Bar – Yacht
Location – Hill Road, Bandra
Size – Medium sized and quite a few tables.
Place – You may have to wait a bit on a Saturday night.
Ambience – Stay away from the AC section and you’ll like this place just fine.
Unique Plus Point – The bar serves London Pilsner. God Bless!
Rating – 3 out of 5 Beers.
I don’t have much against Bandra, not on most days or in most moods. But when it’s Saturday night and I’m in the mood for a cheap beer, I fucking hate the place. In fact I’m starting to feel like Bandra has it out for me and it’s trying to slowly destroy me. This has been going on ever since I started turning people towards Colaba and its many alcoholic wonders. This, it seems has offended Bandra and caused it a great deal of sorrow and pain, not to mention a small dent in its business. And much like the ex who kicked you in the balls, Bandra is hitting me where it hurts, my drinking.
Ever since I shifted my primary drinking focus to the south, getting a drink in Bandra, on the few occasions that I was dragged there, had become almost impossible and that is no exaggeration, it is absolute fact. I once haunted Bandra and spent a lot of time at its respectable establishments, but then it seemed like they all just changed on me. Here’s a list of bars that I once frequented but now can’t even stand the sight of.
Janata – It’s always packed when I go in there and I can almost never get a table.
Temptations - Seems to get louder every time and the last time I walked in they were happily playing Bieber.
Toto’s – Call me weird but I just dislike having 4 billion people within 2 inches of me.
MTC - Well fuck 200 bucks for a beer.
I figured that drinking in Bandra was all but done for me, but then one day as we drove aimlessly in that dark demonic excuse for a western suburb, we found Yacht. We all believed at first that it was a mirage as we saw a giant Budweiser sign glittering in the distance. But as we got close, conveniently found parking and walked right in to find tables aplenty, we realized that it was real.
It was a bar in Bandra where there were tables, actual tables with chairs that weren’t just for show. You could actually sit your ass down on one of these “tables” and people wouldn’t look at you like you were some kind of alien. There was beer, glorious, cold beer for under a hundred bucks. And there wasn’t a single son of a bitch in there with a fucking guitar. It was a small piece of heaven, encased in an overly holy, constantly traffucked, bakery loving, Globus shopping hellhole. And thank god for it.
Sure it’s kinda dingy, but if you sit in the normal section, which is the one with tube lights and classic ‘baakdaa’ seating then you’re in for a typical cheap bar experience, better than most I reckon. However, if you should walk into the section with red lights and sofa seats, then I’m afraid you’re life and soul are forfeit. Just stay away from the red, sit yourself down on one of those white tables and order yourself some London Pilsner (Yes! They serve glorious LP). If you’re a smoker, don’t get up because you can smoke all you like and the waiter will bring you some, just to add to the convenience. And at the end of the night when you’re significantly high on any beer or hard liquor you’ve chosen to hammer down in copious quantities, the bill won’t even bother the loose change you have on you.
And for all those reasons and a couple more, Yacht is one of my all time favourite bars. Now if only I could find a forklift big enough to pick the place up and bring it to Wadala…
