We decided to give Keramangala a break and limit our weekend outings to Indiranagar in May, considering that the latter had suddenly begun aping the former in terms of restaurants popping up all over the place. That’s how we landed up at California Pizza Kitchen, located in that stretch between 12th Main and CMH Road junctions on 100 feet Road, where it seems all the action is happening. (map) There’s valet parking and enough place for 2 wheelers too.
The ambiance is very pizzeria like, and not really fine dining. But it’s neat, classy and was actually near-full when we got there at about 7.30. A little later, we could see people waiting too. But the service is fast, so even if you don’t reserve, you probably wouldn’t have to wait long.
The menu at Zomato is almost complete – the only thing it’s missing is the smoothies section. We started with an Adobe Chicken Chowder, that came to us almost as soon as we ordered it! The tortilla strips added excellent texture to the thick creamy soup, which which was quite awesome – wild rice, cilantro, corn, though we did miss the green chillies. But the pepper on the table made up for that very well.
For the main course, we ordered the Original BBQ Chicken, with a smoked bacon add-on and a thin crust, which costs Rs.20 more. I would’ve liked the BBQ sauce to be more dominant, specially because the onion and the unevenly spread cilantro are all-too familiar flavours. But it was a reasonably good pizza. The other dish we tried was the Southwestern Chipotle Fettuccine. A wonderful spicy, creamy dish, from which the only thing we’d have like to remove would be the black beans, which seemed to stick out like a sore thumb. We had just enough space to accommodate the Chocolate Banana Smoothie, which used regular cream that added a unique flavour to the mix.
Overall, the experience was quite good, though pricing is definitely on the higher side – all the above with service charges and taxes came to over Rs.1600, not exactly what you’d expect from the friendly neighbourhood pizza joint. So long as you keep that in mind, and are fine with moderate portion sizes, you should be fine.
California Pizza Kitchen, 284, Ground Floor, 100 feet Road, Indiranagar Ph: 64048888