Established in
1920 in Panjim, Café Bhonsle is a brand that is in its 100th year and yet going as strong as
ever. Presently, Café Bhonsle is the famed vegetarian café on the ground floor,
with Casa Bhonsle offering non-vegetarian food and a bar as well, on the upper
floor. In 100 years, the brand has expanded its wings to Ponda and just
recently in Porvorim too. The Ponda and Porvorim branches have only the Café
experience while the Casa remains limited to Panjim only.
Café Bhonsle in Porvorim is spread across 2 floors and the upper
floor offers a little more privacy and is air-conditioned. Although most of the
menu is same across all cafés, the South Indian section has been first time
added in this café.
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With Dosa, Idli and Uttapam finding their place on the menu,
this alone becomes reason enough to pay the Porvorim branch a visit. The house
favourites like the veg thali, puri bhaji are also available. Patal or sukhi
bhaji with bread is available from 6:30am to 9:30 am.
To begin the meal, we
ordered Tomato Soup and Sweet Corn Soup along with a Paneer Tikka. The soups
were really delicious as was the paneer tikka. There’s the chance of uneven
coating of the paneer which can result in bland tikkas, but here, the paneer
was spiced perfectly and evenly coated, making it really flavourful.
We tried the Masala
Dosa, which was perfectly crisp on the outside and the inside filling of potato
was nicely done. Served with piping hot sambhar and coconut chutney, it surely
is worth giving a try.
We also tried the
Mirchi Pakoda, which are quite a popular dish. This turned out to be a good
choice for it made a perfect snack to go along with the masala dosa, balancing
the flavours quite well.
The Schezwan Noodles
that we then tried were perfectly tossed and delicious. In fact, they made for
one of the best dishes of the meal.
They have quite a few
shakes to offer and we settled for a chiku shake, which was very tasty. A thick
and sweet shake, it almost satiates all your cravings for eating something
sweet, but for us, the buck didn’t stop there just yet; we ended our meal on a
sweeter note with the Sheera.
So
for a wholesome experience, Café Bhonsle is a name that has been trusted for
years, in fact it’s a century old brand that is going from strength to strength
and in case you haven’t visited this new branch yet, it’s definitely time.
