Thursday, August 6, 2009

Next time..take-away

Visited an upscale Italian restaurant in Mumbai . It was my first visit to this place. Quite a large restaurant. The attempt seems to have been to create a cozy , intimate kind of ambiance. Vintage looking walls , chandeliers (hanging at perilously low levels) , lighting dim enough to induce sleep (personally I prefer good, diffused illumination in a restaurant ). All of these features are at loggerheads with what seems to be the core clientele of this restaurant ( based on what I witnessed in my visit ) - large groups of people most of which often have 1-2 toddlers in tow ! By 8.45 pm the din in the restaurant would have sufficed to attract the attention of inhabitants of neighboring planets. Not many (standalone) restaurants in India pay adequate attention to acoustics and the inter-play of the sound with the visual scene. Perhaps it is lack of expertise in interior design or it's a non-issue for the restaurant. There is undoubtedly a cultural aspect to it . And the fact that a restaurant with 100+ people is bound to be noisy. I do believe that the overall it could have been made more bearable by attention to detail.

The food thankfully was amazing. Though a next time I'd be more inclined to order a take-away.

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