It is interesting how Poetry by Love and Cheesecake attempts to please its visitors personally with tiny snippets and heartfelt poems spread across its space — on the menu, the walls, in the washroom too. The doors of Poetry open to a cosy, colourful ambience. If you visit during the day, the colours seem gloomy. The café is however, well lit up in the evenings.
Poetry serves a healthy mix of variety for the health conscious and for the foodie. We started our meal with one of their fresh cold-pressed juices Full Immunity (Rs 200), which contains apples, pears, pineapples and ginger. Despite having strong ginger undertones, the juice is delicious. The Dark Knight (Rs 150) is a smoothie made of cacao, walnut, oats, yoghurt, honey and bananas. If you call for this presuming you’d be served something chocolatey, you are going to be really disappointed. While the smoothie is rich in texture and has quite an appealing fragrance, it goes very strong on the bananas — to an extent that you might feel sick at the end of it; provided you manage to get to the bottom of the bottle. If at all you must have a smoothie, their Keeping it Simple (Rs 130) takes the cake. Made with pineapple, papaya and coconut water, it feels just right.
The Watermelon and Basil iced tea (Rs 130) has to be one of the best options on their drinks menu. This is an in-house concoction and hits you like a refreshing draft of air — something you’d prefer on a hot sunny evening.
The Autumn Salad (Rs 315) made with arugula lettuce, bacon, green apple, toasted hazelnuts, parmesan shavings, lemon and vinaigrette dressing, comes close to being a fulfilling meal in itself. The lettuce is surprisingly fresh (and crispy even) and proves to be a beautiful pairing with the green apple slices and hazelnuts. The Mushroom Gravy Smothered Chicken (Rs 230) is a much-improved version of the popular mushrooms on toast. The modifications are interesting with grilled chicken, two-year aged Vermont cheddar and mushroom stuffed in a baguette.
Poetry offers a variety of cheesecake options to pick from, but the NY Style Cheesecake (Rs 160) and the Red Velvet Layered Cheesecakes (Rs 160) are their popular favourites; and rightly so. Poetry gets a lot of their menu right, but these cheesecakes top the list.
An evening of conversations, jazz and bright lights under pale pastel colours at Poetry lends itself to a perfect date setting.
Rating: 3.5/5 Price for two: Rs1,000 Address: Poetry by Love and Cheesecake, Pali Darshan, junction of 16th and 33rd road, Linking Road, Bandra (W)
