For the tourist who's here to go sightseeing, this is therefore not a hotel I'd recommend, simply because if it's so very in the back of beyond. For a business traveller who may have to put in long hours of meetings at the office of the many large corporates that have their buildings in Electronics City (Hewlett-Packard is one, HCL is another), though, this hotel's pretty well located.

A tall glass-fronted building topped by its own helipad, the Crowne Plaza is smart and comfortable. My room, on the 6th floor and with a good view of the neighbourhood (very quintessential Bangalore, all swish office buildings!), came with all the amenities I would expect of an upmarket hotel room - and some more. Lovely abstract paintings of water lilies decorate the room, which has two twin beds (each with a full complement of pillows and bolster, plus a little card beside the bed, inviting guests to choose - if they wish - from a further range of pillows on offer, including contour pillows and goose down). In the wardrobe, besides the safe, the hangers and the laundry bags, was an ironing board and iron, a welcome addition that not enough Indian hotels offer.

Among the other things I appreciated about my room was the fact that it had ample and comfortable seating - all the way from a cozy sofa chair good for curling up with a book, to an ergonomically designed swivel chair (with desk, lots of drawers) to a day bed and a sofa. There was a flat screen TV, a mini bar (no alcohol included, though there were packaged snacks and soft beverages available), tea and coffee fixings, and mineral water bottles.

The bathroom was equally clean and well-appointed (and, a major plus point as far as I am concerned), large. It had a good big bathtub, a separate shower stall, neat sink and loo, loads of big fluffy towels, and adequate quantities of soap, shampoo, et al.

Among the facilities the Crowne Plaza offers are a concierge, laundry services, banquet halls, a fitness club, Wi-Fi, and a few restaurants, among them a coffee shop, an Italian restaurant called Aloro, a lounge bar (Connexions), a 'recreational bar and restaurant (The Terminus), and a grill room (Burgundy Grill). There is also 24-hour room service, offering a range of South Indian, North Indian, and Western dishes, plus some other popular international signature dishes, like Thai curries.

Since I was here to attend the Bangalore Literature Festival, all my meals were from buffets organised specifically for delegates attending the event. It was therefore a little limited, but the food was mostly a judicious balance between predominantly South Indian food (including lovely specialties such as bisi bele, idli, vada, adai) and Western dishes, including salads, quiches, pasta (made to order at the buffet) and desserts.

The Indian food, on the whole, tended to be mostly better than the Western - I ended up tasting a chicken salad with overcooked chicken, a cauliflower salad with too many spicy chillies in the mayo dressing, and a tomato and feta salad that had obviously been lying around far too long. One good thing was that I, on a low carb healthy diet, was able to find enough to fill my tummy - and mostly satisfy my palate at the same time - without feeling guilty. Fellow writers who let themselves go on a binge agreed that nearly everything they ate was, likewise, very tasty indeed.

The staff at the Crowne Plaza were attentive, friendly, and helpful; my stay here, though it was only for two nights, was comfortable. If you're going to be spending a good bit of your time in Bangalore at Electronics City, I would certainly recommend this as a place to stay.

Although tariffs per night range from Rs 3000 per night for a single room to Rs 5500 per night for a suite, a suite with a verandah, or a ‘grand room’ with a verandah, we settled for a double room (with twin beds). Neemrana have a ‘Friends of Neemrana’ discount for us frequent residents of the chain’s property, plus we got a special ongoing discount because we visited in what was technically the off season.

Villa Pottipati lies surrounded by a tiny grove of trees and much greenery, so you need to keep a sharp eye out. The old-fashioned gateposts lead to a short crescent-shaped gravel drive, and to the verandah of the little villa. There’s a small gravelled yard on one side, where tables and chairs are laid out for tea or breakfast under the trees. There are old lamp posts, and quiet little verandahs with comfy cushioned cane sofas where you can curl up with a book. There’s also a swimming pool, and a very rudimentary kitchen that offers about a dozen rather boring main courses, including Indian and Western staples like palak paneer and fish in a mustard sauce. This isn’t a place to really ‘dine out’: with a menu that’s just a single page, it’s meant rather for the tired tourist who couldn’t be bothered to venture out to find a good restaurant.

I’d arrived at Villa Pottipati after having spent two days at the Crowne Plaza, so the relative sizes of the two rooms came as a bit of a surprise: the room at Villa Pottipati could have probably fitted into the (admittedly spacious) bathroom of my room at the Crowne Plaza. This was a fairly cramped room, though with the typical high ceiling of a colonial house. Two windows, with pretty blinds made of hand-woven cotton, looked out onto the yard, as perhaps at one time had a window and a small door, the former now boarded up and the latter converted into a handy little cupboard with shelves for extra pillows and blanket.

The two twin beds, both pretty narrow, had been pushed together. There was a luggage rack, a small wardrobe (though with rather inadequate hanging space when it came to anything that happened to be longer than 2 feet), a desk and chair, and two bedside tables. On a small table beside the wardrobe were tea and coffee fixings, and on the desk was a small TV (an odd inclusion, since Neemrana Hotels typically don’t keep TVs in rooms). There was free Wi-Fi in the room, too, which was very welcome.

The bathroom, like the room, was small but clean, tastefully decorated (machine-embroidered curtains, pale pink dado, white walls) and with Neemrana’s very own natural moisturizer, soap, shampoo, etc. Sadly, there was too little space here; the small clothes rack were totally covered by the two bath towels and two hand towels draped over them, and there was only other hook on which to hang any other clothing. Worse, the towels were less than a foot away from the toilet seat – not a very pleasant thing. Even shelf space for a toiletries bag or a shaving kit was both sparse and too inconveniently situated vis-à-vis the sink.

Another source of discomfort were the beds. They were rather narrow, and while the blankets did have a sheet underneath, they could certainly have done with a second sheet on top too – the sight of the blankets, with a few stains and stray hairs from a previous occupant didn’t appeal to us!

The small lobby (with traditional red oxide flooring) stocks lots of pamphlets and booklets about the Neemrana chain.

The good thing about Villa Pottipati is that it feels like you’re staying in a quiet, comfortable home: it doesn’t have the typically impersonal luxury of a five star hotel, and it doesn’t offer a range of restaurants, or fitness centres, business centres, and the like. But the staff are friendly and helpful (they gave us a very detailed map of Bangalore to help us in our sightseeing, and were competent when it came to asking whatever questions we had regarding sightseeing).

On the flip side, the charm can get a bit too laidback at times. For example, we’d hired a cab to pick us up and take around town. The cabbie, even though he’d been told the address, was having difficulty figuring out where the villa was, and phoned my husband to ask for directions. My husband (who, having never visited Bangalore before, knew zilch) went to search for a staffer at the villa – and ended up having to go right out of the hotel, though the kitchen and into the lane at the back before he could find anybody to help. The lobby was empty, the small dining hall was empty, even the tiny kitchen next to our room was pretty much empty.

Plus, of course, there was the somewhat suspect housekeeping when it came to the beds, and the general lack of space in our room. While this is by no means a foul place to stay (in fact, it does have a lovely historical charm to it, and is good and tranquil), it didn’t strike us as being one of the Neemrana’s best properties.

Beyond this dining area, a door leads out into a sort of wide verandah, with coir ropes wrapped around grey stone pillars, typical South Indian many-tiered brass lamps (though fitted with tiny electric lights) hanging from the ceiling more masks, and other traditional artefacts from the region - earthen waterpots, pottery, etc.This seemed to be the more popular part of the restaurant, and most of the tables were occupied. We, therefore, decided to sit here too.

Sana-di-ge's menu consists of a range of dishes, many of them seafood (in fact, they have a refrigerated display case containing lobster, crab, etc from which - if you want to choose your very own seafood - a waiter will bring it to you and you can give your go-ahead). On the menu are dishes from the state of Karnataka itself (of which Bangalore is the state capital), as also neighbouring states like Maharashtra, Kerala and Goa.

The person who'd recommended the restaurant had also told us that one of their best dishes was the kori ghee roast so we ordered that as a starter, followed by (for a main course) a Mangalore mutton curry and a vegetable stew, with fluffyappams. Although Sana-di-ge does serve alcohol, we passed this up (as well as the more predictable juices, aerated drinks and lemonade to settle for something a little more unusual: a soul kadi for me, and a elaneeru shunti nimbehanu for my husband.

So what were these drinks all about? (Mine arrived within a couple of minutes though my husband had to remind the waiter before his was served). Soul kadi is a savoury drink made of chilled buttermilk, flavoured with a little ginger, salt, and cumin (and possibly some more mild spices) - a delicious and refreshing drink, as was my husband's drink, which consisted of fresh coconut water flavoured with a squeeze of lime and the teensiest hint of ginger. Both fantastic.

The kori ghee roast is boneless chicken, marinated in a mix of spices and cooked (not really roasted, I think - it seemed more like pan fried) in ghee. While it tasted great (and with that distinctly rich warm aroma of ghee), it was rather too rich for our liking.

After our starters had been cleared away, our waiter came racing along with the main course, stew, curry and fresh appams. This was where we were to be impressed with Sana-di-ge's quality standards. A good appam is one that is soft and spongy in the centre and crisp, golden and lacy around the edges. To manage that the appam must be served as soon a soon as it's made. Our waiter, having discovered that the trainee who'd been entrusted the task of giving us fresh plates had slipped up and not yet brought the plates, left the curry and stew on our table and took the appams away to get fresh ones, while plates were brought and the curry and stew served.

While the chicken ghee roast may have been too rich for us, the main course was just right: the mutton curry (with bite-sized bits of mutton cooked in a spicy but not too hot gravy) was a good counterfoil to the mild, very fragrant vegetable stew - a combination of green beans, carrots, potatoes, etc, cooked in a gentle coconut milk gravy with whole black peppercorns being the only discernible spice. Perfect for anybody who can't tolerate much spice.

For dessert, both of us settled for local dishes: I ordered an elaneer payasam, while my husband ordered a raagi manni. The latter, a steamed pudding made of sweetened ragi (millet) flour flavoured with cardamom, tasted good but was a little too stodgy for my liking, even though some thinly sliced pears served on the side helped lighten the dish a bit. I far preferred the absolutely lovely elaneer payasam, strips of creamy tender coconut simmered in milk and served cold. It was all I like in a dessert: creamy but light, mildly sweetened, and with a faint fruitiness that was given a lovely textural contrast by the addition of some slivered almonds.

Our bill at Sana-di-ge was Rs 1998, including taxes and service charges. Expensive, but worth it.

On the ground floor of the Ramanashree Hotel, Kudla is approached through a short, curving staircase leading up from the street. Inside, the restaurant has a low- wooden-beamed ceiling reminiscent of traditional old homes across Southern India. The walls are white-painted and textured, and decorated in places with a pale blue-green pattern of waves. Large, colourful South Indian masks hang on the walls, and the waiters wear traditional South Indian clothing, long white mundus (sarongs), crisp short tunics, a gold-edged white stole draped over one shoulder, and an interesting cap made of what looked like coconut fibre.

The menu at Kudla is a merry mix of North Indian, Chinese, and—thankfully—South Indian cuisines. In the latter, Mangalorean food (from Mangalore and its surrounding areas, along the border of Karnataka and its neighbouring state, Kerala) is the most prominent. There are vegetarian dishes, but pride of place is held by the non-vegetarian food, all the way from lobster and crab (both charged according to the size of the crustacean you choose) to mutton, poultry, fish, and prawn. After much perusal of the menu, some discussions, and the help of our waiter, we decided to order a crab masala fry as a starter, along with a fresh lime soda each as a drink. For a main course, we ordered a prawn curry and a vegetable sukka. The latter is available in a choice of three different types of vegetables, including cauliflower, okra, and green beans—we settled for the green beans. Our waiter suggested appams as the best accompaniment for the prawn curry and the sukka, so we ordered one each of the appams.

Our drinks arrived shortly after, and with them came a small metal plate heaped with very crisp and addictive deep-fried rice crackers. We were busy digging into these when the crab masala fry was brought. I have to admit to not really loving the hard work that goes into digging the flesh out of a crab, even though crabmeat is something I like. Kudla’s crab, served in the shell, took a lot of work. They did provide a heavy crab cracker, but even then it took some doing.

Despite that, the crab got our vote. It was gorgeously fresh, juicy and succulent and beautifully sweet. It had been cooked in a masala (a sort of thick gravy) that consisted of tomatoes and other ingredients, spicy but not very hot. Perfect.

Finishing the crab (which was quite large, and fiddly) took a fair bit of effort and time. When we were done, our waiter brought us fresh plates, fingerbowls full of hot water with a slice of lime each, and extra paper napkins so that we could clean up. Then came the main course. The prawns, fresh and juicy, came in a reddish gravy that was based on coconut milk, but wasn’t as mild as one would expect a coconut-milk based gravy to be. Not that it was very spicy, but it certainly wasn’t wishy-washy. The beans sukka was equally good: chopped green beans cooked with lots of grated coconut and a spice base that contained chopped onions, tomatoes, curry leaves, and so on. Both curry and sukka tasted excellent with the fluffy rice-pancake-like appams. The only fault I could find was in the texture of the appams: while the centres were soft and spongy (as they should be), the edges—which should be crisp and golden and almost lace-like—were also soft and not very golden.

The dessert menu at Kudla only featured one ‘local’ pudding, ragi manni (a steamed, cardamom-flavoured dish made from a batter based on millet flour). We tasted a ragi mannu the previous day at another restaurant (Sana-di-ge, and since the other desserts on the menu—mostly ice creams and sundaes—didn’t appeal to us, we skipped the sweet. While we waited for our bill, our waiter brought us a small tray full of paan fixings: a neat pile of fresh green betel leaves; a small pot of lime paste, to be smeared onto each leaf; and roughly chopped areca nut, which is supposed to be put on the lime-smeared leaf before it’s rolled up and popped into one’s mouth. We are finicky about the paan we eat (and paan with only lime, betel leaf, and areca nut can be very astringent), so we passed that up and just helped ourselves to some of the refreshing sugar-coated fennel seeds served alongside.

Our meal at Kudla cost Rs 1,965, inclusive of taxes. We added a tip to this. Considering we’d had a huge crab (which cost Rs 900 by itself), both of us were of the opinion that this meal was good value for money.

Enté Keralam sits on the ground floor of a triple-storeyed building that houses a few other restaurants, including a teppanyaki joint. Enté Keralam itself is entered through a simple little wooden vestibule-pavilion (with a couple of broad benches for anybody who’d like to sit in case they have to wait for a table). Inside, the restaurant’s décor epitomises simplicity: the creamy-white walls have a few quiet and tasteful reproductions of the paintings of the legendary Raja Ravi Verma, but other than that, there’s none of the fussiness that tries to scream "This is a South Indian restaurant!" The chairs are upholstered in a subdued pattern of stripes, and the sideboards are of dark wood. On each table is a quarterplate-sized shallow brass bowl filled with water, and with cheery pink-orange-red roses floating in them. Beside that is a small wooden model of one of the famous Chinese fishing nets of Kochi. All is dignified, warm, yet stylish in its own way.

We were greeted and seated at a comfortable table (the restaurant, incidentally, looked pretty full, a good testimony to just how popular Enté Keralam is), and a waiter brought us the menu. This consists (as the name of the restaurant would indicate) mostly Keralan food—and covering a wide range of dishes, all the way from the food of the Syrian Christian community, to the Muslim Moplah fisherfolk. There is, as is common in Kerala, a lot of seafood. There were loads of dishes that sounded very tempting, but we finally settled for erachi cutlet (a croquette made from spiced minced beef) as a starter, followed by—for the main course—‘prawn roast’ and ulli thiyal, the latter a curry of which the star ingredient is ‘pearl onions’, rather like tiny shallots. To accompany the main course, we ordered appams, pancake-like breads made from a fermented rice flour batter. To drink, we chose keraleeyam, described in the menu as a ‘tender coconut punch’.

While we waited for our starter to arrive, the waiter brought us something to nibble: a small brass bowl with a few bite-sized morsels of a fried dough covered with a dried glaze of palm sugar. Very nice, even though I’d have classified this as an after-meal dessert substitute rather than pre-meal munchies. Another small bowl contained a classic Kerala favourite: banana chips, made by slicing raw bananas very thinly and then deep-frying them in coconut oil: the result is every bit as addictive (if not more!) as a really good potato chip.

Also served up with these snacks were our drinks, which turned out to be glasses of tender coconut water, spiked with the merest hint of ginger, a squeeze of lime, and some very finely chopped mint. Sublime.

The erachi cutlet, five pieces of teardrop-shaped croquettes arranged on a plate with wedges of lime and some sliced raw onions, was simply delicious. The beef had been minced finely, cooked with spices (just enough to make it interesting, not fiery), and then crumb-fried. Although they served a little bowl of tomato ketchup along with that, I personally didn’t think the cutlets needed any embellishment at all—they were perfect as is.

After a first course as good as that, the main course needed to be excellent in order to deliver—and it did. The prawn curry, in a spicy terracotta-coloured gravy, had a generous sprinkling of slit green chillies, but if you steered clear of those, the curry itself wasn’t too fiery, but had loads of flavour—and the prawns, plump and juicy, were super. A very different dish as the ulli thiyal, which came in a lot of dark chocolate-coloured gravy, thick with sliced pearl onions. This had a wonderful sweet-savoury-tart flavour, the sweetness derived from the slow and careful caramelisation of the onions. Both the prawn curry and the lulli thiyal were so good, and the accompanying appams so perfectly cooked—crisp and golden on the edges, soft and spongy in the centre—that we couldn’t resist the temptation to order more appams.

As dessert, Enté Keralam offers a few traditional specialties, including different types of payasam, milk puddings, such as the paal ada payasam, made with rice flakes simmered in milk. We passed that up, though, and opted for our favourite type of payasam: elaneer payasam, strips of tender coconut in a lightly sweetened mix of cooked milk and coconut milk. While I thought the elaneer payasam at Sana-di-ge was better than its counterpart at Enté Keralam, this one was pretty good too: cool, refreshing, and light.

We paid Rs 1,912 for our meal, inclusive of all taxes and service charges. Very good value for money, and definitely recommended.

Koshy’s, we discovered after we’d entered this restaurant, was set up in 1940. The building housed a department store and the restaurant to start off with, and was supposedly Bangalore’s most happening place even back in the 50s and 60s (and later), with big names and familiar faces to be seen here, from Jawaharlal Nehru and Nikita Khrushchev to Queen Elizabeth II. Today, the Koshy’s building houses a couple of eateries, both part of the same chain: one is called the Parade Café, the other is Jewel Box. We went to Jewel Box.

This one, with its windows (framed by faux lace curtains) looking out onto the street, its dark blue runners on white tablecloths, and its shiny copper-like pillars, has a definite air of a bygone era. Down one side of the restaurant is a large, not very good fresco depicting a mermaid in a marine setting: it reminded me something out of a fairy tale. The restaurant seems to be L-shaped (we didn’t go all the way to explore), with a gleaming bar counter and more tables at the far end.

We began by sitting at a table beside one of the windows overlooking the street. Within minutes, we realized why the table had been unoccupied all this while: the air conditioning ducts were just above it, and the blast of cold air was freezing. We got ourselves shifted to a table in the centre of the restaurant just after we’d placed our orders.

Talking of our orders, the menu. The Jewel Box menu is a sort of throwback to the 40s and 50s, when a ‘fashionable’ restaurant was expected to serve stuff like fish and chips alongside more familiar Indian food. The menu contains lots of typical old-fashioned Continental fare, such as fish in white sauce with cheese, grilled/fried/barbecued pork chops, baked crab, and so on. There’s also a section of North Indian food. South Indian dishes, which I’d expected to find in a restaurant that seemed to bill itself as a ‘multicuisine’ one, was conspicuous by its absence, though this place did serve some pretty predictable Indian-Chinese dishes.

After some thinking, I ordered grilled pork chops and my husband settled for the baked crab. For drinks, though Koshy’s does have a bar (which seems to be very popular, and by all accounts quite a happening place), both of us ordered a fresh lime soda each. The waiter took our order and returned a couple of minutes later to let us know that the crab was unavailable, so my husband would have to change his order. My husband, after searching in vain through the menu for something, preferably seafood, that sounded interesting, finally had to settle for fish and chips.

Our drinks arrived within a couple of minutes and were fine. The food arrived after about ten minutes, and just one look at the two plates, and our hearts sank. The fish fillets of my husband’s dish were very thin, crumbed and deep fried to a rather dark brown. The chips were French fries, really, not traditional chips. And on the side were served a very incongruous assortment of vegetables: slices of raw tomato, onion, radish, and carrot. The waiter also bunged down a plate with two unprepossessing soft rolls and a small steel bowl of butter, neither of which we touched. He also gave my husband a bowlful of mayonnaise mixed with coarse-ground traditional Bengali mustard sauce; and a bottle of tomato ketchup. My husband reserved his opinion till he began eating, and then said that that the dish tasted as ordinary as it looked. Nothing close to a good fish and chip dish, really.

My pork chops (two of them, heavily laced with fat) were cooked good and tender, and served with lots of grilled onions. So far, so good. But the pork and onions had been drowned in a too-salty, too-highly seasoned brown sauce, and the steamed vegetables served on the side (which, oddly enough, included cabbage) were overcooked.

We decided to give Koshy’s one chance to redeem themselves, so we ordered dessert: a caramel custard each. "Sorry, that’s not available," the waiter told us. Would we like something else? Ice cream? Apple pie with ice cream? We settled for the latter, and our plates of apple pie arrived within five minutes. Each plate had one large wedge of apple pie each, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side. After the thoroughly disappointing main course, this turned out to be a refreshing change: well spiced and cooked apple, light pastry (with a slightly crisp brown lattice above the fruit), and just generally a good, satisfying dessert which came as a surprise to us.

Our bill at Koshy’s, inclusive of taxes, was Rs 1650; we left a tip in addition.

Would I recommend dining at Koshy’s? Only if nostalgia and the thought of eating at an ‘institution’ appeal to you more than good food does. The food here – barring the apple pie – was very average (in fact, downright unappealing in parts). And, at the sort of prices they charge, it isn’t even cheap.