Just heard: Off the road

Just heard: Off the road
Ballard Estate’s newest eatery promises a food truck experience, minus the road show.

The lane popular for housing Parsi restaurant Britannia & Co. now has a new casual dining space called Kaboom. Housed where Café Model used to be, it has a steel drum for a dustbin and old salvaged pedestal fans provide a base for red tables. The focus is on sustainable and organic, high-quality food, says proprietor Yohaan Dattoobhai, who intends to capture the office goer’s attention.

Inspired by food trucks of the West, Dattoobhai stays with competitive pricing and offers a selection on cuisines. Kaboom offers a different menu every day (Monday: South East Asian; Tuesday: European cheese toasts; Wednesday: Italian; Thursday: Middle Eastern; Friday: American).

On Thursday (Haba Habibi day, they call it) we dropped in, we could pick from the predictable Lebanese hummus, baba ganoush, pita, falafel sandwiches and fattoush salad. The okra stew with vermicelli pilaf (add shawarma for Rs 20) was good comfort food.

The familiar flavour of lady fingers cooked in a light tomato gravy made us smile. The shawarma sandwich (Rs 230) packed in tender chicken pieces, pickled vegetables and hummus. The homemade pita had a rotilike consistency, soft but firm enough to hold the meat. But the hummus, we thought, was a bit too lemony. The surprise was the fattoush salad (Rs 170) - a tangy sweet mix of cherry tomatoes, bell peppers and lettuce.

The food was good, but not great. The service is efficient, and your meal is assembled right in front of you, served hot in cup-like containers.

Opens on November 17