New Kat. Old Tricks.

Bar Name – Kit-Kat

Price of Beer - Rs.190

Location – Opp. Metro Adlabs, Marine Lines, Mumbai

Size of the Bar – Large

Place Availability – Relatively easy to get a table

Ambience – It's brand new but also extremely plain

Unique Plus Point – Bang opposite a movie theater

Rating – 3 out of 5 Beers

(Pictured: The Other Kit-Kat)

The single most dangerous staircase I have ever encountered in my life has finally been demolished. And now, I really kind of miss it. It’s odd that I should though, considering it made several attempts to murder me. The damn thing has entire steps missing. Which doesn’t sound terrible, but it is when you’re three drinks down. It’s been replaced by a much more ‘complete’ staircase in a bar that replaces one of the coolest joints in the city, a place filled with character, style and flaws. The old Kit Kat.

Now of course, Kit Kat, bang across from Metro Adlabs, is one of many. Just a template bar, that serves people who don’t particularly care for all the things that made the old place what it was. They care about functional air-conditioning, waiters that actually serve what you ordered, a TV that’s been manufactured post-1985 and a staircase that works as advertised. They wouldn’t like the old Kit Kat. They’d think it smelled funny (possibly asbestos, I should see a doctor), they’d think the deep blue, near-Cubano style interiors looked dingy and the pillars were just unneeded. But that place was amazing! One of those bars that you never even had to keep a secret, on paper it was honestly that terrible.  But if you sat down and had a drink there, you’d get it. You’d probably never come back on account of the non-existent food menu, the prices and the fact that it promptly shut down at 11, but you’d get it.

But enough nostalgia, what’s the new joint like? Well, as I said before, it’s like everything else.

Expect the typical formica that you’d see literally everywhere, the same prices and even the same waiters. Honestly, if you’re a Sunlight regular, they literally have the same waiters. Mainly because it’s owned by the same dudes who brought you that bastion for binge drinking Xavierite’s. It has a regular section down below, an AC section upstairs and another smoking section, which for some god forsaken reason insists on playing music loud enough to cause resident complaints in Khar (Ha ha). No, but seriously it’s stupid loud!

They have a big LCD TV that’s been religiously airing the Kabbadi league and thankfully, outside of the smoking section, the place is proper quiet. Good for conversation and the AC section sports a diverse enough crowd, so the ladies seem welcome. The food and the drinks are direct pick-ups from Sunlight, though I’m pretty sure the food here is better. Maybe it’s a mental thing because this place has actual lighting and not just one bulb in the corner.

(*Seriously, how the hell do you Xavierites drink there? Leave me a comment)

The drinks are perfectly priced and the service is properly good.

Ok. Now that the staple fare is out of the way, let’s get down to the main reason you should be going to this bar, which incidentally is the only reason I go to this bar. Because Metro Adlabs is literally 50 feet away!

Have you ever watched a movie whilst blitz-out drunk? No? You’re missing something there, champ. Missing something real good! 

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. 

Ghetto-tastic!

Bar Name – Ghetto/The Food Court

Price of Beer - Rs.180

Location – Mahalakshmi, right next to the temple

Size of the Bar – Large

Place Availability – Tough

Ambience – Two separate bars. One has classic rock playing and graffiti on the walls, whilst the other is your typical air conditioned cheap bar

Unique Plus Point – 2 bars in 1

Rating – 4 out of 5 Beers

There’s always 'that' girl. Everyone knows a girl like that. She’s not much to look at and not very cool at all, but for some reason she’s insanely popular. And she’s popular with all the right kind of people. This is beyond your understanding, why, why is she cool?

And then one day you meet her and it hits you. It’s because she has serious personality. And a ridiculously hot sister.

In a metaphor, that is exactly what Ghetto is to me.

All my friends have gone to Ghetto, my older sister has gone to Ghetto, bet my dad was in there at some freaking point. But I’ve never, ever, had even the slightest desire to venture in. Cause I never got the appeal.

Bars speak to me. Right from the door and the signboard I can tell if this is going to be an interesting joint or a snooze fest with chewy crispy chicken. And Ghetto never did. I don’t know why, but it didn’t.

But recently, a friend from office said ‘hey, let’s go to Ghetto.’ To which I replied, ‘Sure, I don’t have shit else to do tonight!’ And thus, it began.

Downstairs is the proper Ghetto, with loud music, usually classic rock, pool tables and graffiti like it just popped out of a stereotypical skate movie. It’s excellent and not unreasonably expensive, but as my avid readers (hi Sis) will know, I don’t like that kind of place.

My kinda place is upstairs, where the booze is served in quarters and the chicken comes in 17 different varieties of schezwan sauce. It’s called the Food Court (I’m not making this up) and it’s the hot sister I was talking about.

Air conditioned, good food, rather cheap. And the crowd is usually overflow from the Ghetto. Girls are numerous as are cool folk. It’s also bright and a generally happy place, if slightly devoid of charming wear and tear.

They work best as a combination. A beer here, a quarter there and you’ve had a damn good time for yourself.  

Drinking on the streets!

Bar Name – Harvic Bar and Restaurant

Price of Beer - Rs. 110 for LP

Location – Metro, right opposite Metro Cafe and Metro Adlabs

Size of the Bar – Small

Place Availability – Easy to get a table. The place is almost always empty

Ambience – Typical Irani joint, old man at the counter included. It’s also pretty quiet except for the TV which, for some reason, is always playing CID.

Unique Plus Point – Nothing in particular

Rating – 3 out of 5 Beers

You remember those scenes in American movies where the hero or heroine is sitting at a fancy little bistro in Italy that’s right on the street. And then a Ferrari drives by like an inch away.  Yes, Harvic is exactly like that. Except that it’s not fancy, nor is it a bistro. And it’s definitely not Italian. Also, you should probably replace the Ferrari with a taxi that has that freakish neon tube light inside it. But it is, almost, right on the street!

Ok I’m exaggerating a little, but that’s only because I’m a little smitten with this place. And once you get there you’ll understand. Just park yourself on the table right by the door, which is literally three feet from the streets of Metro, look up at the old wood railings and order a 100 odd rupee bottle of London Pilsner. Yup, you’ll see why.

Located right opposite the unimaginatively named Cafe Metro, this little spot is quite the old-school beer bar. Yes, beer is the only thing you’ll find on the menu here and there won’t be a wide variety of it. Also, there’s almost no food, except for packets of the usual chakna fare. This means that spending the entire weekend here is out of the question. As is surviving the zombie apocalypse.

So yes, sparing in what it serves and a little bit tiny, but overflowing with character. If you like old-school Irani joints like Churchgate and Oval, you will absolutely love this place.

All good things…

Bar Name – Quarter Pillar

Price of Beer - Rs.200

Location – Right next to Khar Station and 3 Wise Monkeys

Size of the Bar – Medium

Place Availability – Gets pretty packed so get there early!

Ambience – There's always your typical edm/rock/pop playing and there's a giant screen. There's an AC section and a pretty comfortable smoking section outside. 

Unique Plus Point – Open very late!

Rating – 4 out of 5 Beers

I usually get very, very upset when someone shuts down a bar I like. Bounce, opposite Mini Punjab, for example. They replaced it with some random Pan Asian crap.

Even now, when I walk past Nom Nom or whatever that shithole is called, I glare at it, give the security guard the stink eye and play Eric Carmen’s All By Myself at full volume on my boom box.

The same thing happened to me a few weeks ago. There was a lovely little joint called Samrat Bar in Khar, right outside Khar station. It wasn’t a great bar, it had decent food and it was cheap. But I’ll tell you what it did have. It had a god damn PALM READER!

Right there. In the bar. He sat there and if you gave him some cash he’d read your freaking palm.

It was amazing! How often do you find a bar with a built-in palm reader. It was great!

So of course they shut that shit down!  

But when I saw what came up in its place, I was not angry. Instead, I was happy as shit.

It’s called Quarter Pillar and its punny name tells you everything you need to know. It’s fun and it serves by the quarter.

It’s got a giant screen that usually plays big matches, it’s got reasonable prices that ensure you get properly wasted and it’s got some really good food (The reshmi chicken that comes wrapped in a sort of omelette is reminiscent of old school Gokul!)

Yes, of course, the palm reader is gone but he’s been replaced by really good service and a bar that’s open to the wee hours. 3 am if you’re lucky.

The location is also amazing! Right next to 3 Wise Monkeys and a couple of other yuppy joints, it gives you the option to pre-drink and then bar hop. This also ensures that the crowd you usually see here is pretty alright.

In a word, it’s fantastic. 

Photo Courtesy: Twitter - @QuarterPillar

Of booze and bad, bad moods!

Bar Name – Booze on Moods

Price of Beer - Rs.200

Location – Next to Peninsula Business Park, Lower Parel

Size of the Bar – Medium

Place Availability – Gets tough on Wednesdays and Fridays. But you'll get one.

Ambience – Couple of TV’s and your typical 90’s pop playlist.

Unique Plus Point – Nothing in particular.

Rating – 2 out of 5 Beers

If you’ve ever lived or worked in Lower Parel, then you’ve suffered the agony of having to wait outside Ambience for a table. It takes half a lifetime and sometimes doesn’t even happen. Ambience is awesome and so of course, everyone wants to go there.

Now while you wait in that line, I’m sure you’ve often thought, maybe there should be another bar, another place like Ambience in Lower Parel, so I wouldn’t have to wait out here on the street like an animal.

Well, for the past year or so, there has been another place. Another ambience if you will. It’s called Booze on Moods and for many, many reasons, it’s a terrible place.

Walk in there, go ahead, just to challenge yourself if for no other reason. Sit yourself down and take a gander at their menu. Better, more kvlt copy I have not read in my lifetime.

Once you’ve stopped laughing uncontrollably and your breathing has returned to normal, place an order. The service will oscillate between disinterested and utterly incompetent.

Once the rage has dissipated, order some food. This will be the only saving grace of your evening.

Have a listen to the music, which is your typical Bryan Adams somehow flowing seamlessly into Sisqo and Baha Men type playlist.

And then GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE.

Because every so often, the bar descends into what I like to call the ‘Cheap Bar Orgy’.

This phenomenon occurs when a bunch of ‘not-so-cool’ individuals (That’s putting it mildly) happen to be friends with the owner/manager of the bar. They show up, connect their Nokia 3310’s to the DJ console and begin to play the entire Aashiqui 2 album on loop.

Let me be honest, this can happen in any cheap bar. It starts with one song and a couple of dudes walking in and suddenly the whole place is a fucking shirts optional house party.

But it hasn’t happened to me anywhere else, only at Booze on fucking Moods. Where, while I was enjoying a drink with my friends, the place turned into a mad house. It was not pleasant, it was not fun, it wasn’t even – it’s so bad, it’s good. It was just really, really sad.

Booze on Moods had a chance to do something rather spectacular. They could’ve created a bar that was a genuine option when Ambience gets crowded. That almost guarantees a full house every weekend. But no, instead they’ve chosen to be little more than a poorly managed dive bar with air conditioning and a mark-up.

My advice – shut yourself down and hand over the keys to someone who knows what they’re doing. Like the management at Ambience, perhaps.  

Photo Courtesy: DineOut.co.in

Old school Irani with a side of beer

Bar Name - Churchgate Bar and Restaurant

Price of Beer - Rs. 120 for LP

Location – Churchgate near KC College

Size of the Bar – Small

Place Availability – Easy to get a table but this place looks like it could get quickly packed 

Ambience – Quiet and open air. If the weather is nice this place is awesome!

Unique Plus Point – Ridiculously cheap pitchers and proper nice Parsi food

Rating – 4 out of 5 Beers

Old wooden benches and tables, high ceilings with long, low fans, Parsi food and exactly 3 drinks on the menu – all of them beer. That’s Churchgate Bar and Restaurant, a quaint little place located just down the road from Churchgate station near those classic acronyms of education KC and HR.

It’s a place that is as old school as old school can get with everything feeling like it’s straight out of the 1980’s. Thankfully the beer, whether it be from the pitchers or the bottles, is as fresh and cool as any you’ve ever had. And probably the cheapest as well with a bottle of LP burning just a 120 rupee sized hole in your pocket. The food is also great and not unreasonably priced and the ancient Irani feel just makes you want to chill here for hours at a stretch. As such it is my solemn belief that an evening here will leave you feeling better about life, the universe and everything really. Except that is, when you go to the washroom to take a leak. That’s when things go downhill…

It’s indescribable really but I’m going to try, because in all my years of haunting this city’s cheap bars I have never once seen a washroom this odd. Sure some RGV movies have shots of places like these but I assumed that those were sets created by guys who wanted to create a metaphor for the chronic decay of society. I didn’t know they were real.

It’s not the most unhygienic washroom, in that it seems like they clean it, but getting there is an adventure in and of itself. Actually the closest comparison I could find for this washroom is the island from Lost.

Why is the bathroom at Churchgate Bar like the island from Lost:

• First, you walk by the kitchen and then take a turn into what looks like a small dark alley (A proper street inside a restaurant…looooosssssttttt)
• Then you turn and find that this lane is flooded with water. (It isn’t even raining outside and it isn’t washroom overflow…loooooossstttt)
• Then you walk further down this lane and find three different types of mysterious ‘growths’ on the wall. (Dharma initiative running moss and mildew experiments?...loooosssssttttt)
• There are two washrooms. One has a regular light bulb and the other has a freaking black light. (a freaking black light… loooooossstttt)
• There is, I fuck with you not, a metal circular staircase that leads to nowhere (holy motherfucker… loooooossstttt)

To be honest with you the washroom actually adds to the awesomeness of the place and if you can withstand it you’ll never want to drink anywhere else. I highly recommend good old Churchgate to anyone with a hankering for a nice cool beer.

The Miracles of Gin

Bar - Akshay Bar

Location – Parel East. Behind the ITC Hotel and next to the Pet hospital.

Size – Medium sized joint.

Place – You’ll get a place most of the time but Saturday’s are a bit of a wait.

Ambience – Air conditioned and bright with comfortable sofas and great service.

Unique Plus Point – FREE CHEEZLINGS (I cannot emphasize how amazing this is in a world with no free chakna anywhere)

Rating – 4 out of 5 Beers

Yes my drink is Gin. I mix it with soda, squeeze some lime in it and enjoy it for the mildly alcoholic, zero hangover in the morning version of fresh lime soda that it is. You can make fun of me all you want for this over a drinking session, but come the next day you’ll be barfing and holding your head whilst I will hop over for a morning stroll and maybe grab a donut.

Gin is also inexplicably cheap, so cheap in fact that it’s almost always the cheapest drink on the menu and this is always a fantastic thing. You can get a Gin quarter for, at times, 50 bucks cheaper than a Royal Stag and gin tastes a boat load better than any of the cheaper whiskeys. Also you can drink a boat load of it before your tongue starts to taste like fart. Now one of the premier places to have Gin is Akshay Bar, a cozy little spot I discovered thanks to Varun J.

It’s premier because it really looks like a spot that should be way more expensive than it actually is and has service and comfortable sofas the likes of which I’m not even accustomed to at home. And it’s the gin hub because a quarter costs Rs.150. Yes, a quarter of gin in an air conditioned place with free chakna and great service and an LCD costs 40 bucks more than it would cost you in a wine shop.

When I first heard this I did a backflip. I didn’t even know I could do a backflip and as such I credit Akshay as a place that also gives you superpowers that you were previously unaware of. Upon arrival I was greeted by a most friendly German Shepard (a dog, not an actual German sheep herder of some sort) and the sort of service usually associated with four figure bills.

This place however, is ridiculously light on the pocket for the sort of spot that it is. For example, a beer will set you back 170 and a Royal Stag will cut about 210 out of your wallet. And the crowd is pretty decent as well, I mean once in a while you’ll find a group of advertisers in there, but that’s about as bad as the situation gets. Not too sure about bringing a girl in though but I’ve seen more than a few agency chicks spending their Friday night at this fine establishment.

All in all a hell of a place and a great spot to knock down some cheap booze.

No Bandra, you didn’t beat me!

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…