Porus, I met your cousin EXORBITANT Aurus!

Of the few close friends I have, of which majority are spread across the universe, I have a daily interface to three of them. By daily I mean we talk for five minutes once in two days, or catch up once in a week, or have a 30 minutes conversation once in a month. That’s Hemant, Vishal and Partha respectively.

And funnily enough, I rank them in priorities – Partha and Hemant keep fluctuating between number one and two positions depending on who pisses me off more by their habits. I find Partha predominantly being on the first while Vishal is always settled on the third. I don’t understand this chronological order of priority – I mean why would I do that and just not shut up about it diplomatically? And worse yet, write about it here. Do we all do that, rank our friends?

Well, anyways, so this birthday I decided to take Hemant and Vishal out since Hemant was flying into Mumbai. Vishal lives here, for now. I would have preferred a place that I have been to before but decided to try out something new. I Google-d and settled on Aurus, Juhu Tara road, sea facing restaurant.

Some breather

The dull lighting of the place hit me first. However as I got seated I was impressed with the class of fabric covers. “Nice” I said to myself, and decided to stay back and experience the place. I decided to write about this after the bill hit me. I was like “OMG, this place is exorbitant, for the shit I ate.” Thank God, I had great company to keep, and the wine, and sangria just made the blow softer.

Firstly, the waiters can get some education on communication and etiquette. The same three of us were at “Out of the blue” the other day and I couldn’t make a decision on wine. So the good waiter at OoTB told me “Let me get you both the wines to taste, Sir, and then you can make your choice.” See, now, how happy does that make me as a customer? Instead at Aurus, when I asked to taste some Australian wine, I was told there are only specific wines I shall be allowed to taste. Ok, fine, but just say it in a more pleasant appropriate way with logical reasoning – is that too hard? Since we had decided to stay, we ordered some Australian wine made from Pinot Beurot (I think), the first time I tasted that grape variety. It was decent wine, however nothing compared to the ‘Howling Wolves’ rose me and Vishal ordered at Vie. That’s another reason why I love Belgian beers, they are as exotic as wines, and are very smooth on your wallet too.

Then, the food menu was so limited that I probably felt egg factory could make more variety egg delicacies with eggs than Aurus with all the possible exotic food in the world. I ordered Bruschetta and got 5-6 pieces of toast with some toppings on it, no flavor of garlic whatsoever. I realized, I could have made the same thing every evening for 2 months and paid the same amount as I paid for the dish in one evening. I requested something similar to a vegetarian platter (it was my veg day and we were dying of hunger) and they got me something densely populated with egg plants. I mean are there no other good-tasting vegetables in the world that you probably have? I had to Google the nutrient value of this food and I discovered that the best it did for me was a good source of folic acid and potassium. Am I supposed to be happy with that, I wondered?

The sea-facing that I talked about was a kilometer away. I couldn’t see and hear the waves or feel the breeze in that air-conditioned piece of glass restaurant. It wrote off the place as “one exorbitant place with not as much value for money.”

The coveted divan

However, here’s one thing to enjoy. There’s a fancy divan seating at this place that one can probably book. It’s nice seating, really! May be you can also take a peek at the long distant see and enjoy a good drink or two and hop into Vie which is next door for the amazing Howling wolves rose. And yeah, you may bump into a celebrity or two at Aurus. On our chosen day, Amisha Patel came by. She’s beautiful btw, contrary to the appearances she has made in movies or magazines.

The trio on 23.09.2010

Thank the lord, I had excellent company. You make sure you either have great company or a heavy wallet. Both work fine! However, people with healthy appetite and love for food, I hope you like hopping places.

p.s. When I made the booking, the woman on the other line conveyed that dress code is business casuals. Just out of curiosity I wish to know would she have told any other woman no “hot pants.” Was the business casuals request unisex?