My mom is very fond of Chinese cuisines. If given a choice, she always opts for Chinese restaurants to dine out; Chiyang, Malaya etc being her favorites. However, I am not very fond of Chinese food and so, like every mother on Earth, she lets me choose.
When my friend came home a few months back, we decided to try Chopstix – a restaurant at Palarivattom, Kochi. We like the place and the food and so I decided to bring Amma here some day. After months & months of waiting, we got the chance to visit Chopstix again.
As we ascended the stairs to the restaurant on the first floor, a metal embossing of Budhha, placed on the stair walls, caught my eyes.
The restaurant had one side made of glass, giving a view of the urban streets. Apart from the fact that you could know when the traffic at the signal nearby clears (which is very given the rush), it gave a retro ambience. I have always loved that part of the city. The area of Civil line road stretching from Palarivattom circle to the signal. It is almost always crowded due to the signal, but beautiful due to the abundance of greenery. When it is before or after the days, Man! Isn’t it beautiful? Watching it from the first floor, slurping on hot soup would be perfect!
As the name suggests, chopsticks were placed on every table with directions on how to hold them. Every inquisitive person who walks through that door would read the instructions and try to use them. So did we. Until the waiter arrived to take the order, we mastered the art of holding chopsticks and tried our best to make the two ends of each chopstick meet. That was easy. The tough part was picking things using them. My sister managed to lift a fork off the table using chopsticks. 😀
We ordered Manchow soup, Schezwan chopsuey and crab fried rice. The soup was thick, creamy and rich unlike in most of the places. If you like things spiced up, you must give manchow soup a try.
When we enquired about the chopsueys, they said American was sweet, Chinese was bland and Schezwan was spicy. However when they brought it, Schezwan was spicy but also sweet. It was alright since I liked the flavor. But if you can’t stand sweet in spicy food, you shouldn’t go for it because halfway through the meal, the sweetness begins to overpower everything else.
The crab fried rice tasted similar to normal veg fried rice with chunks of fried crab. As we finished our food, we were on the lookout for drinks to order and Jasmin tea caught my attention. I wanted to give it a try, but was skeptical about the quantity of tea that would be given. It said a Jasmin tea pot was priced at Rs 90 and we weren’t sure if we would be able to drink it all.
Since they didn’t have much options for drinks, we decided to give it a try. With the first sip, I had mixed feelings. For one, the scent of fresh jasmine flowers was strong and it was queer tasting jasmine flavor after years of smelling it. I liked that part. But the fact that there was no sugar, made me uneasy. With a few more sips of hot jasmine tea, I began to like it and didn’t bother asking for sugar. The liquid was clear and watery with a slight tint of green.
The pot had tea for six. Since we are generally tea and coffee lovers, having two cups is no biggie. Besides the cups were super-cute and tiny with no handles. I wonder if it’s a Chinese thing. The restaurant closes at 3.30 PM but the staff were patient with us. Once the place was devoid of customers and it was ten to four, we realized that we were holding them back. We drank the tea quickly, apologized, thanked them and took our leave.
PS -If you are wondering where the images of food in the food review post are, we were busy hogging that the dishes were half empty before I realised that I had to take pictures. Hence the compensatory pictures were taken afterwards 😛
A Few Handpicked Things in Life 