Testing Indigo's hype. Review on Indigo, Colaba, Mumbai

Reading and hearing so much about this unbelievably good restaurant in Colaba for ages, about the exquisite food and minimalistic ambience, 8 of us decided to eat dinner at Indigo one night.

Reservations were duly made for 10pm and we arrived a few minutes late. We were taken up to the private lounge area since no table was free. After explaining to the waiter that we didnt drink or smoke and didnt want to sit in the lounge bar, we were taken to the open air seating area. Waiting there for half an hour, we ordered the food (taken by a waiter dripping with sweat). After repeated requests to the hostess, we finally reached our table. Disappointing so far, but we hoped the food would make up for everything. The hostess and maitre'd were extremely apologetic.

We ordered soup, corn chowder which was very very good and mulligatawny, which wasnt.

For the main course, I ordered Norwegian salmon souffle, which tasted like bread and cheese, contrary to the other times Ive eaten it. However everyone else seemed to be enjoying their food......the maitre'd got me a complimentary portion of good fettucine with a great sauce (must have seen my face while eating the salmon). We ate grilled chicken breast with broccoli, rare tenderloin and some other things whose names I dont remember because they were too long.

Then dessert, most of us had almond meringue with almond mocha mousse which was good, I loved the meringue part. All the desserts had these cool chocolate streaks on the plate and chocolate dust which made a very pretty picture.

Suddenly one end of our table started laughing, these guys got us a large piece, like a quarter of a cake with sorry written in huge letters, it was a little comic to see their way of placating delayed diners.

The dessert menu is customised with the name of the person making the reservation printed on the top.

I have nothing to write on the alcoholic drinks, since we had fresh lime and some grenadine thing. The fresh lime was good, the grenadine horrible and of course I was the one who ordered it.

The entire place was packed to capacity until 12:30, even the bar area, even when we left at 1:15, there were quite a few people around.

As you enter, there is a restaurant area to your right, in the centre is the bar, when you go upstairs there is a private lounge cum bar area, and an open air seating place. Indigo is an old house/bungalow converted into a restaurant. Though Rahul Akerkar is supposed to personally supervise all the food prepared I dont think he was in the restaurant the day we went.

Overall, the food is good, portions are very tiny, so be prepared to order more if you're hungry, and, most interestingly, the prices are reasonable, compared to what one would expect, not like a Shiv Sagar but not like a Trattoria either.

Go there at least once for the food and please dont order the salmon.