Full of beans

Pancake cassettes. Pics/Ashish Raje

Food: Delicious
Ambiance: Simple
Service: Efficient
Cost: Inexpensive
Verdict: 1/5

Sitting snugly sandwiched between a beauty salon and a grocery store on a restaurant-infested stretch like Bandra West's busy 16th Road, it is easy to miss Easy Cappuccino's nondescript storefront.

Americano

It's only when your olfactory senses are treated to the aroma of freshly ground coffee beans, does this new coffee shop assert its presence. Living up to the first part of its name, everything here is easy and relaxed. Mainly so thanks to its minimal, almost Scandi-chic interiors with plenty of blonde cedar wood and comfortable banquette-style seating along one wall.

Here, one will find none of those in-your-face coffee shop décor tropes like sacks of coffee beans, quirky coffee quote posters' etc. It makes up for this visual quietude with an intensely flavourful and robust coffee selection of both the hot and cold varieties, along with a few food items.

Basil and mushroom pizza

We begin our innings with a single shot of the punchy Americano (R190) where the smoky roast of the Arabica bean is evident in every sip. We chase this with an Irish coffee (R140) that comes with a thick head of cream and imbued with the taste of (non-alcoholic) Irish whiskey syrup. We also call for a frappuccino version of the Irish coffee (R190) that is even better tasting in its cold avatar, coming to our table in a generously proportioned glass that's filled to the brim with the blended drink.

Interestingly, none of this apparent generosity in portion size is reflected in the food items we sample. Though freshly made (we saw the counter staff whisking the batter) and scrumptious till the last crumb, the quartet of peanut butter topped pancake cassettes (R100) are barely larger than a coin each and have us nearly calling for seconds.

Jim jam cheesecake biscuit shake

Restraining ourselves, we instead order a rather overpriced nasty Nutella croissant (R160), that's once again woefully under-endowed, but buttery and soft to the taste. Bursting with the freshness of basil that complements the woodiness of the mushrooms perfectly, our only savoury order of the six-inch basil and mushroom pizza (R195) makes for messy satisfaction.

Back to our afternoon's raison d'être i.e. coffee, the cappuccino (R110) - that we request to be made with almond milk (R70 extra) - is another winner, with the barista managing to give it a thick foamy head, despite the presence of the notoriously-difficult-to-froth almond milk.

Irish coffee

We end our caffeine-dominated session with one of Easy Cappuccino's non-coffee blended drinks in the form of a Jim Jam cheesecake biscuit shake (R190) that takes us back down nostalgia lane when our schooltime tiffin boxes would almost always have the jam-centered biscuits in them.

At Easy Cappuccino, 16th Road, Pali Hill, Bandra West.
Time 7 am to 9 pm
Call 9769039715

4/5 Exceptional, 3/5 Excellent, 2/5 very Good, 1/5 Good, 0.5/5 Average.
Easy Cappuccino didn't know we were there. The Guide reviews anonymously and pays for meals.

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