Trench Restro Lounge by the Chocolate Room

4 Bungalows, Andheri (W), Mumbai  Rated ***

The good news is the places is not in the trenches! Trench Restro Lounge by the Chocolate Room, located in 4 Bungalows, Andheri, is a spacious restaurant with two floors with the first storey being spacious than the ground floor and the open air dining area, though well placed and inviting sadly has smoking allowed and hence is inaccessible for those of us who are non smokers. I am wondering just how do all these restaurants interpret the ruling that smoking in public places is not allowed! That apart, what I liked and my friend disapproved of were the stairs that were quite a climb, steep and took the cardio workout seriously! But the first floor is rewarding once you ascend it. 

The glass pane on the facing wall giving you  the view outside makes the place more spacious and the neatly placed, decently sized tables are a welcome break from space starved restaurants in our city, especially the ones in Andheri- Oshiwara belt. We were ensconced in one of the sofas right below the caption: "you are the french to my toast",  celebrating togetherness. It is well lit, neat, and affords privacy to all customers owing to the size of the tables and the space between them too. 

Our lunch experience at this diner, begun with appreciation and ended with some disapproval. Appreciation for the range in cuisine, options and ambience and disapproval for the lack of imagination in variety, quality of the cocktails on offer, the extremely slow, uncoordinated service with seemingly disgruntled waiters and lack of warmth in greeting customers. 

There are only 5 cocktails on offer including the typical ones such as Blue Lagoon and the Mojito and the vodka based Mojito I requested for lacked in mint and had to be sent back for 'repair'. The virgin Mojito was flawless by the way and served in an interesting bottle. The starter we ordered for was apparently speciality of the restaurant, Trench Mexican Crepes and it was delicious. Soft, suitably stuffed, served at the right temperature and the sauce was spicy and worked up our appetite. However, it took two waiters and three reminders for them to bring us our starter and the drinks! 

In the first few minutes, having realised the staff are rather slow to the orders and inattentive with miserable pronunciation of the items, we decided to ask for the main course and the long black coffee (Americano actually) even before we got the starters. What happened was, we finished our much delayed but delicious started and waited for 15 mins before the waiters realised after repeated reminders that the other special dish, Trench Sunday Mood Pasta, a green sauce based pasta with pine nuts, basil and parmesan in olive oil was finally served to is rather cold! It was average and the portion size was decent, non greasy but with hardly any pine nuts to be seen. Given that it took them nearly 30 minutes between our appetizer and the main course to bring in the pasta, we did not dare to remind them of the coffee again and asked for our check instead. 

The prices are not competent but not exorbitant either and we would surely return to the place to try out their other dishes and the coffee for sure! However, it is best they train their staff to learn up the names of the dishes accurately as it can be misleading when crepes are referred to as crabs! The bar menu could surely be worked upon in terms of appearance of the menu a laminated sheet(! ) the range of cocktails on offer needs to be more extensive and since they pride on their range of chocolates and chocolate based desserts, the waiting staff need to recomend and promote it. 

So, we hope for a better service and experience on our next visit. I would surely recommend this place for its range of food but not if you are lacking a few hours to space for a leisurely lunch!

A G K