Column: The Good Life: for Mint Lounge
Bangalore and Beyond | Condenast Traveler US |
Bangalore is home. I didn't always live here—until two years ago I lived in New York. But now this is the city where my kids go to school, where I hail auto rickshaws for bone-rattling yet perversely exciting rides to work and meetings, where I prowl pubs and malls in search of stories and sales, and where I go to Namdharis Fresh supermarket to buy organic grapes, too-hard bagels, and much-too-soft cream cheese in an attempt to replicate the Sunday morning brunches at my Upper West Side apartment.
The minibar menace
The minibar menace Raise the bar: Paying for every can of cola can be more than a mini nuisance The minibar: I know this sounds like a Seinfeld episode but it is in fact a rant. The one thing that really irritates me at hotels is the minibar. I think it is an outdated relic that ought to be abolished. Hoteliers should simply price those cookie bars and cans of Coke into the room. Perhaps they do already. Five-star hotels in India are hardly cheap. I was at The Leela Goa recently and was informed that their room rate [...]
Rating hotels for review: Mint Lounge
The filch factor: : Mint Lounge 4 min read . Updated: 01 Feb 2008, 12:06 AM ISTThe Good Life | Shoba Narayan I have a somewhat unusual method of rating hotels. I call it the filch factor. If I feel like filching something from the hotel, I consider it worthy of my esteem. I hasten to add that I haven’t actually filched anything from hotels (okay, maybe some toiletries) but the filch factor is what makes a hotel memorable in my mind. I still remember the crisp asparagus-green linen napkins at the Ritz-Carlton in Santiago de Chile; the spa robe at [...]
About service in hotels: Mint Lounge
Leave me alone, I'd like to be invisible please: for Mint Lounge 3 min read . Updated: 04 Jan 2008, 12:21 AM ISTThe Good Life | Shoba Narayan Ok, folks. I might as well get ready to take it on the chin. I am going to come across as a real snob here. But please, before you dismiss me altogether, let me explain that this piece was written with the “lofty goal" of making the hotel industry re-examine its notion of service. Like every Indian idealist, I wrote the following in an attempt to change the world, albeit a world inhabited [...]
Dinner with Alain Passard
When your food sings to you 5 min read 23 Dec 2011, 09:22 PM ISTThe Good Life | Shoba Narayan As fresh as it gets: Chef Alain Passard has a kitchen garden in France. Photo by Maurice Rougemont/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images . As we are introduced, Paul Pontallier, the legendary winemaker of Château Margaux, takes my hand, bends down…and kisses it—exactly like Elaine Sciolino describes in her book, La Seduction: How the French Play the Game of Life. I walk in prickly (more about that later) but by the time Pontallier releases my hand, I am charmed. We are at The [...]
Our Native Village: Hotel Review: Gourmet Magazine
Our Native Village 11.16.07 This 20-room rustic hideaway bills itself as India’s "only 100 percent eco-friendly back-to-basics lifestyle resort." In plain English, that means solar power, windmills, composting, bio-gas plant (no, it doesn’t smell), organic gardens, and a "zero-waste" policy that recycles everything including water from washbasins and toilets to irrigate the garden. A couple of hours from Bangalore, where I live, it attracts young techies who seek its peace and solitude before they go back to being "Sam" or "Carla" at their tech-support call centers. WHAT'S THE BIG WOW? The beds are supremely comfortable for rooms so Spartan. The massive [...]
New York Times: My first article
This is the first article that I wrote for the New York Times. I didn't realize it was available on the Times' digital archives till someone forwarded it to me.