Kamal Chhaya Bar & Restaurant

When you think “Kamal Chhaya”, you’re really expecting some cheap action on the night. While the action here doesn’t live up to your expectations, you’re kind of left feeling stood up on the night… They ran out of Boiled Chana for crying out loud!

Leaving you feeling “stood up”. But even Ross found his crab cake, remember?

Alright, before we begin to be all judgmental and hammer a poor little hole which was meant to “hammer” us in the first place – Weren’t “Kamal” and “Chhaya” names of popular characters from one of those ‘sanskari’ Indian TV soaps which ran for decades together? See, you’ve already concluded that Kamal Chhaya brought out the best in us, eh?

The name ‘Kamal Chhaya’ for a cheap Andheri bar really uplifts your expectations on the night, if you know what we mean. But with KC (let’s keep it short from here on), you go expecting an SRK, and what you get is a KRK…

Now, bars that fall in the Kamal Chhaya family of bars thrive on their chakna. These guys ran out of their ‘Boiled Chana’ when, it was one of the primary things we went for, which could accompany our evergreen monk. And that’s what triggered their collapse…

The layout of this place and the infrastructure reminds you of office cubicles that separate one frustrated employee from another, with a boss that’s caught up in a mid-life crisis, much like the manager dude of KC.

These guys have an AC room on the first floor, but choosing to sit in their AC room would be like choosing Veg Biryani over Chicken Biryani. Both are Biryani’s alright, but only one gives those taste buds the fucking feels.

Unfortunately, this Chicken Biryani was under-cooked, and we didn’t even bother exploring the raita *Interpret whatever the fuck you want to out of the previous sentence. This ain’t no Nolan film. In fact, now that we think, this is at best a Vikram Bhatt film.*

When places like these begin to bore the fuck out of you, the best thing to do is to go through their menu card. You’ll feel like a 10 year old going through a joke book… If “Chineese Chickn Rice” doesn’t bring a smile to your face then what will?

It was the fag end of the innings and KC was now only playing for pride. They managed to salvage some with their spectacularly tasty omlette, almost like getting to see a switch hit sixer by a lower order batsman. Or getting to see a Sunny Leonne special appearance in a Neha Dhupia film.

How often does it happen that you order peanuts with daaru and end up paying, that’s right, peanuts itself? And thus, KC and the likes will always be that losing team you always want to root for, in spite of many of its shortcomings…

I’m not trying this Chicken Biryani again but I genuinely hope it gets more tasty in the future… We hope we’ve managed to spill the raita though.

Where? Chinoy Estate, Opp- Krishna Mandir, Veera Desai Road, Andheri West, 

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