OUR DINING EXPERIENCE- MAINLAND CHINA

 

 OUR DINING EXPERIENCE- MAINLAND CHINA

My family and I love the Indian version of Chinese food. Years ago, we thought what we were eating was authentic Chinese food but later we came to know that what we have is Chinese food designed to suit the Indian palates. We call it "Indian Chinese" these days. 

One of the best places for food of this type in Namma Bengaluru is the Mainland Chine chain of restaurants. This is a subsidiary of an Indian restaurant company called Specialty Restaurants Limited. There are four of them nowadays in our city. We usually visit the one in Jayanagar, in South Bengaluru.

We went there for lunch yesterday, to celebrate my husband's birthday. Being a week day there wasn't much of a crowd when we got in at 1.30 pm - the time we had reserved a table for ourselves. By the way, one practice we have honed over the years is to tentatively plan the meal before we actually get there. These days menus are available on the internet, so we go through them and have a broad idea of what we might like to have before the restaurant visit. This helps us as otherwise one would get rather overwhelmed with so many dishes to choose from in a somewhat limited time. 

To start with, we ordered Sangria, the punch made with wine. They didn't have the one with red wine - which was surprising as this is the more common variant- so we settled for the one called Blonde. 

This was made with white wine and brandy, orange liquors and assorted fruits, It tasted pretty good.

We placed our order for starters and as we waited we munched on the kimchi and the cucumber carrot vinegar salad.

We decided to skip the soup and go straight for the starters. There was so much to choose from. We chose Shanghai Chicken Spring Rolls which came with a Sweet Chilli Sauce which turned out to be quite fiery! 

The spring rolls were crisp with well done chicken as the stuffing along with water chestnut and Chinese cabbage. 

The next course for us was Spicy Dragon Chicken Fried Rice. The portion was quite generous and it was as tasty as it looked when it was first brought to our table. 

We had the Chilli Basil Fish in a Clay Pot. I think this was the stand out item of our lunch. The basa fish was incredibly soft and was what is often described as melt in the mouth. It went well with the Chicken Fried Rice.

I had mentioned when booking the table that it was my husband's birthday, so the restaurant gave us a small complimentary cake to celebrate the occasion . 

The service was efficient and the guys who served were prompt without hassling us in any way.

For both the quality of food and the quality of service, I would heartily recommend Mainland China- if you are looking to eat out for "Indian Chinese! "