Red Window

One lazy Saturday morning, I was scrolling through my Instagram feed and came across what looked like chocolate milkshake in a Mason Jar with a Profiterole on it. I’m not a huge fan of milkshake or profiterole but the Mason Jar got my attention. The hypelinked location flashed The Red Window.

Red Window

Located in the heart of Dhanmondi, this new café has already won hearts of food lovers. If you’re looking for a cozy place with delectable desserts but want to go slightly easy on the pocket, then The Red Window is the place to be.

I’ve been to the café about 5-6 times by now (give me my frequent visitor card already) and the place never fails to make me happy. The Red Window gets an A in almost everything.

The first two adjectives you’ll think of when you enter the café are cozy and homely. The interior is graceful; hint of detailing everywhere yet nothing is overdone.

First you'll encounter the mouthwatering display of cakes and cupcakes, and then as you walk ahead, you'll see a red window drawn on the wall to your left. 

As you walk in further, you'll get the feel of walking into a lavish living room with a TV hung in the center of the red wall and also with a display case of showpieces and candles.

From there on your left, are more cozy sofas and homely decorations. But if you choose to look left after entering, you'll be greeted with an old classroom feel, with its hand painted tables and chairs.

The menu offers snacks, both small and large, along with some meals and a long list of desserts and drinks.

To begin with the light bites, there are Buffalo wings, prawn tempura, poutine, fries etc.

I have had their Buffalo wings and French fries so far. The ‘Suicidal’ wings were served piping hot; with a delicious garlic mayo dip- even someone who cannot stand spicy food will lick the plate clean!

  

The Buffalo Wings, with some garlic mayo dip

When the wings (level 2) arrived they were absolutely, straight-out-of-the fryer, steaming hot.  They looked good and smelled even better.  Each piece had just the right amount of sauce coating each wing.  The sauce is thick and creamy. They really stick the wings. People who are not into spicy food, caution, when they say suicidal, they’re not joking.

I’m extremely picky when it comes to fries. They are a pure vehicle for fat and flavor and fine salt crystals: the perfect food.  The Red Window scores high with fries with me- crisp, golden, evenly cut fries sprinkled with salt and pepper and served with a dip; delicious! The fat, soft, salty steak fries with a kind of dried starch texture; I could legitimately munch on them all day.

French Fries

Moving to bigger dishes in the menu, there are rice bowls with different items like chicken basil leaf, beef basil leaf, chicken teriyaki along with grilled chicken, sandwiches, pasta, seafood and burgers. 

These are priced between Tk 200 to Tk 400.

Being a literal Bangal, I look for Bhaat almost everywhere I go. I love the fact The Red Window serves rice bowls. I tried the chicken Teriyaki rice bowl. It did not top my expectations;

  

Chicken Teriyaki  Rice Bowl with The Shakey

I have had better rice bowls in Dhaka alone. 

The green sauce served with the bowl gives the dish freshness and elevates its taste.

Their signature milkshakes, the 'Shakey', on the basis of looks aren't your ordinary, run-of-the-mill milkshakes. They come in four different flavors: Red Velvet Cheesecake, Waffelicious Peanut Butter, Chocolate Profiterole and Cookie Crush, with the price ranging from Tk 210 to Tk 280.

Chocolate Profiterole comes with a profiterole and Waffelicious is served with a waffle on top. The Shakeys look better than they taste. They’re very heavy and leave you thirstier than before; but hey, at least you get pretty photos for your Instagram!

The drink you don’t hear about is their iced tea. Its 120 taka worth of fresh iced orange drink infused with just the perfect amount of tea. It’s marvelous.

Iced Tea

Meanwhile, The Red Window’s dessert game stunningly is on point! There are cupcakes, éclair, sliced cake, brownie, soufflé, caramel pudding and a lot more for all those with a sweet tooth. They are of perfect sizes, sublime and beautiful.

The lemon cheesecake is a showstopper among all the desserts they have. It's smooth, creamy well whipped and of course with the right balance of sweetness and acidity. It looks like it has a lemon cake base but I doesn't feel like so when you put the cheesecake in your mouth. I think it needs a little thicker base of lemon cake to balance the overwhelming taste of the cream cheese.

Lemon Cheesecake 

Another indulgent treat is their chocolate tart. It’s dark, gooey and chocolate-y with just the right amount of crumbly pastry underneath. The tart is very heavy and might not suit who does not like overwhelming chocolate.
For those who believe in there is no such thing as too much chocolate, this tart is joy, this tart is everything.

Apart from their interior and their cheesecake The Red Window has me with their service. Their staff is friendly and proactive. They give approximate time for the food to arrive and actually stick to it! It’s wonderful to see that businesses have started to take customer experience seriously.

Pricing seem appropriate given you pay for the whole ‘oh this place is so cozy’ experience as well as the food. It is not cheap, I would have liked it better if I could order a meal within 200 Taka including taxes.

The Red Window is a good place for dates, for meet and greet or just to sit back enjoy a drink and a dessert or two. If I hadn’t spent all my salary money already, I’d drop by for their iced tea tomorrow! 

Written By:

Fabiha Farzin

Stash...

Refrigerators are perhaps the most adored kitchen/dining appliance and well deserve all the love it gets. Your fridge doesn't only store food and cool down your drinks it also relives you from having to make a meal from scratch every single time. It's where you stash your food!!

Fridges have always been a part of our comfort zone. It stores food for us and nothing beats that, unless if by some magical phenomenon, we’ll be able to directly download food off the internet but that isn't happening anytime soon.

We are people who miss their fridge a bit quite too often. It is completely natural for us to go into the dining, open the magical door of the fridge and just stand there; even if there is nothing to eat.  As we munch on our late night snacks, we can’t help, but try and link the “fridge door opening activity” to people’s personality.

Please note that we have no intention of offending any food lover, or even those people who eat to live and not live to eat. Feel free to add any more points by commenting below.

You open the door only when you need to.... You like conformity in this world filled with chaos. You like rules and you stick to them (you’re probably even responsible for issuing a few rules). You don’t understand why people do things that they could survive without.

You just like to chill.... Movies direct your life. You have a filmy dialogue or background music for every situation in life. You open the fridge and pretend to be king Leonidas standing naked in the harsh freezing land. People often tease you for your dreamy attitude but hey, the world needs more dreamers.

You like to keep the eggs the “right side up”.... You know there is a proper way to keep eggs and jams and basically food in general. You do not understand why people fail to grasp the simple concept: put things in order. You want everything in proper line, color coded preferred. You’re the OCD one in your group, but everyone admires your superpower to remember the proper order of things.

You open the fridge and…just stand there.... You’re perhaps one of those people who are perpetually hungry. There isn’t a time in your life that you don’t think of food. You love your fridge the most in the house. It doesn’t feel right if you don’t check it out regularly, even if there is nothing to scrounge, you just love staring at it.

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Tastebud...

After much debate regarding which place to explore next, we decided maybe it’s time we satisfy our sweet tooth. From the various patisseries available, the name that instantly clicked in our heads was “Tastebud”. 

Situated in Banani road 12, it occupies a pretty decent and busy location in Dhaka City. 

Now we all know that there is no dearth of cafes in Dhaka, and every few months a new one seems to open up. While most of them successfully sell their image with their excessive flashiness, they forget to pay attention to what really matters - the quality of the food .Thankfully, Tastebud maintains their quality with the right amount of splendor. Though most of its clientele include university students, and office workers, its warm welcoming lights and eye-catching interior makes it a very preferable spot for the couples who are looking for some cozy time.

Aryt enough ranting about the place, now let’s get to what really matters, the food!! There’s an endless array of desserts to choose from. Whether you are a nutella-chocolate freak or an avid fan of cheesecake or a sweet tooth, TasteBud offers something for everyone’s taste. We ordered three desserts, The Banoffee Pie, Chocolate Paradise slice and the red velvet slice. 

Banoffee pie, Chocolate paradise Slice and Red Velvet Slic

Now for those of you who are wondering what a Banoffee pie is, it’s a pie or tart made with toffee, bananas and cream. Well the pie was splendid with its rich banana flavor and scrumptious toffee essence and by the time we were done ravaging it, it just left us begging for more. 

Chocolate Paradise Slice

The chocolate cake paradise was good too but it was the same old chocolate cake pumped with cocoa, it actually felt like there was a bit too much cocoa in it. Nonetheless, it was delicious. 

According to the people at TasteBud, their best dessert is the Red Velvet Cake and the chef indeed does justice to this trendy yet classic dessert. 

Red Velvet Slice

The red velvet cake had the perfect balance of cream cheese and buttermilk flavor, and was worth every bite. Overall, we were quite satisfied with desserts and their price seemed reasonable. However, one thing that left us disappointed was the excessive service charge. 

Then came our post meal ritual: the little chitchat that we have with some other fellow customers. This time the “lucky” ones were Shahzeb and Munazza. 

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Shahzeb and Munazza

Shahzeb had ordered the Tiramisu slice, and being a regular foodie at Tastebud, he complained that the quality of the food had deteriorated over the past few months. Munazza had ordered the brownie with ice cream, but did not like the fact that her ice cream was served on top of her brownies, according to her one does not simply serve hot brownies with cold ice cream! That’s right! The ice cream melted before she could even start. So for the people who plan on ordering brownie with ice cream, I suggest you eat up quickly before the ice cream melts. They did not seem very overwhelmed with the drinks they had ordered; the watermelon juice was just an unexciting mixture of soda and syrup.

All in all, if your taste buds are craving for a sweet delight or you are looking to take your special someone, friend or coworker to some place they will enjoy and have a good time Tastebud is the place to be. Its cozy ambience bundled with the soft music and friendly staff makes it a place worth checking out. Be sure to pay them a visit!

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Preetom...

 It’s not very difficult to find a burger in Dhaka city these days. Even street vendors openly sell burgers for as less as 40taka (well there is the hygiene issue of course). But finding a good juicy burger at an affordable price might be a thought provoking process. That’s where Preetom comes in. Situated at the heart of Banani, ‘Preetom’ might just be the place you are looking for.

Upon the entry into FR tower Preetom looks quite small and not very flamboyant, but its simplicity shouts out its quality. The place is well lit with a good ambience and most of the people coming here are either students or corporate workers who don’t pay that much attention to the presentation and are just looking for a quick good bite with value for money. 

From the clear view of the kitchen it was quite clear that they weren’t afraid to show that they are proud of their hygiene standards, and well let’s be honest you don’t see that very often in the restaurants and cafés of Dhaka city. 

The beef burger, which Preetom is so well known for, was too good with its juicy patty and generous spread of mayo and barbeque sauce, but it may not have been the same for everybody. 

Our friend Asif Ishtiaque and his friend Sabrin Islam from BRAC University did not share the same view; they were rather dissatisfied by the chicken burger and promised never to return to this place again. In fact, they didn’t even finish their burger. Whatever might have caused their discontentment, the unpleasant music from the Television channels might have played a minor role in it. 

We were also lucky to interview Mourin, Tonmoy,Shakhawat, Tanzim, Shadman, Sunny and Kazi from American international University of Bangladesh (A.I.U.B) who were totally satisfied with beef burger and the chicken chow mien but made it very clear that this place is not for family gathering rather for hangouts and quick meal. 

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The chow mien served in Preetom was good but wasn’t anything worth dying for and it’s not surprising considering people sings songs about their burgers only. However the lack of more options in their menu was quite disappointing. We all love your burgers Preetom but giving us more burger choices than just the beef, chicken and half pounder would make things a little bit more exciting. 

Further the lack of desserts also adds to the misery and the abandoned ice cream machine just sits there, idly waiting to serve the customers. Just to be clear there are two Preetoms few yards apart which we did not notice at first due to our hunger and desperation for food. Regardless they both are more or less the same. If you are looking for a place to hang out with friends and have a quick satisfying bite, Preetom is the place to be. Its simplicity may not attract couples and families but I guess that is the point behind less attention to presentation and more attention to food.



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Wok And Fire...

If Chinese food is what your stomach craves and your heart desires, you can’t but let them have what they want but if your pocket is in a bit of a jam and your dad’s wallet is not made accessible to you, then Wok and Fire is your destination. Situated just behind Athena furniture, resting itself on four wheels, this food cart awaits its customers. Now the specialty of this place, is that none of its food….contains salt. Yeah that’s right, no added salt, but that doesn't mean it lacks in flavor at all, if anything it tastes better than most Chinese food available.

Our visit to Wok and Fire was not planned at all. We got to know the owner of Wok and Fire during our interview at Kiva Han and he graciously welcomed us over to his food cart. As I've mentioned in our earlier blog, we had a very interesting conversation with Mr. Ziaul Alam, people should know how different food tastes like and how the food is originally supposed to be but instead we try to blend and mix the tastes with our own native flavors in a way ruin the specialty of that food. Instead of complaining how undercooked authentic Chinese food is, people should have the realization that Chinese food is meant to be like that. 

The taste buds of our country are accustomed to a wide variety of seasoning and flavors therefore we end up wanting all that, from every single bite that we take and if we don't like it, we pass around a comment that the food wasn't good. What doesn't seem tasty to you might very well be delicious to other people. But do we actually take that thought into consideration? The Chicken Chow Mein that we tasted, was absolutely delicious, we didn't even feel the need for salt and the best part, was that it was on the house!!! I even took some home for my mother to taste and she loved it. Another interesting thing was their use of sporks, it's not really that widely used in Bangladesh.

To every yin, there is a yang but in this case, it’s more like room for improvement. We know it’s a food cart and what more can we really expect than good food at a cheap price, but the dustbin really needs some improvement….. :P

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Kiva Han Boutique Cafe...

So by recommendation of Khadija Ismail, whom we had met during our visit at Smoke Music Café, we decided to check out Kiva Han. Situated at the busy heart of Gulshan-1, surrounded by corporate offices, there it stands, a place where you could just forget about all your worries, sip on a cup of coffee, nibble on some snacks and spend time alone, or maybe with some friends or even with that special someone. The interior was not well lit, as if it was to soothe the tired mind, preparing it for more work. 

Near the entrance there was a cigarette case and nearby was a smoking zone...good news for the smokers!!! 

We were both exasperated and most definitely hungry. After scanning our eyes through the menu, it was the Bolognese Pasta and the Fried chicken with Thai fried rice and Chicken Chili that we craved. The menu was a nice touch actually, printed on brown wrapping papers it was cheap and creative.

The wait was pleasant and short. Hip Hop music of various artists like Bruno Mars, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna and Eminem filled the air, not the kind of music the corporate would like to hear. 

There was nothing special about the presentation of the food. It looked plain and simple, like it was just poured down straight from the pan to the serving plates but then again, you can't really expect a restaurant quality flashy presentation of the meal in a café. The quantity was wholesome, nothing special in the taste, but it was pretty good.No complimentary drinks though, unlike in Smoke Music Café even though the price was almost the same.

For dessert we ordered the chocolate mousse, perhaps we had raised our expectations a bit too much. Watching too much masterchef might be the reason. It looked nothing like they showed on tv. Served in a plastic cup with an oreo stuck in between. It didn't taste that great either, it should've been more dense, more chocolaty. Not a great ending to our meal.

Then came the interviews, the first two that we proceeded shot us down, they were too “busy” for it. But the second two was a success, 

Mr. Tahsin Ahmed Chowdhury, director at a real estate company and Mrs Rafeya Ahmed Chowdhury a school teacher at CGS. They both had almost identical opinions on the place. The service was great, the food was okay but the music was not to their liking.They had both been here before and were satisfied all times. They had the Japanese fried rice, iced tea and lemonade. Even though a bit overpriced they would recommend others to try out this place.

The third interview was of Zia Ul Alam, coincidently the owner of Wok and fire, and Ahmed Farha Khan, they both come here often and are quite big fans of Kiva Han's pastries and drinks but does not quit share the same opinion on the other foods on the menu, this time they had the red velvet cake and the lemonade. They judged the place based on it being a Cafe and they would rate the play and 8 out 10. we had a very insightful discussion with them but we'll save that for our next adventure where we explore Wok and Fire...

By recommendation of Mr Tahsin Ahmed Chowdhury our next destination is Brews and Bites…. can't wait!!! :D

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Smoke Music Cafe......

It was a sunny day and I could very well feel the wrath of the sun on me and by courtesy of Mr. Big Burning Ball of hydrogen, the back of my shirt was soaking wet. So after waiting for 30 minutes under the scorching heat, Mr. Late (Hassan Mahmood) finally decides to show up and we’re on our way to Smoke Café situated in Banani. Now,  To add to our demise, we had no idea where Smoke Café was actually located except for the idea that it was somewhere near Platinum Suites. So after we reached Platinum suites we roamed around for about another 15 minutes asking random people about the specific location of Smoke Café with no luck at all and after a while we found ourselves circled back to Platinum Suites, and guess what? Smoke Café was actually on just the opposite side of the road. It’s like it magically appeared by the time it took for us to circle back to Platinum Suits. We make our way up to the 5^th floor by the elevator and then again another flight of stairs to reach the main café. It was kinda situated on the roof of the building.


So we get ourselves settled in, ran our eyes through the menu and ordered the BBQ cheese burger for myself and the All American burger for Mr. Late and zealously went through the burgers in a matter of minutes, once we were served of course, the complimentary drinks along with the French fries was a nice touch. Next up were the interviews. We found a group of young ladies aged around 15 who had just finished up with their meal and they were perfect for the interview.  They had ordered The Smoke Burger, The BBQ Cheese Burger, The Five Napkin Burger and The BBQ Steak Burger. The empty plates in front of them said a lot, they had a pretty fulfilling meal. So according to them, the food was great and the size of the burgers, even though a bit intimidating was not a problem because of its great taste, the service was satisfactory and the environment was pretty cool. For a few of them it was the first time they had been there just like us and all of them agreed that would definitely recommend others to try out Smoke Music Café and all in all we’ll give them a 7.5/10.

Umme Salma Shabbir, Khadija Ismail, Sherebanu Saifuddin, Insiyah Hussain, Rashida Lokhandwala



By recommendation of our new friend Khadija Ismail… our next target is Kiva Han… can’t wait :P

                                                                         

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