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Ayda, it appears, is almost always populated with incredibly beautiful, kohl-eyed women of Persian descent. If these houris, emerging as they do from wisps of shisha smoke, don’t catch your fancy, you could, of course, indulge in what you came here for in the first place: food. It’s a capital idea to begin with a plate of dande kababs, barbequed mutton ribs served with naan. The kababs are marinated in the woodiness of cinnamon, the bite of nutmeg, the summery wonder of parsley and the zest of lime – each strikes a strident note on your tongue. Such spices ring true in other dishes too – kobideh momtaz, a barbequed mutton mince mixed with Persian herbs and served with ghee and saffron rice, and joojeh halazuni, a rolled chicken fillet marinated in saffron and Persian herbs and served with pickled vegetables.

If you are too accustomed to the Indian tradition of consuming breads with gravy, you have no recourse but to improvise: take the barbequed tomato that is infused with the juices of the meat and squash it into your rice, adding a dab of ghee. But whatever you do, do not commit the sin of leaving this place without trying their havich bastani, carrot juice swirled into ice-cream. It’s as easy on the tongue as the patrons are on the eye.

BG Hotel serves its customers in plates that are divided into neat compartments – two little craters for the gravy, one slightly bigger one for the meat you’ve ordered, chops, khaima, chicken masala, mutton fry and so on, and one large square for the mudde and rice. The mudde here is, again, quite different from others you’ll get in Bangalore. It is far smoother and compressed tightly enough for you to tear bite-sized pieces out of it.

This restaurant champions a cuisine where the freshness of ingredients is crucial and errors can’t be masked by spices. Harima’s sushi platter is a worthwhile investment: fresh fish on perfectly vinagered rice. The crisp fried soft shell crabs are to kill for. But the best things on the menu are the last: wasabi and green tea ice creams. Order one scoop each to experiment and alternate spoonfuls. One is fire, the other an extinguisher. A great way to spend a special evening.

It is the kadi in the kadi chawal combo that establishes why Khushboo gets crowded at mealtimes: the subliminally spiced curd gravy is marbled with milk fat and chilli powder, and the deep-fried besan pakoris are light and flavourful. Khushboo’s menu features other north Indian specialties such as gatte ki sabji, chuchu bengan and kanji vada, but if you take a cue from the other tables you’ll order the uttam thali. You get a bowl of tomato soup served with croutons (when did that get appropriated as a fail-safe appetiser in Indian restaurants, anyway?), followed by a serving of fluffy dhokla. A vegetable korma makes its appearance, but ignore it in favour of the excellent creamy kaali dal, redolent of cloves and bay leaves. Papad, boondi raita, peas pulao, phulkas, pickle and salad make this quite a substantial meal, with the staff on hand to serve you seconds (or thirds). To end the meal, they bring a kulfi falooda to the table: layered with vermicelli that’s stained pink with rose syrup, the milky dessert is textured with a generous sprinkling of chopped pistachios and almonds.

This unassuming eatery serves wholesome Kashmir Valley cuisine. While you wait for your food to arrive, sip on the kungh lassi. The metallic honey of the kungh (saffron) shines through the creamy lassi. The classic tabaq maaz, slow-cooked and fried lamb ribs, has to be torn off the bone by hand, teeth and brute force to reveal a layer of fat, but eating this kabab is a rewarding process that attests the skills of self-professed carnivores. Next, try the yakhni goshtaba– tender lamb dumplings in fragrant, thin yoghurt gravy, and the kungh cockur curry – chicken that just slides off the bone, cooked in a piquant saffron-based sauce. Both go wonderfully with steamed rice, and you’ll soon realise this is a meal best enjoyed with your hands. Make sure you try the kahwa, traditionally had at the end of dinner. Served steaming hot, with chopped almonds settled at the bottom of the shallow cup, the sweet saffron infusion would make the perfect end to the meal, but you won’t regret ordering the rose-water flavoured phirni as well.

At Shiro, Chinese dumplings get a menu all to themselves, and just one bite of the har gau, steamed prawns in a steaming hot bamboo basket, confirms that they entirely deserve it. The moist translucent wrappers barely conceal the juicy, well-cooked shrimp, served with a chilli sambal tasty enough to eat after the dumplings were long gone. If you’ve ordered the nigiri platter you’ll get 12 pieces of red snapper, tuna and, strangely enough, chicken pesto. A word of advice: dip, don’t dunk. Both the soy sauce and the wasabi are strong. Try the prawn laksa; its creamy thick coconut consistency goes well with sticky rice and is as mild as the thinly sliced tender beef with chilli and basil is spirited. The dark and white chocolate mousse rolled in chocolate casing is a dessert version of sushi. It’s almost too pretty to eat.

This tapas bar always brims with good intentions and is full of good cheer. The platter of crumb-fried fish fingers makes a happy pairing with the drinks and remains our favourite. You’d do well to ask for the minced lamb here: albondigas con salsa (lamb mince balls in salsa sauce). It’s a good break from the fowl and fish and goes well with the excellent whiskey sour. The dessert, a cointreau crème brûlée, keeps up the high standards too.

One step inside the leafy confines of Halcyon Condominiums confirms they got the name right: it is indeed tranquil here. The best thing about Cilantro, apart from the wonderful service without the five-star prices, is that they let you linger. There’s no rush. After all, they never close. Order the basil-infused fried mozzarella any time you drop in, just to marvel at the sweet-and-sour salsa that spices up the crumb-fried cubes of cheese. If you’re there during meal times, order the Cilantro special sizzler. It has huge quantities of chicken shaslik on rice, topped with spicy barbecue sauce, while the poached red snapper fillet is just as substantial a serving. The fish is subtly flavoured with saffron and flakes perfectly to the fork.
Halcyon Condominiums, 9, Drafadila Layout, 4th Block, Koramangala (4110-2200). Daily 24 hours. All major cards. $$

Eating here requires some planning: the restaurant is tucked away on the first floor of a serviced apartment. Bangaloreans who have been to the previous avatar will remember the place for its well-known Parsi favourites. Still on the menu are the chicken farcha (fried chicken), patrani machhi (fish steamed in banana leaf) and dhansak (mutton in a lentil gravy), to be had with cinnamon-flavoured brown rice or rotis. The accompanying kachumbar (chopped onions, tomatoes, green chillies and coriander dressed in lemon juice) is free and offsets the gentle flavours of the dhansak well. Desserts are also made in-house, the winners being the warm creamy lagan nu custard and the malai kulfi.

An open courtyard right in the middle lets you lunch, or dine, in the light of the open skies. They’ve recently renovated, so you can soak up the cheery atmosphere at the even-bigge bar and take your pick from the tapas on offer. The bacon quiche and the beef steak remain eternal favourites. The pièce de résistance, however, are the entrées. Especially the salad of wafer-thin slices of Parma ham and scoops of melon. Owner-chef Manjit Singh will try to convince you that the real stars are his desserts; try a slice of the eggless chocolate cake and you’ll understand what he means. And if you’re there on the weekend, catch live performances with your meal as well.

It helps to be with familiar with the local tongue at a place like Malgudi. For starters, the munakai soup is only lentils and drumsticks cooked with aromatic herbs, a sort of refined sambhar, if you wish, while the attukal and the nandu versions are made with a leg of lamb and crab, respectively. You wouldn’t need a translator to pick out the cashew curry masala (batter-fried with onions) and the lamb pot roast with coconut. The popular non-vegetarian picks include the fish pulimunchi (spicy sear fish curry) and the karimeen pollichathu (pearl spot fish steamed in banana leaf). All of that goes down well with appams and neer dosa, or lemon rice, or you could even ask for a bagala bath (vermicelli curd rice) or stick to the ragi mudde and jolatha rotis (made from maize flour).

Ruh is the latest venture by the same folk who run Chandni Chowk in Koramangala and Heera Panna on Church Street. Here, the shisha fumes (of flavours such as apple, grape and paan masala) swirl into a heady breeze, and your evening is lit up by scented candles aplenty. The chicken in orange- and tequila-sauce and the mushroom paella with walnut pesto are excellent picks, as is the lamb warak inab (vine leaves stuffed with minced lamb served with rice cooked in Arabic spices). But it’s the specials here that you may want to consider – such as the outdoor barbeque, which makes the most of the open ambience and succeeds in exterminating the shisha vapours too. For dessert, our top pick is the gulab jamoon flambéed with rum.

If she could be plated Sue R John would have been the best dish at this Caribbean restaurant: spicy, sweet and full of goodwill, just like the food she cooks up. The juicy pork curry is mind-blowing and is the star of her Sunday brunch. Apart from the curry, the massive buffet spread includes Jamaican jerk chicken, Trinidad juicy beef stew and fish akra (cutlets). Regulars seek out the geera pork – cubes of the fatty meat slathered in Tobago-style cumin-spiked gravy, served with rice, tomato dal and mother-in-law salad. The spicy salad has a liberal supply of green chillies, thus earning its name.

Skip the regular menu and focus on the restaurant’s specialty: the Mongolian barbecue. You take a pick (vegetarian, non vegetarian, seafood), ask for a particular type of noodle and choose a hot bowl of accompaniments to go with it – we like the Asian hot bean bowl with lamb, flat noodles, bean sprouts, pak choi, water chestnuts and shitake mushrooms. You can also try the elephant chilli garlic bowl with seer fish, udon noodles, shredded potatoes and carrots in a surprisingly serious chilli oil-infused pepper sauce. The chef comes out and gets it all together with a deft hand.

The Garden Restaurant at Jayamahal Place is all about location. It is set in the verdant gardens of an erstwhile palace, which now offers its rooms to lodgers. The menu at The Garden Restaurant offers an array of north Indian food. However, the good news is that, it isn’t the typical ‘tandoorikaalidalbutterchicken’ variety. There are a number of unusual dishes to choose from. A must-have is the fish ajwaine tikka: the fish is crispy with ajwaine on the outside and tangy with masala on the succulent inside. The bhuna palak here tastes like butter. Its mouth-watering garlic- and cumin-seasoning is surprisingly delicate. The rahara ghosh, a mix of mutton chunks and mince, is a dish fit for kings, and the chicken biryani is excellent without being too oily. The waiters don’t stand on too much ceremony. They are warm and easy, maybe even a shade shabby. So you don’t have to worry about dressing up for this royal location.

It’s more apt to call this a kitchen for Punjabi cuisine rather than a restaurant. Nayadaur is primarily a takeaway joint, but if you’re hungry enough, and amenable to the idea of dining on the pavement you’ve parked on, they’ll set up a table for you. The food is brought quickly out of the kitchen: their chicken chilli sheekh kabab sizzles with oil, comes chopped up like a sausage, and is served on a stir-fried bed of crisp capsicum, garlic and onions. Both the chatpata paneer tikka masala and the Punjabi chicken masala are fiery and laden with spices. The chef shows a lighter hand with the vegetables – the okra in the bhindi aloo retains its crunch and colour, while the wedges of crumbly potato are lightly seasoned with turmeric and lime. The dishes are best eaten with the lachcha paratha – it’s as big and greasy as the plate it comes on, but it unspools easily. If you need a more delicate counterfoil to the heavy flavours of the dinner, try the pale and paper-thin roomali roti.

At Pizza Stop you won’t find the pepperoni endemic to fast-food chains or the Parma ham of swish Italian restaurants, but neither will you miss them. Here, they stick to what they do best: there are over 15 types of vegetarian wood-fire oven pizzas on the menu, and that’s pretty much it. The Zorba is a good choice, with fresh tomato sauce, mushrooms, garlic and black olives; an extra topping of sundried tomatoes adds a delicious tang to the combination. Also try the Mediterranean – topped with artichokes and oregano, and grated parmesan, which adds sharpness to the bland mozzarella. You can also customise your pizza to make it as “gourmet” as you like with extra toppings such as capers, jalapenos, broccoli and asparagus. The toppings here don’t look sprinkled on like garnish, nor are they leaden weights like with most American versions of the pie. Fresh ingredients and the perfect amounts of stringy cheese on crispy-thin pizza bases make for a light, flavourful meal.

There are no tamarind trees at Tamarind, although there is a treetop dining option: the platform is halfway up a jackfruit tree. Kids have a playground, bridge and waterfall area to run around in, which leaves parents free to sip cocktails over candlelight.

Seated up in the foliage, try the planter’s punch (dark rum with orange and pineapple juice) and the extremely lethal salty dog (vodka with grape juice). At this point, your moony eyes might owe as much to the bartender’s heavy hand as to romance. Follow those up with the fish tikka – the chilled mint sauce it comes with is a pleasing contrast to the hot kababs. The methi rotis are good enough to be eaten plain, but they’re even better paired with the spicy mutton pepper fry. The heavy masala flavouring of the meat is offset by the dal fry, which maintains a homemade comfort-food philosophy. Forget about dessert; weave your way down from the treetop and head straight for the paan stall in the car park.

On most nights, this tiny restaurant is packed with families and groups of women. The crowds are loud, the Bollywood music is even louder, the waiters weave their way through tables and children weave their way through waiters. There’s a fair representation of Indo-Chinese, surprisingly decent Thai food and a much smaller range of Indian cuisine. The butter kulchas arrive fresh and hot in a cane basket, gleaming with calories and studded with sesame seeds and coriander. The malai tikka comes to the table cocooned in a foamy casing of egg white which conceals plump morsels of chicken cooked to perfection, crisp around the edges but succulent within. The tikka is served with a flavourful mint raita. The Szechuan doesn’t aim to be fine dining – this is simple and tasty grub for when you’d prefer to skip doing the dishes at home.

While a mention of the year normally arouses mass patriotic fervour, for some of the populace in south Bangalore, it also invokes hunger pangs. In these parts, 1947 is a restaurant that offers “fine Indian cuisine”, and that it can get packed on a Tuesday night is a good measure of its popularity. The restaurant’s well-lit, in an unabashedly friendly “we really want you to see what you’re eating, so you can enjoy it more” kind of way. From the attentive staff dressed in beige khadi kurtas to the instrumental versions of old Hindi film classics piping through the speakers, this place is a fitting tribute to the past. The bharwaan aloo, potatoes stuffed with vegetables and a sprinkling of paneer, wins our whole-hearted approval.

Little has changed by way of patronage or food at this hole-in-the-wall institution since it first opened shop in 1965: the menu has hardly varied – idli-vada, khara bhath, kesari bhath and coffee, and the crowds are primarily early-morning joggers from Lal Bagh or students from the National College in Basavanagudi nearby. Almost everyone first orders the idli-vada, served with incredibly tasty chutney. People often travel to Brahmins’ purely for the chutney. Refills are mandatory, as the chutney on your plate runs out before half an idli is consumed (the refill counter is outside, on the pavement). Patrons who like balance in their breakfasts usually follow up the idli-vada combination with the sweet kesari bhath – hot, sticky and intensely saccharine. It is near-criminal not to order coffee at Brahmins’; rich, dark, nutty with a sharp caffeine bite at the end, the brew easily counts as one of the city’s finest.

The cooks here take traditional Konkan food and turn it into urbane cuisine – perfect foil for beer and wine on a lengthy Sunday afternoon (they don’t have a liquor license, but will let you bring in alcohol and charge you corkage). The soorna kachri (yam chips) and mutton pepper fry are both excellent: the chips hot and moderately brittle and the mutton well-marinated. Kanua’s practice of dipping chicken in ghee before roasting it – resulting in a close approximation of the “ghee-roast” from Mangalore – is legendary. The yeti pahnnaupkari (prawn masala) is more than competent and goes well with the dalithoi (yellow dal with lime) and rice. Chances are slim that any food will be left unconsumed on your plates no matter how much you’ve ordered.

Never ever call New Modern Hotel by its name; say “NMH”, and you will elicit happy sighs: “the sambhar, ah the sambhar”. That’s what people head to this establishment for: spicy, hot and laced with the sting of tamarind. NMH has a veritable feast of options: poori and masala dosa are the most popular. The former can be ordered with palya, the same stuffing that goes into the middle of the masala dosa. The restaurant is also popular for its sweets – the chiroti being the star attraction among these: semolina strands fried and assembled into a bird’s nest of sorts and consumed with hot, badam-flavoured milk. The coffee at NMH is one of the nuttiest and most aromatic brews in Bangalore. The restaurant allows smokers to take their coffee out on to the pavement. Make sure you pay your bill first, and if you ever intend on returning, always put the empty glass back on a table inside.

The restaurant serves Italian food in south Bangalore and keeps its menu entirely vegetarian. Try the cheesy garlic bread, which has four delicious slices of buttery, aromatic bread, with a layer of spicy red chilli sauce and lots of cheese. While the penne pomodoro has the “elegant tomato sauce” the menu said it would, it is frugal with the also-promised parmesan. The food at Ragoo’s is light and tastes like something your mother would cook after watching back-to-back episodes of The Hairy Bikers Ride Again. Try the chocolate mousse, it’s one of the best in these parts of town.

Consider the star of the show: the mutton biryani. At Shivaji, the rice is not a vehicle to transport the meat; because they are cooked together, the two whirl in a mix of complex spice mixtures and are bound together by the woody thickness of coal-fire generated smoke. The meat is divine, marinated and cooked so that it slips off the bone. The mutton fry sings the same aria as the biryani: intensely spicy and swimming in its juices, it offers a contrast in buttery meat and tongue-searing heat. There is, however, a downside to all this and it has to do with timing – you have to arrive at Shivaji at a prescribed hour to get a pick of the thoroughbred batch of biryani; veterans put this hour at around 1.47pm. If you go there too early, you might just end up eating a half-formed notion of the dish, and if you are at the restaurant too late, you might find that your dish is a little fatigued.

Here, Continental cuisine is far removed from its fine dining moorings; gourmet Italian fare like aglio oglio or its indigenously-flavoured cousins (kadi and crispy pakodas on hard wheat pasta, for instance) are all unpretentiously eaten out of banana leaves on recyclable betel nut husk plates you might have last seen at your neighbourhood chaat shop. The white pepper elbow pasta, brightened by tricolour capsicum and served with garlic bread, brings to mind Mum’s mac and cheese from the days when everything Italian was “macaroni”. The shepherd’s pie – a generous layer of flavourful chicken mince beneath mashed potatoes that find the happy balance between lumpy and pasty – is a more filling option, but the highlight is the creamy, mildly seasoned black olive and oyster mushroom risotto. The bite-sized squares of dessert, too, come bearing the same no-frills sentiment.

The staff looks after regulars fondly, but tends to be brisk and businesslike with the newbie. However, they warm towards you when they see you prepare the banana leaf expertly and serve yourself a portion of the mutton biryani. The rice is splendidly spiced and the pieces of mutton are massive. There are the usual pudis (chutney powders) and pickles on the table but all you need is the raw cut onion and the lime wedges. The onion cuts the fatty flavour of the rice and the lime perks the whole ensemble up. But try this combo in size “small” – the “large” biryani will easily feed a small taluk. The biryani itself does not really need any dressing up – not even the raita. The restaurant also serves up an excellent mutton fry. The same cuts of meat found in the biryani, this time in an onion masala fry.

Bhairava first started selling mutton kheema (“khaima”) and the one item of food that baffles most immigrants, ragi mudde, 19 years ago. This tasteless sphere of ragi, or millet, often confounds first-timers because no one really gets why a dark, bland morsel of steamed millet must be dipped in the hot sauce that accompanies it and swallowed whole. Why not chew it? One view is that the steamed millet is not really the point of the dish – it merely acts as a vehicle to transport the dense flavours of the sauce, which is usually a thin curry made of lentils and various greens. The kheema is minced meat balls that are served in thick gravy. These are a study in fiery contrasts: they break easily, revealing notes of cardamom and clove, both quickly yielding to the searing spice of chillies.

The primary emotion that permeates through Central Tiffin Room is eagerness and anticipation for the benne (butter) dosa. Quick-digging into the dosa is exciting, because, unlike the regular darshini fare, it is not all one texture: the dosa is crisp, but has little speed-bumps of fluffiness, with the palya squeezed in at just the right time, retaining its own character of pungency. The accompanying chutneys – coconut and coriander – go perfectly well with the dosa; the flavours and textures are distinct. Because the dosa is smallish and not too heavy, you will be tempted to order a second one.

This restaurant has a fast-growing tribe of fans who swear by it. The frenzy is prompted in no small measure by the kane masala fry and you too will be converted at first bite. The chilli masala that coats this fish is a deep red and is freshly ground every morning. There’s a hint of lemon to it – the reason why they don’t serve wedges of lemon with the fish. We love the pomfret naked fry and the prawn curry is a great reason to order up a plateful of pundi (steamed rice balls flecked with grated coconut) – perfect sponges to soak up the spicy gravy.

You don’t go to Mudde Madappa for love and reassuring words of amity. You go for the mudde (ragi ball) and the rasam, which is sublime – sour, spicy and thick with the combined juices of tomato and onion. There is a process to the consumption of a meal here. Instead of staring uncomprehendingly at the square, domino-sized piece of wood on the table, you pick it up sagely and insert it beneath the far end of your plate so the ragi ball remains un-doused in rasam. You break off bits of the hot ball, fashion them into smaller globules, dip in the rasam and swallow – god-forbid you chew; hell hath no fury like a Madappa wronged.

Higher Taste, the new restaurant at the International Society for Krishna Consciousness complex, carries forward the gastronomic impulses of the non-sectarian religious organisation that it represents: use of fresh produce, minimal processing and marked by the absence of any pungency; you’ll find no evidence of onions or garlic. Try the soup: nellikai charu. It is not very often that you’ll get to taste gooseberries in soup and when you do, the experience can be surprising. The berries can easily be mistaken for slightly greenish wedges of radish. They are crunchy at first bite and do not betray a hint of the sourness that they are famous for – instead, what you get is a dense, full-bodied taste with just a fleck of lemony aftertaste. Also recommended are the inji vadai, deep-fried dal cakes. . While these are standard fare in most south Indian restaurants, the vadai at Higher Taste throws a surprise late into the plot with a few fennel seed bursts.