Where have all the ad-men gone?

Bar - Madira 

Location – Parel East. Next to the ITC Hotel and opposite the offices of MTV and Grey Worldwide.

Size – Medium sized joint.

Place – Weeknights are usually jam packed but you'll get a place if you wait for a bit. On Saturday's a table is usually a certainty. 

Ambience – Dimly lit and horribly bleak in the inside section but the outside section is nice when the weather is kind.

Unique Plus Point – None really unless you work in media. In which case you'll meet a lot of your own.

Rating – 2 out of 5 Beers

If you wanted to kill the advertising fraternity, as I’m sure many of you do, you need only poison the food and drink supply of Madira Bar. This place is populated by the crème de la crème of Grey, Leo Burnett and McCann and hosts ad folks in their hundreds over the course of a Friday night. So if you should poison the joint you’ll knock out a big chunk of the Parel based ad fraternity and knock over a pretty decent collection of MTV folk as well. All in all I’d say that counts as a social service.

But all talk of killing ad men and Roadies aside, Madira is a fairly OK joint. It is however as dimly lit as a crypt and is a bit of an electrical hazard (A table fan once short circuited, the whole place went dark and all the ad-men howled like little girls over all the sparks) There’s also the monsoons at which time the whole damn place looks like it’s going to collapse under the rain water. But the beer and hard liquor is fairly inexpensive and if you’re in advertising I’d definitely recommend it just so you can run into 50 people you know and have a blast across tables. I’d also recommend quitting your current job and doing something more honourable such as prostitution and/or drug dealing but that’s just me.

Now if you aren’t in advertising, here’s what to expect – Madira is a small joint but has both outside and inside seating which means when the weather is nice, this place is awesome. However, the inside section never seems the most hospitable and is lit with a mixture of red and yellow lights which sometimes resemble puke, if puke could light a room. On the bright side though (excuse the pun), it has quite excellent food and you could easily pound down a proper dinner here. It’s also the kind of place that girls frequent so you can always bring the ladies around for a drink.

My recommendation would be to sit yourself outside, grab some Chinese starters and drink up.