<p><span class=”f12″><p>The upper echelons and the cream de la cream of Mumbai’s society will soon be calling a 5-deck ship on Mumbai harbor their newest fave spot. Welcome Planet Hollywood. </p>Shubh Hospitality will import the giant ship and future home to PH from USA with plans of launching it early 2008. The floating restaurant will boast of a restaurant, bar, coffee shop and perhaps also a spa and lounge. In addition to creating it the hottest hangout spot in the City, Shubh Hospitality hopes to also use the facility for product launches, conventions and fashion shows. <br /><br /><br />The restaurant business is a tricky one in India – with the consumers tastes ever-changing the plethora of options, it is difficult to keep their attention&nbsp; at one place for very long.&nbsp; We’ll see how Planet Hollywood fares in the home of Bollywood!

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We watched SuperSize me and thought we knew it all. Our Daily Bread, a documentary film about cold industrial salt mines and slaughter houses reminds us just how much we (blissfully?) do not know. From it’s website,

"To the rhythm of conveyor belts and immense machines, the film looks without commenting into the places where food is produced in Europe: monumental spaces, surreal landscapes and bizarre sounds – a cool, industrial environment which leaves little space for individualism."

Watch trailers here. (via)

This is one sorbet that needs a 21+ ID to purchase and you probably won’t have much luck looking for it at ice-cream stoers. Wine Cellar Sorbets uses vintage wines from the California, Oregon and  New York region to create delicious, refreshing sorbets. The wine sorbets are currently available in over 40 locations in NY and NJ.

Some time back, I wrote about Turn Here – the travel website that features short videos of cities. If you loved that site and if you are in New York, most certainly check out Savory.  A super-easy wiki format and professionally shot local vidoes of new (and notable) restaurants in New York, Savory hits the nail. Each restaurant listed has a page to itself with links to reviwes in mags and papers, vital stats (cuisine, price, hours, mode of payment etc.) AND information on public transit and parking. Can’t beat that!

I like covering new business ideas and entrepreneurial ventuers on my blog. The stories are often simple, yet very interesting. Like in this case -McBride thought of this idea when he wasn’t able to find a good resource to find a good restaurant in San Diego. Co-founder and wife, Jennifer, a producer for VH-1, loved Chris’s idea of restaurant videos. They started working on the idea last year and went live this April. I played around the site and it is pretty exhaustive!

Savory has plans to launch a San Fransisco and Chicago version soon. I only have one beef with them : the big cities are overdone! Maybe concentrating on the little-er cities makes more sense. I could be wrong but my guess is- being in NY/SF/LA, you are constantly deluged with information, websites and travel guides. There are just too many options!! But in case of smaller cities like Philadelphia, a concept like this would really hit it off. (or maybe I’m just partial to Philly!)

This mouth-shaped urinal at a Dutch Mc Donalds was removed after an american toursit made a complain to the head-office in America.

Seriously — what was Mr. McDee thinking with this move? Was this supposed to amuse kids or fuel fire to absurd adult fantasies?!

(Art makes sense in the right context. I probably wouldn’t be offended or think otherwise of these urinals at an art-gallery or even a fun-themed restaurant. But good old Mc Donalds? !)

Apologies for the long silence. In other news, I’ve tons of new coolspots to share with you and get your creative juices flowing. 

Stumbled on this cool site while on a recent web-crawl and am very pleased with the service. PicoStation allows you to directly post photographs, vidoes and audio files from your cell phones on the internet. It’s still a growing community but I like the concept. There will always be concerns: mobile porn? privacy? spam? But for now, let’s wait and watch where this goes.

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Babies are a multi-million dollar business.A recent WSJ article suggested-  Very soon- your inbox is going to contain video files of your friend’s fetus and her ultra-sound. So instead of looking at photos of the new borns in the family/ friend circle – you’ll witness all the stages of the baby’s development  on your screen. Companies like Womb’s Window offer pregnant ladies ultra-sound  photo-packages of her fetus that includes videos in different formats and still shots of the baby-in-progress. I really don’t know how I’d feel about recieving the video to a friends fetus, but it’s no more a possiblity- it is an eventuality.

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Now this isn’t a really *new* finding. I was watching Will Smith’s Hitch a few days ago and noticed the scene where Eva Mendes and her friend are snacking on amazing rice delicacies at a hip bar in NY. I remember passing the place once — Rice to Riches is a cutesy rice pudding store located in Nolita, New York. It offers inventive rice pudding conctions : rice pudding with oven roasted fresh fruits, with jelly… with nuts.. with toasted coconut.. are only a handful of the sampling. Rice pudding on a wholly wholesome level- can’t beat that now, can you?

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My Dare-all column is published in the April issue of Zink magazine. Under, Tales from the Darkside.
Buy a copy and read my article if you get a chance! I’ll post it here soon.

The word has become so homogenized that even the utterance of it fills my nostrils with the unbearable oily heat of the curry. And yet, in New York, its popularity astounds me. “Wanna go to Curry Hill?” And I look blankly at my colleague wondering if I misheard her or misunderstood her accent. “Little India?” She asks looking for a flicker of recoginition, that imaginary bulb to spark inside my head. But continous blank stares later, frustrated, she questions…”Lexington Ave?.” Sure. I say.

There is no real or existing account of why or how the area around Murray Hill became Curry Hill. Some date it back to the 80’s when “Curry in a Hurry,” the first Indian steam-table type restaurant opened in this neighbourhood. Today there’s Pongal, Chinese Mirch, Indo-Wok, East in the West… and (somewhere in remembering the names, they have all begun to sound scarily similar) But the pervasive smell of curry can probably explain how the neighbourhood derived its name.

The funny thing is, even as an Indian who was born and raised in India, I am confused when it comes to “Curry.” As surprising as this is, it definitely wasn’t an everyday word. We didn’t really eat “curry” for dinner or lunch. The closest interpreation of the Anglo definition of “curry” I have, is what we call “Gravy,” – varities of savory sauces to match various appetites. There’s the elusive curry and then the slightly familiar vindaloo, more so from being the theme for England’s 1998 World Cup. (Remember, We’ere off to Waterloo/me and me mum and me dad and me and gran / And a bucket of vindaloo!)
But curry, is not even an Indian creation. Some say it is the British derivation of the Tamil word, Kari, a pickle like relish to with rice or probably from the curry leaf.

In unsettling corners of Lexington Avenue, it is easy to feel transported to a shanty brown-benched “hotel” where the tables are too close, and bollywood music from the ninities dissolves all conversations. And the food arrives doused in oil and spices — heavily delicious all the same. But eating Indian food for lunch is disastrous if you have to go back to work, it lulls me into a seista-like haze and I have to struggle to stay alert and awake!

I love Indian food, I adore Indian food but sorry, the spicy, oily texture of all curries and sabzi’s at these Indian restaurans turns me off. It blinds other flavors and when you are done, all you remember is the firey tinges flaming your tongue. This is a trait, I’ve observed with most people of my clan. They complain if their Indian food isn’t spicy enough, but they don’t get it, not all Indian food is supposed to be floating in chillies!

If your fingers aren’t smelling of the food you just had, it had to be really good food. Thats my unproven, least professional but most effective litmus test to judge good food. And it has worked just fine.

But please, don’t let Lexington Avenue’s Curry Hill be your only reference to Indian food. There is a general misconception that Indian food is inexpensive. Maybe you do have to shell out a couple extra dollars to get a taste of more subtle flavors from the Indian cusine to complete your gastronomical experience of South Asia. As I explore more of New York’s culinar facets, I will take it as a personal task to update you about the Indian restaurants worth trying in NY. Until then, have an open mind and remember there’s more than curry and chilli in Indian food.

Y’know what I absolutely love about this wine? It’s packaging. Why didn’t wineries think of packaging wine in cans before? The cans have been made to appeal the "Sex and the City" crowd which means, the young, hip and urbane.

I haven’t tried it yet – but considering the kind of movies Sofia Coppola makes, the wine will hopefully live up to its expectations.

Did I mention it comes with a matching straw? 

If you ever visit Philadelphia, you should stop by my friend’s cozy tea bar. In class, I could have never imagined Courtney was researching and learning about teas while the rest of us scrambled to meet deadlines! Well, it was worth the effort.
Remedy Tea Bar , a lovely mint green walled cafe opened its doors last year to a very Starbucked Philadelphia. Sisters Courtney and Kristen decided that Philadelphia needed a real tea bar when they were touring London and “were shocked at the number of coffee shops in a place historically known for tea.” (A tea bar with a story! mmm)

I am not a huge tea fan– but how can you resist a place that serves “mar-tea-nis”!

Besides I like the fact that these teeny clusters of tea Bars is helping promote a new beverage culture in coffee-washed America. Yay to that! And like I said, do visit! (and say hello to Courtney!)