Food review: Counter Culture in Bangalore

Counter culture
2D2, 4th Cross, Dyavasandra Industrial Area, Whitefield Rd
(credit cards accepted)
Price: Rs900
(Meal for two, without alcohol)

Driving to Counter Culture can be a pain. It’s in Whitefield, the traffic isn’t encouraging and to be honest, you won’t go there for the food either. But even so, if you like breathing in fresh air where the temperature drops a couple of notches rather obviously, and there’s no sound of traffic to interrupt your eating pattern and you can sit back and relax over a drink, Counter Culture will easily feature on your list of must-visits — as it did on mine.

It is spread approximately over 24,000 sqft with more space dedicate to nature than to man and was built primarily to promote music, performing arts and the like.

However, the menu too has a hint of the eclectic in it. A lot of the fresh greens are grown right there, including tomatoes, herbs, some of the greens, chillies, pumpkins and spices fennel etc.

Grown organically, most of the fare on the menu depends on what produce comes from their gardens, and their little touches of eco-friendly operations are rather commendable.

Sure, this restaurant wouldn’t get a Michelin star, but it would still remain a popular haunt for various other reasons.

I went there on a non-gig night and was surprised at the sheer sense of peace. With our cocktails being shaken and stirred at the bar, we picked our starters — stuffed mushrooms and Thai flavoured chicken wrapped in banana leaf. The chicken was grilled to perfection and the little morsels of meat had the right bits of herbs and dressing… the stuffed mushrooms, too, were good enough to go with the drinks. Served piping hot, I’d recommend you to wait a minute or two before popping them in your mouth.

Some experiments were on in the kitchen I heard, so I readily agreed to a portion of Stuffed Bitter Gourd that came to my table in less than 10 minutes. In a nutshell, if you don’t like the vegetable, avoid it,  though I have a feeling it won’t end up on the menu. As for me, I loved the whole play of sour with the bitterness and the steaming hot mashed vegetables in the tiny little bitter gourd casing.

That’s another interesting thing about the menu at Counter Culture — they keep changing dishes every two weeks, keeping a few that are quite popular with the regulars. The menu is written on a typewriter and once it’s redundant, it’s recycled to be used as fuel or even a candle shade.

From their entrée section, we chose a Stuffed Chicken Breast With Couscous, Fried Rice With Oriental Fish, Grilled Chicken Breast And Cous Cous with a pepper and mushroom sauce and finally, a Tenderloin Pepper Steak. The Oriental fish was basically basa tossed around in an abundance of red chillies and a sweet sauce.

If you have a tender palate, run away from this one. But the fish was cooked well because basa allows it to be played around with. The steaks too were cooked just right, the sauces palatable, but I didn’t quite enjoy their generosity with pepper. Every bite put a peppercorn in my mouth and that didn’t go down well with anyone. The tenderloin steak was the best out of the lot — the meat was tender, grilled to the right consistency and even though I did think it was slightly high on the salt content, I wasn’t complaining.

Dessert is a must here, purely because the chefs have taken the trouble to think up some really creative stuff. We tried stuffed gulab jamuns where they deep fry halves of jamuns and stuff them with rabdi — divine. We also got to try the mango custard that comes in a nice martini glass. Easy going, simple and delicious.