posters.

While worn-out, the place oozed character & retro vibes.

I asked the manager if they had a functioning jukebox, he said they have a smol one that plays CDs 📀

Here's what it kinda looks like 👇

1/ Many ppl see Dil Se & feel repulsed at SRK's stalking + sexual assault

Ppl write it off - saying it aged badly. Bollywood glorified stalking then.

How could SRK - Bollywood's blue-eyed boy - be such a creep?

What if I told you.. we aren't supposed to like SRK in Dil Se? 👀 2/ In Dil Se - while SRK is charismatic - he is a creep on purpose.

While SRK has carved a niche for himself being a lover boy, he is no stranger to being the antagonist.

There are several times in his early films that he played the role of the psycho lover. Ex: Darr, Bazigaar.

1/ These big AF matchboxes from @MAPBangalore's gift store are LIT AF 🔥

I LOVE them!

Not only do you get art that you can prop up..

But you also get long AF matchsticks (perf for those hard to reach 3-wick candles!)

At Rs 250, it's perf for a gift 🎁 2/ Loved this matchbox with a rendition of Mohini on a Swing by Raja Ravi Verma.

I love how it's cheekily called "Temptress" here

They really should do a collab with @Tinder_India 🤝

It'll be.. a match 🔥

1/ Today I learnt that Lufthansa serves more than 200,000L of tomato juice mid-air a year. 🤯

Almost as much as beer. 🍻

In peak German way, they went to a research lab to reverse-engineer this trend 🔧

Why do ppl <3 tomato juice so much mid-air?! 😶‍🌫️
And what SHOULD you order? 2/ Food on flight SUCKS.

Michelin star chef Gordon Ramsay once said, “There’s no f–king way I eat on planes"

Not the flight's fault, tbh 👀

Turns out a bunch of things affect your sense of taste mid-air - like sound & smell.

1/ The aesthetics of this coffee shop in Hyderabad, oof.

It's giving 🤌

📍True Black, Jubilee Hills 2/ Had THE most refreshing Valencia Orange Coffee 🍊

It's espresso, with freshly squeezed orange juice - served cold🍹

Trust me, this eclectic combination of citrus + coffee just works! 🤩

Similar to the Mazagran you get in Maverick & Farmer in B'lore (espresso + lemonade) 🍋

1/Why does left over biryani taste better the next day?

While I couldn't find anything in Masala Lab, found this lovely @krishashok-esque article:

forbes.com/sites/nadiaaru…

While there's a (flavour) bomb of reasons, here's a summary if you're too lazy to read the entire article: 2/ 🥘 Umami is a function of free standing amino acids in food like tomatoes & meat🍗

🔥 Re-heating the food again breaks down protein. This releases more of the umami compounds from their structures.

🥵 This results in a more rounded savoury mouthfeel when you reheat biryani.

1/ Most Bangaloreans have heard of Koshy's Parade Cafe.

What if I told you that there was another lesser known Koshy's? 👀

Illustration from @flipparworld's postcard 2/Tucked in the bylanes of Richmond Town is the lesser known Koshy's Automatic Bakery

Automatic? Yes, well - it was South India's first mechanised bakery that sliced 🍞

Which is those days was "wonder bread" 🤯

There's a reason there's a saying - the best thing since sliced 🍞

1/ Took part in an X'mas book exchange by @CubbonBookClub.

The book I got had a cute Cubbon themed postcard with a handwritten note 🥺 2/ Everyone went around in a circle & talked about the book they got.

Then we put the books in the middle of the circle and "spun the bottle".

Except the person to whom the bottle pointed just had to pick a book from the pile. Nothing else. :P

1/ Recently I ordered filter coffee from VS Mani & Co. ☕

The coffee was good, but the copy was better 👀

Curious, I made myself a cuppa coffee and dug deeper 🧐

Was amazed by what I found! 2/ Turns out that VS Mani was a pandemic pet project of @gd_vsmani!

He was a Vice President at an advertising agency.. by day.

He'd wake up by 5 AM 😱

Pack all the orders 📦

And THEN head to his day job (!!!)

He'd then ship products during his lunch breaks 🚀

Respect 🙇‍♀️

1/ Bangalore has 70+ microbreweries 🍻

Each day, each brewery uses 200 kg of grain/day

That's ~14,000 kg of grain going waste.

PER DAY 😱

So Bangalore based food researcher cum chef @elizabethyorke started @SavingGrains.

@SavingGrains upcycles spent grain to good flour 2/ This isn't new.

In the good ol' days, brewers & bakers used to work v closely together 🤝

That's because bread n' brews use the same building blocks:

🌾Grain
🍚Yeast
💧Water

Bread became brew 🍻

While spent grain became bread (anew) 🥐

And the circular cycle continued 🔁

Pink Bengaluru szn 🌸 Why are we Bangaloreans so besotted with the tabebuia rosea tree? 🤔

In the tabebuia rosea tree, all the green leaves fall off 🍂

So the contrast between it's 🌸 pink blooms 🌸 and the sky is far more visible

So it's more aesthetic vs other trees whose leaves don't fall🌲

1/ Finally, went to Nerlu Café today!

The coffee cupping experience was pretty interesting! 🤔

They let you pick 3 black coffees, and you're supposed to guess the "notes" in the coffee.

As a coffee n00b, I found it v hard 😅

Might be worth it if you're a coffee connoisseur 🧐 2/ Nerlu Cafe has a range of v reasonably priced food.

Lots of sandwiches!

They also have scones with cream cheese & blueberry jam!

I've always wanted to try them after reading Enid Blyton books.

Thought they'd taste like Variar puffs. But they're more dense like shortbread.

1/ Veryyy excited for the Craft Cocoa & Chocolate Festival happening in Bangalore this week! 🍫

Here's a line up of the sessions & workshops I'm looking forward to the most 👇🏾 2/ Tomo there's a cocoa ceremony happening during the full 🌕

Participants are given ceremonial grade drinking 🍫

As per the @hubermanlab podcast, chocolate releases 1.5x dopamine.

Allegedly, it also "opens" your 3rd eye 👀

This is followed by a sound bath for good 'vibes'🧘‍♀️

I LOVE how #Bangalore now has so many places from where you can order THICC & CHONCC-y sandwiches 🥪 from!

Grab a bib, cuz here are 5 sandwiches you just gotta try: 👇🏾 1/ The Food Lover Company

🥪 All sandwiches are fundraisers for the Coorg Wellness Foundation, an org set up for ppl + wildlife
🥪 No set menu, as veggies are sourced daily from farmers
🥪 Super eclectic fillings, like 🍏, which 🤯

Order in advance from: instagram.com/the_food_lover…

1/Paneer and pav. Two Portuguese inventions I am very grateful for. Little did I know that I also had to thank the Portuguese for the Alphonso aam as well.

Curious about how the 🥭 revered by the aam aadmi came to have a Caucasian name I researched a bit. Here is what I found!👇 2/When the Portuguese first landed in India mangoes were a little bit..sucky. That is to say, Indians used to devour them by sucking their pulp.

These mushy mangos, while delicious, were hard to transport back home. The emperor demanded 🥭s that were easier for European exports.

1/6 If you go to Madurai, you will come across a curious cold drink called Jigarthanda. While it is a lot like falooda, it is not quite the same.

It contains almond gum (from almond bark). It has a sweet earthy taste due to sarsaparilla syrup. What intrigued me most was its name 2/ The name of the cold drink Jigarthanda translates to "cold heart". It is an amalgamation of two Urdu words jigar (जिगर/جگر) and thanda (ठंडा/ٹھنڈا).

While thanda made sense, I was puzzled by the usage of jigar which literally translates to one's liver rather than one's ♥️

TIL that prior to the adoption of the internationally accepted A4 std sheet, Britain's standard paper size was called "foolscap".

Its unique name is because the paper was watermarked with the symbol of a joker with a fool's cap and bells. It's slightly bigger than an A4 sheet If one digs back to the etymology a bit more, John Ciardi says that the watermark “foolscap” was actually a mistranslation of an earlier reference to legal paper. 📜

In the middle ages, contracts were drawn upon a large sheet of paper, & both parties signed. (1/🧶)