Impossible to say how long this will last, but for now, sitting in the open under the night sky four storeys high, even with the traffic sounds of Bandra wafting up Linking Road, is a magical experience. The waning moon sadly, wakes up very late these days and it’s easier to see stars in Juhu or on Twitter than it is in a city sky, but the slight breeze and the pleasant ambient temp — okay, enough of sounding like a weather report — added to the pleasure.
Don’t know whether Escobar is related to Pablo but certainly, this could be addictive.
You walk past the closed air-conditioned section to the large terrace, past a bar counter which runs the length of the room and then continues outside as well. It’s all wood and white, quite stylish. The breeze does not give the candles much room to grow but the waiters and their lighters manfully try to keep them alight.
Who cares, it looks so pretty and different. This is what Mumbai needs — more open-air eateries. If this faced the sea, it truly would be perfection. I get it — let’s not get greedy.
But that, of course, is what we’re here for. The waiter provides a bar menu with a long list of cocktails and little else. I am aghast but the waiter quickly reassures me that I do not have to spend the night drinking cai-this and cap-that. The Old Monk appears at a leisurely pace (and so does rock chick) but I don’t bother with pretending to play with my phone while I wait because it’s all so delightful.
Escobar has a tapas menu but the one Spanish thing which should be a must — chorizo — is not available yet. So we opt for patatas bravas and some grilled prawns with chilli, garlic and fennel. The potatoes were just fancy chips with cheese sauce on top but the prawns were very delicately flavoured. Just about everything else on the menu had chicken in it which is anathema to rock chick, so we tried the water chestnuts — which turned out to be deep fried! This was interesting, in a kind of Chinese flavour — soya, spring onions. I’m assuming that China is very far from
Columbia, but what the heck.
By this time, the evening was still balmy, the music was kind of Euro-techno and its steady thump went well with the Old Monk and the night air — glorious!
For main course, we tried a roast duck salad and a cheesy pizza (the curse of the chicken again). Sadly, I have had better duck and for me to waste any is criminal, but I did. The arugula was good, the dressing was tangy, but something was not right.
The pizza on the other hand was fine — lots of cheese, lots of olives and nice and thin and crisp. Awesome, the waiter had promised and he was right-ish.
Desserts were limited so we went with a familiar tiramisu which was distinguished only by its strong and effective use of coffee.
By this time, the beautiful people had arrived and you know that this is the kind of place which will have to keep re-inventing itself if it wants to retain the vibe. But so far, so good.
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