Back to basics: The bar menu is getting a much-needed facelift

What happens when bars get innovative with their alcohol? The good-old chakhna undergoes a transformation as well.
Boiled eggs and masala peanuts are passé. Bengaluru's bars are pairing innovative snacks like popcorn shrimp, calamari rings and exotic dumplings with craft beer and designer cocktails.Building a bar menu, in fact, has come to be as significant as the main course.

“The popular resto-bar culture, where people are standing pretty much all the time, calls for easyto-eat finger food. In fact, most young revellers don't even want the main course. They are only looking for short bites, pushing us to constantly innovate our bar snack menu,“ said Sly Granny's chef Varun Pereira. His menu has some favourites in bite-sized portions: Kulchas with gourmet fillings like fig and goat cheese ig and goat cheese and spiced pump kin, and mezze platter.

While many res to-bars are look ing at gourmet, the Social chain is giving a modern temperament to local foods. Its lamari with gun bars serve calamari with gun powder, fish and chips with vindaloo paste and Bombay bhel puri with granola. “For well-travelled Bengalureans, food is as im portant as their alcohol,“ says Saurabh Arora, city chef for Impresario Entertainment and Hospitality which owns the chain.



According to Saurabh Udinia, head chef for Masala Library, Farzi Café and Masala Bar, the concept of tapas and small plates is popular as diners get to experience restaurant specialities, and chefs get the creative liberty to pair unique flavours and play around with presentation and plating.

On dedicated bar snack menus, Gourmetindia.com founder Suresh Hinduja says, “Even classic French fries now come with new-age dips like mustard and truffle oil in place of ketchup.Restaurants like BBQd are playing with local eats like kodubale 65, curd rice tikkis and customized kothu paratha. As long as libations continue to evolve, the bar snack menu will revolutionise too.“

Rahul Nagpal, partner at Synergie Hospitality Consultants, believes that in the future there will be a return to more local food with modern tweaks.