Shiok has moved to Inner Ring Road! Check out my restaurant Web site

Look ma, yummy food pics!

Hot n' sour rice noodles

Grilled tiger prawns

Whole fish in chillies, garlic, and basil (yes, seafood is what we love!)

Drunken noodles using flat rice noodles

Gado Gado salad - veggies with our own peanut sauce

Some of our cocktails

My current location

Shiok Far-eastern cuisine
96, Amar Jyoti Layout, Koramangala Inner Ring Road
Domlur
Bangalore - 560 071
Phone: (080) 65715555/6666
Serves: Food from Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and China
The cocktail lounge serves affordable cocktails and fine foreign spirits like Chivas Regal, Black Label, Jack Daniels, Remy Martin, Glenlivet, etc. 

Directions

From Airport Road:
Take on to Inner Ring Road. Go about 200 metres. It's on the main road, next to Adishwar's.

From Indiranagar 100 ft. Road
Go on the flyover and get on to Inner Ring Road. Go about 100 metres after the flyover ends. It's on the main road, next to Adishwar's.

From Koramangala
Take the Inner Ring Road all the way up to the Airport Road flyover. Do not take the flyover. Take the left lane under the flyover instead. Then take the U-turn under the flyover to come back to the other side of the Ring Road. Go about 200 metres. It's on the main road, next to Adishwar's.

Parking

Go straight down the road after Shiok about 50 metres and take a left turn after the bus stop. There is lots of parking space in the lanes there. (Valet parking available in the evenings.)

Fact sheet on MadMan

A brief bio

For those who can't spare the time to read the engaging biography that follows, here's the short of it.

I run a swanky Far-eastern restaurant and cocktail lounge in CMH Road, Indiranagar, a pretty upmarket part of Bangalore. Apart from being the owner, I also happen to be the Executive Chef i.e., the bloke who designed the menu and taught the rest of 'em how to make the food.

Not content with serving regular Indian and "Chinese" fare like so many other restaurants in town, I toss up exotic food from South-east Asia: Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. And the cocktails are pretty good too.

Before starting Shiok (my restaurant), I used to be in a totally different line of work for more than 7 years: Information Technology. Yessir, I've managed networks, designed and managed huge web sites, and also designed interfaces for things.

Come, come, don't look so surprised. If I've caught your interest, the section that follows has plenty more detail. :)

A not-so-brief bio

So I see plenty of comments asking which demon possessed me enough to make me throw out everything I'd been doing for more than 7 years and get into the restaurant business. Where shall I start, I wonder...

Before all this happened, I used to be a Webhead. No, I wasn't Spider-Man. I was a dude who did stuff on the Net. Wait, that's not a very good place to start either. (OK, this is going to be long. You sure you've got time?)

Ahem, flash back to 1988 to when I had just entered my teens. As you might guess, I'm very fond of food. At that time, I loved Chinese food (the stuff I now call Indo-Chinese glop.) Unfortunately, my parents didn't share my enthusiasm. One day while thumbing through a UK superstore catalogue (that my father brought back from his frequent trips there), I noticed a curious item in the "kitchen appliances" section. There it was, described as "Ken Hom 14" Carbon Steel Chinese Wok. Comes with spatula, chopsticks, and cookery book." Somehow, the idea hit me that if I perhaps got this thing (I didn't even know what "wok" meant), I might be able to satisfy my craving for Chinese cooking by making it myself, or at least get my maid to make some for me.

My poor, wonderful father actually dragged it back for me on his next visit. It wasn't easy; a thick gauge wok weighs a fair bit. Over the next few weeks, I studied Mr. Hom's book in detail. It taught me a fair bit about the philosophy of the cuisine. I realised just how different it was from the goo they dishes out at the local "Chinese" restaurants. (No Virginia, there isn't a Chinese Gobi Manchurian.) The only problem was the sheer number of exotic ingredients I'd never heard of. These days, stuff like oyster sauce, dark soy sauce, etc. are available in ever supermarket but in 1988, almost nothing was here. Fortunately, my father's UK business associates were kind enough to keep bringing me bottles of these gems so I could continue my culinary adventures. Over months and years, I studied cooking like an art, trying to understand not just the "what" but the "why" of making food. It is a quest I continue even today. I gradually realised, "Hey, I've got a thing for this." It soon became just as much of a passion as the other love of my life - computers.

(You still with me? You're either unemployed or very interested in me. Let's hope it's the latter, eh?)

After passing out of school, I had to make a career choice. Do I study hotel management and extend my love of cooking into a career? Or do I confirm my geekiness and get into technology?

I decided to remain a geek.

Whoa whoa whoa! That's not as stupid a decision as you might think it to be. I talked to a lot of hotel people before making my choice. The problem was essentially this: I wanted to cook glorious food and would've loved to become a chef. What I didn't want, however, was to do all the other stuff - make up beds, clean rooms, learn French, and everything else you have to do as part of the course. So I told myself that I'd continue to study cookery as an art to keep my passion alive, while making a living being a geek.

You know what they say about making lemonade when life hands you lemons? Well, I never got handed those lemons. I prefer iced lemongrass tea anyway.

That last line was a test to see if you were paying attention.

Where was I? Right, so I was making a living as a geek. You remember how I started off cooking authentic Chinese food? Well, I happened to study in Australia after school. The flights there and back always involved stopping over at Singapore or Malaysia since there wasn't a direct flight from India. That's when I met Asian food and instantly fell in love with it. I had to learn this new cuisine. Fortunately, Asian food is fairly popular in Australia. I ate and learnt more and more. Singapore really is the food capital of Asia and I've had the best food there numerous times. That's how I expanded my repertoire into newer, more exotic food.

Starting a restaurant was one of my long-term plans. I figured that if I didn't become a millionaire from stock options in tech companies (I didn't), I'd set one up when I was in my mid-thirties. The volatility of the IT business (in my last company, they fired a third of my department at night without asking or telling me), combined with the encouragement from friends persuaded me to move forward my plans and do it while I was still young, er, younger, er, below 30. I figured that it's easier taking big risks when you're relatively young and single, not when you're hitched and have to be more stable.

And thus was born Shiok Far-eastern cuisine. I took almost half a year to get everything planned, designed, and making sure I was psychologically ready for it. The other half was spent building the place from scratch, hiring good staff, planning and designing a menu, and all the other hard stuff that goes into setting up a fine dining restaurant. I saw a real market for South East Asian food in Bangalore, my adopted city. I also saw a market for a warm, cosy restaurant where you didn't have bright lights, loud music and tables 1 foot away from each other.

Well, that's my story, folks. I thought I could make it short, but apparently I'm not as good a writer as I thought. Well, I did tell you it was not-so-brief. :)

If possible, I'd like you to drop in at my restaurant, see my dream, and taste my food. My food is like sex - when it's good, it's great. But when it's bad, it's still pretty good. ;)

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