If you’re expecting whacky seafood, Shirin Mehrotra tells you to hold on. She discovers the most twisted thing about this eatery is the menu.
Don’t let the name and the twisted logo confuse you. This one’s not a fancy, high end eatery. Twisted Fish is your friendly, neighbourhood restaurant where you hop into with your family for a relaxed Sunday meal. Since the restaurant serves Konkan and Mangalorean food, this meal could easily be followed by a quick nap on a Sunday. We think Sundays are all about sleeping aren’t they? But the thought of food makes us happy any time of the day, so we made our way there straight after work.
The restaurant is located a hop, skip and jump away from Khar Road station. While this day old restaurant was empty when we visited, we grabbed
the opportunity to chat with the Managing Director and co-owner Varun Salian. As Mangaloreans, both brothers who co-own the restaurant focus on Indian coastal food with smattering of North Indian and Chinese thrown in to cater to a wider audience. The décor is a cross between fine-dining and a low key Gomantak restaurant. So, while the food is served in steel plates they also have place settings at the table.
The already confusing décor got a little more confusing, when spotted an empty wine rack, which we were told will soon have Indian wines on display. If that doesn’t confuse you enough, the owners also plan to set up a live dosa counter.
The menu that we were presented were similar to your everyday ‘restaurant and bar’ establishments; laminated, spiral-bound pages with a limited selection of dishes. Seeing our astonished faces, Varun promptly informed us that these were temporary menus. Elaborate menus were still being designed. Tisk tisk! We couldn’t help wondering if a complete menu was too much to hope for from a new restaurant?
We started with ordering a Mojito, Butter garlic prawns (Rs 400) and Paneer Jaipuri tikki (Rs 190). These prawns were beautifully marinated in garlic, crisp on the outside and fleshy, soft and well cooked on the inside. Despite being seafood lovers the Jaipuri paneer tikki gets thumbs up from us. The crispy paneer and mixed vegetable patties were made crispier with a coating of fried papad bits.
For the main course, co-owner Varun highly recommended the neer dosa (Rs 30). We picked the Meen Pulimunchi (Rs 240) and Chicken Gassi (Rs
190) to go with it. The fish was tangy, heavily spiced and paired well with the soft neer dosas, which justify a special mention. While the gassi was also delicious with a subtle coconut flavour, the chicken was a little undercooked.
Known for its digestive properties and zesty flavour, we craved a glass of Sol kadi to complete our meal. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that it will be added to the final menu.
The well-meaning staff at Twisted Fish was attentive, but hovered too close while we dined; a tad annoying after a while. They could also use a few lessons on pronouncing the names on the menu; Chicken gassi was repeatedly referred to as chicken jassi.
In our opinion, this eatery is suffering from a bit of an identity crisis. A little work and we think Twisted Fish has potential to be the next new destination for coastal food lovers in Mumbai. Until then, we’ll stick to Saibini or Highway Gomantak.
Must Try: Neer dosa
Price for two: Rs 1200+taxes (without alcohol)
