Waking up to coffee!

Rating: **1/2
Meal for two (with coffee and tea but no alcohol): Rs650
The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf
Heaven B, Linking Road, Bandra (W), Mumbai-400050, Tel: 6406333, 6406444

This is a well-known American chain which according to the publicity material placed on each table has “mesmerised” celebrities since 1963. It is hard to understand how exactly, because The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf (CBTL) appears to be a standard coffee shop in the Western/international mould.

The smell of coffee in the air is tantalising; the waiters and cashiers and coffee makers all shouting “Good afternoon Coffee Bean” every time someone enters is vastly annoying. Maybe this obsession with meeting-greeting mesmerises celebrities in Los Angeles.

When it happens every five minutes, you want to get up and start screaming because if nothing else it seems to distract the staff from doing whatever they should be doing. Like you have to repeat your order at least three times as the staff are shouting “Good afternoon Coffee Bean” to each new entrant.

Carping done, let’s take a look at the rest. The first floor in the Bandra eaterie is all cafe and business-y, upstairs is all sofas and comfy so you can choose your style. Given the level of current efficiency, I would stay downstairs unless you’re in some lovey-dovey mood and want to be left alone.

We ordered a farmer’s egg sandwich and a chef’s tuna sandwich, both in multigrain. We also decided to order a potato salad with salmon topping. And to start the meal, a cheese croissant — which was a ‘test’ by rock chick. Yes, it was properly cheesy and not a cheating cheesy like other croissants in the city but as she pointed out, if you heat a croissant in the microwave it becomes limp and chewy, losing that lovely flakiness essential to a croissant. Someone might pay attention to that.

The sandwiches were worth it —excellent buns, crusty on top and soft within. The boiled egg filling was deliciously mustard-y, which gave it a good twang. The tuna was also well-flavoured. The potato salad — which took about 30 minutes to arrive, go figure — was less effective. There’s a trick to potato salad and it’s not just to do with the quantity of mayonnaise. If the potatoes are not cut small enough and the mixing is not done at the right temperature, the salad does not blend. So this one needs a little work, although the salmon topping was excellent.

That leaves the coffee beans and tea leaves of which there is a mind-boggling variety and probably all of them deserve to be tried out. For dessert, rock chick tried the blueberry mousse cake which lived up to its promise — sweet, creamy, mouth-filling. I decided to try the pancakes with butter and honey which threw the kitchen off-gear — I don’t see why since kitchen staff don’t have to shout “Good afternoon Coffee Bean” every five minutes — and took 15 minutes to arrive.

The pancakes were what I would call drop or griddle scones but possibly what the Americans call pancakes, but if you get the batter right you can hardly go wrong. Two little ones, so not very heavy but really quite nice and a change from a pastry type thing. For a new entrant which mesmerises celebrities, CBTL needs a little fine-tuning.