Pub and Restaurant Hopping

A recent discovery, Residency Road (above) and an old haunt rediscovered at Forum mall (below, with an NMIMS alum)

13th floor, with Savitha, an old friend, above, and Uru, near IIMB, with Avinash and Medha.

Innovative gathering of alumni of various IIMs, with Shailaja at HSR layout.

Milind, and Anjali squared at Lalbagh outer circle. (below)

Old colleagues above, nearby -Toast on the Terrace.

Below, a new friend and bookworm, Anushka. Chai Villa.

Old colleagues when I was at Indore. Saumya and Shweta Kushal.
 

Bangalored

It is always a pleasure to be in Bangalore. This time it was work that brought me here, and a highlight was discovering some places and even better, rediscovering people I had not met in some time.

I spent some time in the MR (Market Research) industry after my MBA, and one of my friends from those days is Muthukumar, who is still in the industry, while I veered off into academics. Our friendship grew over the years, and we independently started on Golf too. It was great meeting him and his family after a while.Here we are, at the KGA (Karnataka Golf Ass.) one evening.

Again, meeting old students is a given, as I try and catch up with my FB friends in person. This time I got lucky, and met three former students from different institutes-one at IBM, another into her own Exec Search frm, and the third at SAP. Also met my former assistant at Indore, Saumya, who works for Hansa research at Bangalore. And got to catch up with Aniruddh, an old friend who works for NetApp as a lawyer. Wonderful time spent with all.

The beer pubs are a great attraction, and I went to a couple of microbreweries that make exotic beer varieties.  Missed out on a few others (pubs and students), but there's always a next time

Researching Microbreweries

Went to a research conference on Social Media Marketing in Bangalore. During the after hours, tried researching the phenomenon of the microbrewery. Bangalore was the pioneer when it came to pubs in India. The first one started around 1983 and was called Ramada's. The later ones tried distinguishing themselves with different decor and ambience, and some even shut down due to 'recession.' Bier Keller at Hyderabad, and 10 Downing Street (ditto) are some I remember going to. Then I grew old, and the noise got to me, so I did not go to any for a long time.

But now, there is a reason to do so, if you qualify- as in, if you above the drinking age. The reason is 'product variety' or novelty. And a tastier, fresh beer. The two microbreweries that I tried out thanks to a friend (purely for research, of course!) both had interesting stuff. I had read somewhere that Trappist monks invented beer (naturally, in order to serve God through serving his creation), and one of the pubs probably in a tribute, had a variant known as Fat Abbott. Quite nice.

Another one had a wheat beer/ale that was very flavourful and smooth. There were stouts (brown/black) in both the places, but since I only had a small taster glass I can't tell you too much about those. By the way, a taster glass for sampling is a great idea.

Unsurprisingly, both are in the Brigade road area on either side of it. That's where it all began in the eighties.