After quite a while, today I visited the Cafe Cocoa Bean in Kazhakuttom again for lunch… This time, with my dad… We had our lunch there and took take away for my mom and grandmother… Compared to my previous visits, I was surprised since I found the place crowded with tourists… Seeing their tour bus outside, I guess they stopped for lunch along their way… We end up waiting for a few minutes till a table became available for us…
Once we sat down, a new surprise… Instead of the usual two menus, now there are 3 as they have started serving Ice Cream by Baskin & Robins and hence their menu is also included as shown in the pic… So, together we ordered the Barbecue Chicken and Velvet Chicken Cake as the starters and then a Chicken Stroganoff and what they call a Bistecca Di Pollo as main course… Then since we thought of having a dessert and being the only choice outside the Baskin & Robins menu, we went for splitting a Banana Split 🙂
First of all, I must mention a complaint I had with the way the service was today… Usually we expect the starters to be served first and then the main course to follow after the customer is done with the starter… This time however, to our surprise, all the starters and main courses came together… The problem with this was that by the time we ate the starters, the main courses became cold…
Anyways, the starters were the Barbecue Chicken and Velvet Chicken Cake… The portion of Barbecue Chicken came, as seen in the pic, with a whole leg of Chicken as two pieces i.e. the drumstick and the thigh grilled and then cooked in their barbecue sauce to perfection and then topped with some yogurt sauce and served with some salad consisting of cabbages and lettuce on the side… The barbecue sauce is different from what I had before and has a smokey sweet and sour taste to it which I liked with the grilled chicken and the combination of the sauce coated chicken with the crunchy lettuce and cabbage pieces seemed to work really well…
The Velvet Chicken Cake was something I have had before and my dad had that this time… For those who are not familiar with it, its a special they sometimes have, which is not included in the regular menu and its basically a sort of a fried cutlet made out of chicken minced with herbs coated with red velvet powder and fried with a piece of carrot inside as seen in the pic, and then served as topped with a sauce and a salad on the side… However compared to last time, instead of that incredibly sweet green coloured cream sauce, they used their tartar sauce to top the velvet cakes… Also, instead of serving it with a salad consisting of only bell peppers, this time we got bell peppers with lettuce…
Then for mains, we had a Chicken Stroganoff and a portion of what they call Bistecca Di Pollo… The Chicken Stroganoff consisted of shredded chicken cooked with bell peppers, onions and mushrooms in a sauce which had a hint of cream and butter and sort of like the barbecue sauce which we usually get but with the flavour of mushrooms dominating it… But when I asked, the waiter just said that its their stroganoff sauce… The stroganoff is then served with some rice cooked with butter and then topped with their usual yogurt sauce with a piece of lettuce at the bottom…
The Bistecca Di Pollo, according to their menu is basically Wine marinated grilled Chicken breast served with potato and vegetables… What came was a butterflied Chicken Breast grilled and coated in what looked like a barbecue sauce and sour cream served on top of boiled vegetables sautéed in butter with garlic and herbs along with mashed potatoes and a piece of their garlic bread, finished off with some grated parsley…
Then finally for dessert, being the only option available, we got their Banana Split… It came in a tub with 3 scoops of ice cream namely two scoops of vanilla and one scoop of chocolate with a whole banana split and chopped topped with 3 kinds of fruit syrups which felt to me like strawberry, kiwi and litchi along with chocolate sauce and finally some chocolate sprinkles as shown in the pic… Unfortunately, personally I didn’t enjoy this dessert, while my dad loved it very much… The reason I didn’t like it is because to me, it tasted too sweet because they practically flooded the tub with the syrups and so the whole thing was way beyond my tolerance level for sweetness… However, for my dad for whom I am yet to see a tolerance level for the same, it was his favourite item of the day 🙂
Anyways, overall a nice meal as usual from the place, which I now call as “Poor man’s Villa Maya” 😀 😛
