• The Biere Club

    Having been thwarted once on a ‘table for 2 after 7pm on Saturday’ at TOIT, we decided to try another tack at The Biere Club and reserved a table via Poshvine for Sunday noon. Here’s a map for those who aren’t sure where it’s located. Parking would really depend on when you’re dropping in. One option is to park at UB City and walk. We sat on the ground floor, with a view of Lavelle Road as well as the microbrewery. There are two more floors – the smoking sections, I think. Lots of graphics on the walls, reminded me a bit of Mario Miranda. Looks like a peaceful place, without the buzz that TOIT seems to have, but that was probably because of the time we were there at.

    From the huge selection of beverages and meatables, (don’t worry, there are veg options  in plenty too) we decided to go for a wheat beer (you get a 500 ml for the price of 330 ml as part of a breakfast combo) and a glass of Biere Sangria. We also ordered a Moroccan Chicken to go with it. The wheat beer was fine, and perfect for the non-regular beeraholics, but on my taste buds scale I prefer the Basmati Blonde at TOIT and the one at Punjabi by Nature, in that order. The stout beer is pretty good, if we go by the 4sq tips. Maybe some other time, when I’m not riding back. 🙂 The Sangria was much better, and chances are that you’ll really like it – especially the little zing that the lager adds.

     

     

    The Breakfastwich arrived first – a sub with ham, bacon, a couple of fried eggs and a token cheese presence. While the bacon and baked beans were just fine, the entire thing proved a bit unwieldy, and didn’t really impress much. The Breakfast pizza arrived a bit later, and it was then that we realised that they had forgotten to tell the kitchen about the Moroccan chicken. But one look at the pizza was enough to convince us that it was a fortunate mistake. The thin crust pizza had bacon, sausages, mushrooms and a fried egg at the centre of it all. Sliced just right, it was quite awesome with a tomato tang, mild spice and a good load of cheese. Great combo with the beer. 🙂 We really had no space for desserts.

    The service was reasonably good, barring the Moroccan chicken incident that proved advantageous for us. All of the above cost us less than Rs.1200, thanks to the Poshvine deal. Definitely worth a visit, especially considering that it’s Bangalore’s first microbrewery. 🙂

    The Biere Club, 20/2, Vittal Mallya Road-Lavelle Road junction Ph: 42124383/4/6

  • ItsMyMeal

    ItsMyMeal is a FoodCommerce venture, where food & e-commerce are managed together to provide the basic daily meal. In conversation with co-founder Nikhil Gupta

    [scribd id=94863993 key=key-1c0u9tjycvkz084406ze mode=list]

     

  • Branded trends

    Last week, Karthik had a post titled “Twitter, Twitter on the wall.. Who’s the trendiest hashtag of them all” that resonated much with me. In fact, it was a sentiment I had expressed just a few days before –

    We live in an era of instant gratification – from a consumer perspective. I’m not sure about the origins here – whether technology (from pagers/mobiles to social networking) came first or the behaviour did – and that prompted technology to evolve rapidly, but delayed rewards seem to have little or no meaning for today’s users.

    It’s a difficult behaviour to ignore, though building and evolving a brand’s DNA is a story that requires a much larger timeframe, IMO. And that’s where I remember Godin’s post titled Twitch – “the social internet is emphasizing twitch more than ever before. All that smart phone checking and checking in and name checking and instant rejoindering is amplifying the work of those that are just a little quicker than everyone else.” Godin himself states later that “While twitch may pay off in any ten minute cycle, I’m not sure if it gets you very far in the long run, where the long run might be as short as two weeks.“

    While it is possible to argue that individuals, even the personal brands, could scale quite some way on this, I’m not sure whether brands can. And that’s why I, despite being a practitioner of ‘social’, find the rise of the twitch tendency in brands, disturbing. Twitch is probably the brand’s rendition of ‘instant gratification’. What’s worse is that it’s not even the idea of social that’s the twitch here, but individual platforms and devices, (such as hashtags) which seem to have become drivers, sometimes displacing a well thought through strategy.

    A brand (even before the social era) consists of many parts. There’s no taking away from the fact that social has probably been the biggest disruption that brand frameworks have seen, but it still is only a part of the larger story. It needs to be woven into the larger brand framework, and then a decision should be taken on its role – lead or otherwise. Until brand managers take cognizance of that, twitch, will unfortunately prevail.

    until next time, a twitch in time….

  • Sunny Stunner

    As he sat down at the table, he heard one of the girls exclaim, “The sequel has Sunny in it too!” “Remember Balwant Rai ke kutte?” he excitedly joined the conversation, surprised they had seen Ghayal. Looking at him strangely, they left the table. “Sunny Leone in Jism 2, you idiot”, said one, before leaving.

    until next time, Big Brother vs Bigg Boss

  • The Rozabal Line

    Ashwin Sanghi

    I have quite a bit of interest in Hindu mythology, so I had a bias going in. It would be fair to say that it also gave me the patience to sit through the back stories that constantly intersperse the narrative.

    The thing I admire most about this book is the painstaking research that the author seems to have done. (all references have been diligently acknowledged) I’ve read books that require research and mix fact and fiction (eg.Michener), but in this case, the research is across cultures and religions in one plane, and across time, in another. When you combine that with the requirement of having a story that should flow in concert, is when you realise the work that has gone in.

    The other thing I could identify with was the author’s love of anagrams and wordplay. He has put it to excellent use, when dealing with the names of gods and drawing connections between cultures.

    Though the primary plot of the book revolves around what happened to Jesus after crucifixion, his bloodline and the modern repercussions including religious terrorism, it is also about the parallel themes and recurring phenomena in modern religions. (The part of Jesus-like characters in earlier religions is fascinating)

    Its a superlative read, the only possible drawback being the heaviness of the content, not just in terms of historical trackbacks and comparative religion – conversations, but the twists and turns in the contemporary story itself.