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Adding a few inches

Café Inch takes the concept of a coffee shop a step further

AIRY AND RELAXED Café Inch is characterised by a lounge-like atmosphere photo: Murali Kumar K.

Give someone an inch and they will take a mile. But why waste column inches on inches when the point is that the city now has Café Inch? Situated at 100 Ft Road, Indiranagar, the first thing you notice about the coffee bar-cum-restaurant is that it offers more than a few inches of parking space.

Café Inch is a West Asian chain that has branches in Qatar and Egypt. This is their first venture in India.

"We wanted to create more of a lounge atmosphere. Though the coffee shops serve great coffee, the biggest complaint against them is they don't have good food to go with the coffee. It's mostly microwaved dishes. We offer an entire food menu that includes Middle-Eastern cuisine to Thai and pastas," says Sushanth Nambiar, the Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer of Summit Hospitality, the company that owns the restaurant.

The interiors of Café Inch are quite airy and bright. The section for smokers has been thoughtfully kept outside on the portico. The seating includes beanbags, wide couches and indoor swings. There is a television set into one of the walls and they have a collapsible TV that is used in the evenings to screen episodes of the popular sitcom Friends. The owners say they have all the episodes of the serial with them.

Though primarily a café which offers a variety of coffees, it is the food menu that catches the eye here. It is exhaustive. First the soups. There is the Italian Minestrone with pasta and pesto crème fraiche that is served with garlic and herb French toast and the tom yung kung, a mildly spicy Thai soup with shrimps, lemon grass, lime leaves, coconut milk and cilantro.

For starters, if you are diet-conscious, there is the classic Caesar salad and the Greek farmer's salad (small cubes of tomato, cucumber, onions, peppers and olives mixed with olive oil and lemon and finally topped with cheese). But if you want some spice to tingle your tongue, try the lamb and chicken Malaysian satay, the wantons or the assorted Oriental delicacies (hummus, fatoush, babaganoush and mohamara).

The main course is a little on the heavier side. Try the raspberry infused chicken liver (chicken liver sautéed with garlic and onions and cooked in raspberry vinegar). If you want to play it safe, go for the oriental mixed grill which contains the Arabian specialities — shish taouk, shish kebab and kofta kebab. They are served with rice-blackened vermicelli noodles, chilli Arabic bread, grilled tomato and roasted pine nuts. But if you wish to keep your main course light, you can go for the range of sandwiches on offer or just choose between a range of pastas, noodles and lasagne.

Among the desserts, Kit Kat and Arabica (baked cheesecake with chilled Kit Kat bars, served with coffee ice-cream) are delicious. So are English apple pie and American mud pie.

Café Inch is located at Milestone, No. 57, 100 Foot Road, Defence Colony, Indiranagar. It is open from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. For reservations call 41538088.

A.S.

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