All smoked up

All you crave for on a windy afternoon is a cosy place where you can binge on some piping hot food. That is exactly what the American style pub and restaurant —Plan B offers.

The place is on the second floor of the #13 building on Rhenius Street. We occupy a table right beside a huge open window that gives us a pretty view of green branches swaying gracefully to the sound of the wind, creating its own dance.

The speciality of Plan B is that it offers smoked meat in various avatars. The chef, Thashvin Muckatira, mainly “plays around with pork as “that is my favourite meat and it takes beautifully to the smoked flavour.”

We start off with a few mocktails and chilled beer, which looks gorgeous frothing as it gently runs over a tall glass it is served in. Along with it arrive the starters — smoked winged chicken (marinated chicken wings smoked over charcoal), BBQ pork belly (smoked pork spareribs, glazed with a sweet and spicy sauce), smoked meat tacos (crunchy fried tacos stuffed with smoked meat and coleslaw). The perfectly smoked meat with varied flavours creates a beautiful tingling sensation on your palate which is cooled off with every sip you take of the beer —making it a perfect affair with food.

Then we dig into the main course, which is smoked meat lasagne, beef brisket andouille sausage along with corn on cobs, creamed spinach, garlic toast and spicy coleslaw. These come in the BBQ platter section and are served in style on wooden boards.

The dishes are created by the chef Thashvin, a post graduate in Business Management, who actually started off as an engineer.

“The switch to food happened when I couldn’t drive every day to Whitefield,” recalls the chef. That is the genesis behind the name. "As taking to cooking was indeed my plan b,” says the man who loves experimenting in his kitchen and adds that his passion for smoked meat began when he lived in the US.

“I went for a five-day training in smoked dishes and took it up as a passion. The toughest part about creating smoked meat is getting the timing and the temperature right. If you are careless, the meat just dries up,” explains Thashvin.

As of now, Plan B does not have in-house desserts as Thashvin wants to create them with pork as one of the main ingredients.

“That will happen soon,” beams the young chef.