Breaking walls

A bar in Andheri replicates what a night out in Berlin might be like

Sometimes all you want to feel sitting at a bar table, is comfortable. You might be a girl waiting alone for a boy, with a rose you’ve bought for him. He’s late. You wait. But you know for sure that he will arrive. In the meantime, you ask for a drink and the men sitting on the bar stools next to you strike up a conversation, just to let you know that the milk of human kindness is a fountain that never stops flowing.

You keep waiting. You have a good time chatting with the strangers and meanwhile, you forget about the boy. But as promised, he arrives. The rose serves its purpose. The people you’d been talking to put your man at ease. He doesn’t feel threatened by them. He settles down on his own bar stool and you get drinks together. The night turns into how you envisioned it to be. This happens in Andheri, at a new place called The Berliner Bar that has Aishwarya Desai serving customers. She’s the co-owner along with Abhishek Upadhya, her fiance. Both of them tend to guests together. They are a couple who have started this venture, holding hope and hands.

Whisky sour

Abhishek makes a decent whisky sour (Rs 439). He tells you that he and Aishwarya also serve three craft beers priced at Rs 290 each for 300 ml, of which the hefeweizen is the best. It’s light and fruity, while the stout and Indian pale ale are suitably bitter. The food they offer borrows heavily from dishes that would crop up on menus at the German capital. You ask for pommes aka French fries, hangover burger and currywurst, while you turn away from the kind strangers to the person you now give your undivided attention to.

Curryswurst

Conversation flows. Sparks fly. And the fries get served with in-house chipotle sauce. Both are disappointing, since the fries are clearly of the frozen, packaged variety while the sauce seems suspiciously ready-made. But the good part is that the dish is priced only at Rs 129, which is cheap considering how swanky the place is. There is clearly thought that’s gone into the décor, which replicates a European bar better than other joints in the vicinity. The currywurst (Rs 499) is also reminiscent of what you’d get on the streets of Berlin. The dish basically consists of pork sausages slathered with ketchup, with a hint of curry powder that reflects the union of two cultures coming together, like the union of two people out on a date on a Saturday night.

The interiors of the bar

The hangover burger is the best dish of the lot though. It’s filled with a fried egg, hash brown and bacon, ingredients that serve as pick-me-ups after a hard night out. The bun is fresh, like your feelings about the man who’s asked you out. But it’s nearing 10 pm. Soon, it will be time to leave considering the harsh Cinderella hour that the state has imposed on establishments. You look around at the place one last time, feeling warm and fuzzy about the couple of hours you’ve had at The Berliner Bar. They even serve Guinness, though there are only two cans remaining when your date asks for one as the final drink for the night. One of the kind strangers gets the other. He pours both out to display the art of getting the froth right even as Aishwarya watches indulgently, without grudging someone else doing her job. Let’s hope that her venture with her fiance survives the test of time, because they have got a good thing going together.

The in-house hefeweizen

But as for you and your date, it’s too early to tell, even though as human beings, we are ultimately made of feelings, and there is always hope as long as the feeling remains right.    

Time: 12 pm to 11 pm
At: The Berliner Bar, unit no 19, Kabra Metro One, JP Road, Versova, Andheri West
Call: 9319463776

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