Corleone

Jan 28, 2007

The Don would not be pleased

The big man and I had walked up to Pizza Express at Veer Nariman only to find it has dissapeared. In the mood for Italian, but not for walking we headed round the corner to the Intercontinental to check out Corleone.
In pretty early we got a good window, there was only one other couple in the place. The service was quick and attentive. Bread and water swiftly appeared with what I am guessing was tapenade, but with waaay too much balsamic in it - it shouldn't taste pickled - so we left that.
For starters I ordered the roasted mushrooms, creating great gusts of enthusiasm from our waiter about how it was the best starter and how it was flying out the door. The big man ordered the veg antipasta. Both arrived in a timely manner, but I was not impressed. 10 or 12 small field mushrooms, stuffed with a tonne of garlic and then drowned in a gallon of olive oil is not my idea of a taste sensation, and I LOVE mushrooms (and galic and olive oil). The big mans starter was also dissapointing, fairly sure someone had just cut a slice of cheese (answers on a postcard re the type), opened a jar of sun dried tomatoes, added some Kalamata Olives, danced over some onion and then tried to set it afloat on olive oil. Hmmmmm.
Main course followed at a gracious period after, giving us time to listen to the band tune up and then start playing Beatles tracks....no comment.
The big mans veg lasagne was an amazingly compact piece of engineering. Like it had been put in a box with weights on for a few days. Containing little more than tomatoes, peas and pasta there was nothing wrong with it, and to be fair true Italian lasagne is mostly pasta with a little sauce inbetween, but normally you would expect some peppers/ mushrooms/ aubergine even. Just for fun. My Spaghetti Carbonara was not worthy of the Don. Carbonara should be rich, silky, decadent with a hint of panchetta, not sticky, oily (do they have a mob connection in the olive oil trade) and loaded with little tiny bits of extremely salty, hard lumps of very finely diced panchetta. Dear me, when I blow this many calories I want to enjoy it.
With 1 glass of wine, a soft drink, a bottle of evian and the above it came to 2000 INR. I know its in a hotel but I think that was expensive, certainly by UK, Italian or US standards.

The worst thing was, I completed the comment card we got with our bill. I mentioned there was too much oil in everything and the carbonarra was salty. The waiter must have showed it to the manager and on the way out of the door I got rounded on by two besuited blokes demanding to know why I didn't like the food etc etc. I told them again but was a little taken aback - I didn't realise filling in the comments card make you a target for a mob hit.....I'll be swimming with the fishies pretty soon.

• Best of burrp!
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