A Little Lemony, A Little Sweet, A Lot Fun | Lemon Leaf Colaba | Food Review

The Food Gods must be really happy, why else would I get an invite for a bloggers meet at one of the most happening and beautiful places in Colaba - Lemon Leaf :) Bringing a variety of pan-asian flavors to our plates, they believe in keeping things simple yet elegant. The ambiance definitely elevates the thought with a proper balance of colors, comfortable couches, zen artifacts, faux bookshelves and contemporary art all mingling in a symphony of elegance. Definitely a place to visit with a special loved one. Oh, this all is upstairs while downstairs is all business with a well laid out bar and classic seating layout. Staff knows the menu inside out which is always a plus point, along with their smiling faces throughout the service making you smile too, of course.

Even though the bloggers meet had a set menu, the portions were decent and the spread was comprehensive enough to fill us up as well as let us glimpse a peek into the best of what they have to offer. We started off with a round of cocktails and mocktails, everything tasting the way it should, most of the places I tend to stick to fresh lime soda and did so here too, no complaints :)

Among appetizers, we tasted Miso Grilled Tofu and Cream Cheese Baby Potato. While Tofu was soft, melt in mouth and mildly spicy with a lot of peanuts (love the crunch!), potatoes were filled with cream cheese and lathered with Thai Green Curry paste outside, bringing succor to traditional palates :) Would love more cream cheese and maybe something crunchy to break the monotony of starchy potatoes but overall, we veggies licked the plates clean :D (The non veggies were especially happy with their Tuna and Chicken,so you might want to try them when here!)

Edamame Dumplings made their appearance next and won us over, beautiful beetroot outer layer served with minced crunchy veggies and Edamame on top, an explosion of flavors all around, wholesome goodness is this. Needed nothing additional to make it tastier and we asked for a repeat too :D

I am the only one in my family who loves Sushi, not that I am any sort of expert on it, but I like the rice rolls, the technicality of wrapping up different ingredients and I really liked the Cucumber & Cream cheese Sushi here, felt a bit dry (but I just had Sushi at Global Fusion the other day and these were marginally better than that) I might have to wait till I travel the world and have some astounding Sushi to expertly critique this dish, till then, am going to recommend the sushi here as quite good :)

After a good round of appetizers, in came the main course. First up was Sichuan Mopo Tofu which actually looks very spicy but is just mildly spicy, and hides loads of veggies along with very soft Tofu, all of which went nicely with piping hot Jasmine Rice.

It was the Soba Noodles that were the star dish for me, buckwheat flour Japanese noodles stir fried and served with Khimchi as well as exotic vegetables such as Zucchini, Broccoli, Bell peppers -it looked good due to presence of nice colors on the plate and tasted healthy. We are so used to having noodles all slathered in different sauces and gravies or,at the very least,a dense layer of oil, that this dish would actually look and feel bland in comparison but have it once and it feels oh so worth it :) Not a big fan of Khimchi but it was decent. I just loved and almost finished the noodles all by myself (belated apologies to other bloggers on the table :D)

And now it was time for the most astonishingly delicious time of the evening-DESSERTS! We tried Chocolate Sushi, a novelty item, which was just a tad too oily outside, but loved the filling inside, it was like a small bite of dense chocolate brownie inside,very rich and delicious, we just scooped that out and finished it off.

It was the range of their hand-churned icecreams that made us go ooh la la this evening. We had Beetroot, Malai, both of which were decent, though the beetroot one felt more like strawberry. It was the rarely found flavors of Dark Chocolate with Sea Salt; Jackfruit; Pumpkin and most importantly,Black Sesame Seeds with Honey that made us feel like we were sitting in some Michelin-starred restaurant. Couldn't stop eating and had to call for another scoop. They actually ran out of Chocolate flavor,so I suggest, when you walk in here, reserve 2 scoops of their ice creams in the beginning only :D The place gets packed up soon and then there won't be any guarantee that you would get to taste these phenomenal flavors.

It is now 96 hours later and I am still salivating over the ice creams, dumplings and the ambiance. Hope to be back here soon :)