Chennai Burps

A lot can happen over coffee, and coffee shops have become the preferred hang out for a short eat and long talks.

With that premise we hit the Ispahani CCD. The spread of CCD is acceptable and has been accepted because if you look closely the new comers on the menu are few and far in between. A cursory look in the menu will tell you that their claim to fame is one Kaapi Nirvana that won a silver in some competition in 2002, much water has flown under the bridge since.

I also felt that their eats were always passable when fresh, high priced though they may be due to their huge over heads and rentals. I even started liking their spinach and the chicken sandwiches which till some time back was served with fries and in my last visit (a month or so ago)was served with some namkeen that reeked of rock salt and made me absolutely throw up in disgust. The sofas I must add are rather uncomfortable for large persons like myself and despite trying various postures it was difficult to get a comfortable seating position.

Anyway this is a food review so I will hit the topic, we declined on the eats, more so because the namkeen episode was still fresh in my mind, I asked a Moccachillo which I was informed was the only thing not available in that page. So I settled for the second option of a Choco Frappe (Rs. 65), my friend took the strawberry shake (Rs. 65) though I told him it would be a flavoured one. The waiter said would you like a chocolate or black forest topping, which in the din of the music sounded like a sauce topping to both of us and we went for the black forest.

The service if you are not used to it is painfully slow and you have to really wave hard to get noticed, not a bad thing when you want to talk sweet nothings without being disturbed, but a very bad idea when you are hungry or in a hurry.

Our order was served and we were shocked to see a small slice of stale black forest cake shoved in to the tall glasses that contained our respective drinks. The operative term is stale and the drink by itself was passable the cake did nothing to highlight or increase the taste component except to pile on the calories. Come on, you don't expect to find a pastry sunk into your coffee do you?

The bitter taste started when we got the bill, with the black forest costing Rs. 47 each. A lot can happen over coffee...you can get ripped off too.

The bottom line is CCD has a stale menu and often stale food but being a life style option, it gets away with it probably because there is no other equal alternative which comes with all the fringe benefits like good parking (esp in Ispahani).

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