The Cheap Bar That Was...

Bar Name – Ambience - The ‘Dining’ Bar

Price of Beer - Rs. 210 for a Kingfisher bottle

Location – Lower Parel, Next to Peninsula Business Park

Size of the Bar – Medium

Place Availability – Insanely difficult to get a table. Forget this place on a Friday/Wednesday night.

Ambience – Faux classy joint with Bob Marley posters on the wall. (Barf!)

Unique Plus Point – Projector screen for cricket matches and a good, media-centric crowd

Rating – 4 out of 5 Beers

The mini-review may just give you the impression that I like this joint. But I do not! In fact I hate it. Because this bar is a sell-out!

Let me take you back in time, to an era when there was no additional tax on booze and people could smoke wherever the hell they felt like and sometimes, just sometimes, you could drink without the fear of getting beaten up by cops.

Yes, it was a good time and shockingly it was only about 5 years ago. I was in college and when I wasn’t drinking them down at York’s (review coming soon) I’d make my way over to Lower Parel for an awesomely inexpensive drink in a rather dingy old joint.

This joint was called Ambience, unrecognizable to those who’ve only seen it for the past few years. The paint was chipping off the walls, there was no retarded pop music and the booze was oh so cheap. Even with the new taxes and adjusting for inflation, a bottle of beer there would cost you Rs.150, no more. But it wasn’t just about the money. Ambience had character back then; it was a media bar, and the kind of media bar that real media people crave - dark, quiet, cheap and completely devoid of pretentious shit.

I miss that bar, because this new one is just a shell. It’s an exterior, painted shiny with some chrome put on to attract people who like that sort of thing. It’s the quintessential sell-out.

None the less, I shall stay objective in my mini-review of this joint and give it 4 beers. Primarily because of the food, comfortable seats and awesome service. Go. Have fun. I hate you all.