How often does the price of the alcohol you drink influence your drinking destination? There are few bars that draw you to them in heaps mainly because of their premium ambiance and affordable pricing. The very popular chain, The Bar Stock Exchange (BSE), is a chain of watering holes that fall in this category, and has caught the living fancy of a liquor loving and bar obsessed Mumbai crowd.
Too much information on a drunk night
While Mumbai is home to the very iconic Bombay Stock Exchange (popularly BSE) in Dalal Street, it’s probably become the least popular BSE in the city now, given that so many others have popped up at various other locations and streets across the city. Oh come on, it was just an obvious joke! We landed on a Thursday evening at The Bar Stock Exchange; their Saki Naka outlet.
This is a typically loud Mumbai bar, screaming its lungs out with its overpowering thumping music, putting your voice chords to task if you want to drink and talk. It also means maintaining a distance of an inch from your waiter’s ear, while you struggle to place your order and give him an indication of how drunk you are in the process with your breath. Oh hey, they have an app too that let’s you order, but nobody really gives a fuck about tapping smart phone screens to place an order.
This outlet has a pretty decent and sizable outdoor seating to complement its indoor space. It will definitely surprise you, considering how small the place looks from the main road. High ceilings, vintage lamps, brick walls; it’s everything that you will encounter in a templated watering hole in the suburbs. But they’re only giving the majority what they like, and it’s clearly working for them, so who are we to complain.
Going by the very basic nature of shares and stocks, the prices of alcohol here fluctuate at varying points throughout the day, depending upon the demand and supply of the liquor that’s being sold. Good luck to you if you’re having mood swings at such times. This is turning out to be a very dry story, like those economics classes we had back in college. But hey, it’s what makes The BSE such a popular drinking destination, and the crowd on a Thursday evening suggested that people are literally willing to bear noise for cheap daaru.
If you’re really in there to play the economics game, you’d be left gazing at gigantic screens placed on the walls, giving you the brand of liquor, its current price, the lowest it hit on the day, and the highest it went for on the day –it’s just too much information thrown at you when you’re drunk. And that’s the catch here. Are people drinking what’s cheap at that point in time, or are they drinking what they really want to drink? Well, it’s both! Two drinks down, you pretty much don’t give a fuck about the screens and end up calling for what you want. It’s such a win-win for BSE, it’s not even funny.
When we were in, most of the cocktails (run of the mill ones) fluctuated between the range of 250 to 280, which is surely on the lower side compared to other places that give you the same feel. A Jim Beam small was selling for Rs 145 (lowest on the day being 80), and a Jameson was going for 161 (lowest being 125 on the day). 366 at that time of the evening for a Jager Bomb felt tempting, but again, it was just not a Jager Bomb kind of day.
While it’s all about the drinking experience here, let’s not forget about the food. These guys have quite an elaborate and widespread food menu, from Continental to Chinese. The Chilly Chicken Kebabs (Rs 300) we called for packed in a lot of spice, because it came with too many friends – bell papers. After a point, the chicken disappeared and all that was remaining were the peripheral items.
There’s so much going on with the screens, the loud music, and the waiters running from one end of the room to the other; it just all added up and got to our heads at one point, as much as the booze. At the end of the day, you end up spending as much as you would on any other night at any other place because that thing called ‘tax’ comes and bites you on the ass.
This is basically a trap being laid out by the Bar Stock Exchange at every one of its outlets, and all of us gullible drunk fucks fall for it day after day, night after night. Well played BSE, well played!
Where? Shivani Industrial Estate, Opposite Times Square, Sakinaka, Mumbai
Cuisine:Continental, Chinese, North Indian, Italian, Mexican
Food you must try: Chilly Chicken Kebabs, Corn Cheese Balls, BBQ Chicken Wings, BBQ Chicken Pizza, Alfredo Penne Pasta
Drinks you must try: If you’re not too bothered about the screens, try their Cosmopolitan and Whisky Sour
Dance Floor: Nope
Cost:Rs. 600 per drunk head
