The Plus Way with Dineout at The Pink Poppadom, Hyatt

Dineout is India’s Largest Table Reservation App and now Dineout is introducing its latest offering Dineout Plus - A Premium Dining Membership Program which will offer great benefits when one dine's at the top five star restaurants based out of Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Kolkata.

With Dineout plus, you can book tables at over 150 five-star restaurants and avail a flat 25% discount on total bill. These restaurants have unlimited usage which means you can dine at the same place any number of times and still avail the same discount.

With Dineout plus, one can dine in style and to celebrate this, selected bloggers were invited to celebrate and launch Dineout plus at The Pink Poppadom, Hyatt Bangalore. Rajat Bhatia from Dineout introduced us to The Plus Experience. A special 4 course menu was curated by Chef Manish which includes the best of the restaurant. The menu was paired with Krsma wine and Vishal Nagpal took us through the different wines from Krsma.

As I don't drink wine, other's enjoyed Krsma wines with assorted canapes. Then dinner started with Soup - Dohra mulligatawny which is a classical Indian peppered lentil soup, served with their beetroot version. It was a thick soup and usually had in the south.

Then came delicious The Trio non-veg starter which had an array of smoked chicken, gilafi seekh and prawn cafrial which is charred in tandoor and served with pineapple shooter.

For main course, Drunkard chicken was served which was cooked in indian masala served with neer dosa and Kokum fish with ghee rice. Kokum fish was very tasty and complemented well with ghee rice

For dessert, Chuski was served along with Coconut creme brulee, chocolate samosa, mango jamun and candied rose petal and Paan shots to end the evening.

Chef Manish has made sure the portions of the meal was sufficient to fill one's tummy and my first visit to The Pink Poppdom was impressive. Looking forward to many more visits and also use my Dineout Plus card.

RedCooker: Relish gourmet food and home-style food with a click

Too many app's bring to you restaurant food but how many actually get their own kitchen cooked food for you? On this idea Rohan Patnaik, Amol Patil and Raghunandan B came up with RedCooker, a start-up which aims at bringing gourmet and home-style food to everyone’s door-step with a click.

These days people like to experiment different cuisines and gourmet food but at the same time, do not want to make a hole in the pocket or eat restaurant food. Now with this choice, we hardly have any choice to make. So here, RedCooker steps in which will serve both home-style and gourmet food. This will be done with the aggregation of housewives in each locality and on-boarding master chefs with years of experience in 5-star hotels respectively, all this at an affordable price.

For now, they are only delivering in and around 5 Kms to Industrial Area, Whitefield and Outer ring road. It plans to operate in few more locations in Bangalore and extend to all the Metros and tier 1 cities in the next six months.

I was invited to the RedCooker's kitchen in Whitefield to experience their food and have a look at the hard work they put to bring us the yummy food we desire. Upon entering the kitchen, I was surprised that the entire kitchen was well organized with cleanliness maintained, no much noise and the smell of yummy food everywhere.

I'm sure you would want to know what I ate? Well, Crispy Fish Fingers, Paneer Kathi Roll, Pasta in red sauce, Paneer Methi Malai, Coriander pesto grilled fish basa, Mutton Rogan Josh and Hyderabadi Chicken Biryani came on the table one after the other. While I did not really enjoy pasta in red sauce and Paneer Methi Malai, I really liked the rest which was served.

The Coriander pesto grilled fish basa was everyone’s favourite. It was a simple dish filled with flavors but it was ordered umpteen times till we left the premises. It didn't look like the one you see in pic below but it was tasty.

Next personal favourite was Mutton Rogan Josh. I am very particular when it comes to mutton as I have had mutton almost all my life. While I was eating, I couldn't think if this was home cooked food or was I eating this dish away from home. Tender mutton pieces with gravy full of flavors. You should eat this to believe it.

I also enjoyed the fish fingers, paneer kathi roll and Hyderabadi Chicken Biryani, it was cooked to perfection and my taste buds were asking for more. The quantity served for every dish is also good for one person. For the amount you are paying for each dish, the food is worthy. If I'm getting such delish looking and tasting food at affordable prices then the restaurants surely have some tough competition. 

Launched in August 2015, they are already in the business with receiving over 100 orders a day only in Whitefield. Their android app with the name 'RedCooker Food Ordering' has a current overall rating of 4.3 which is good. I hope they maintain their food quality and quantity with time and as they grow this would be their biggest task.

So what are you waiting for? Download the app from your google play store and get your hands on some delicious food cooked and served with love. I'm waiting for their iOS and Windows app :)

Go cashless at restaurants with Binge

Noroc Solutions Pvt. Ltd. a Bangalore based technology start-up has launched Binge – an innovative payment application for the F&B industry, in Bangalore. Co- founded by Santosh Martin, Christopher Lopez, Shankar Sukrutaraj, Gaurav Arora, Amit Roy & Ajay Joseph this distinctive application focusses on Food & Beverage industry. The application is available for download today on Android and iOS.

It provides the ability to the user to see his live bill & any updates of the bill on his phone, as and when orders are placed, and to pay on-the-go directly from their mobile.  The application provides for upto 4 credit/debit cards to be pre-loaded; also provides for splitting of the bill amongst friends;  ability to pre-load a wallet;  allows for loyalty programs to be redeemed etc.

Some of the unique features that Binge offers are privacy wherein the users do not have to share their mobile numbers and can check-in with their unique Binge ID. With this application, one can save multiple visa/master debit/credit cards securely as these are stored in a vault. The card details are available on the phone only as a token and no one has access to the data.  One could also see their friends on Binge and add them to the table. With Binge, one could split the bill with their friends in real time without the hassle of a calculator. The ability to tip is in built into the app so the user can tip the steward.

Binge has already tied up with 25 restaurants in Bangalore like Skyye, Toscano, Sanchos, Sinkong, Opus, Blimey, Bootlegger etc. Binge is looking to expand its presence in Delhi and Mumbai by May and further partner with over a 1000 restaurants in Bangalore by the end of 2015. The company has tied up with Uber in Bangalore to offer its customers exclusive deals like discounts on Uber rides.