While there is an abundance of restaurants in Bangalore, and more opening up every day – there are those few places that draw you back with delicious food and beautiful recipes. The Fatty Bao tops that list for me. It’s a gastro bar located on 12th Main, Indiranagar, offering creative and innovative Asian food. Fatty (as I will refer to the restaurant here on) is celebrating their 2 year anniversary, with a new festival menu. Most celebrations are based on themes, and this one is Fatty’s Travel Tales – the menu featuring popular, unique and local dishes from ten Asian countries – dishes that are yet to gain familiarity in Bangalore, and some ingenious oriental cocktails. I was invited for a tasting by the kind folks there, and attended the first day of the festival for dinner. The place looked like a bohemian romance, with gorgeous lanterns, Chinese umbrellas and colorful buntings.

We sat on the terrace section, and started with the signature Japanese Tiger Sushi Roll. Now when in Fatty, don’t ever miss the festive sushi rolls – their last few festivals are a testament to this, because these are like nothing you would have tried. The Tiger Sushi is spicy salmon in sticky rice wrap and topped with an orange gel glaze – a rendition that had a lovely flavor and a mild crunchy texture. Tapash polished off his portions, and normally he swears off sushi. So a must try, really! The Singaporean fried chicken was batter wrapped with shrimp paste – perfect as bar food, and in fact was delicious to munch on.

The famed Carbon Prawn Tempura came next – that’s served with a citrusy yuzu mayonnaise and my favorite prawn crackers. The dish looked very interesting, the prawns were black in color with edible charcoal, but tasted like regular tempuras, would have probably been more interesting with a varied taste. The Chinese Hamburger – roujiamo was up; this was made with steamed buns and braised pork belly on a bed of lettuce – almost a different version of the famous baos here, quite delicious combination of the soft buns and the tender meat. The Malaysian Roti John followed next, a baguette bread sandwich with minced meat, onions, eggs and more that’s popularly sold by hawkers in Asia. In Fatty, this was served with ground beef and chili sauce – adding a zing that I thoroughly relished! Finally concluding the appetizers (!) were the Murtabak. The Murtabak is a stuffed pancake from Indonesia, but also popular in the Middle East. This had spicy lamb and vegetables fillings – and tasted nice, perhaps less of a pronounced lamb flavor.

The Cheung Fun was rice dumplings in delicious yellow coconut curry – an interesting mix that worked very well. The Filipino Bicol Express was one of my favorites that evening – a meal in itself, it was garlic fried rice and slow cooked pork stew spiced with shrimp paste and chilies – this was wonderfully done, and tasted fresh, rich and invigorating. I would go back, just to eat this again and again! The cocktails were very good too, as it is the usual in The Fatty Bao. Marina Bay was yummy, kaffir lime infused vodka, Absolut Elyx and Martini Bianco making magic together. The Oriental Blossom also was a good concoction, with a blend of tea infused vodka and Absolut Peppar and was deliciously potent. This made way for the desserts, there were just two on the festival menu – but offered quite variations in them.

This amazing new menu is available from 11th to 28th August, 2016 – for both lunch and dinner at The Fatty Bao. I would strongly recommend a reservation since they are usually packed to the hilt. During this promotion period, Fatty also offers a chance for diners to win trips to Singapore by Tiger Airways – not that an incentive is ever required to indulge in food, but always fun to get surprised wins. Read more about the delectable food at The Fatty Bao here.

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