College days, is one of the best phases of life. And this phase had few peculiar things that everyone could relate to. One of them being, visiting shady cheap bars with friends. The 2 best thing about these bars is cheap booze and great company. I recently relived this college memory of visiting shady bars when for the first time, I visited Janta bar couple of weeks ago.

janta

As the name suggests, this bar is for ‘Janta’ the mango people. Situated in a good location in Pali naka, Bandra, it’s loud, crowded and shady. There are definitely not many females hanging around at this spot. But the ones who are present are only there with their group of friends (mostly males). The place when I entered was crammed by people, every nook and cranny. We went upstairs to meet my group of friends. I would suggest everyone to go upstairs and seat, it looks marginally better. There are multiple doors opening to different small areas consisting of few tables. My friends were sitting in one such room, which we found after opening multiple doors!

Now, the main task there is not to find a place to sit, which mostly people complain about but is still manageable. We were nine people sitting at a table meant for 6. The maitre d’hotel kept getting us extra stools to sit on which were adjusted in the small aisle passage. So sitting is still fine but the main task is a) get the waiter to take your order and b) get the waiter to take your COMPLETE order! The waiter was the most stressed looking person there who just won’t wait in one place. We tell him one thing and he disappears. Takes his own time to come back to us and then we will try to convey the rest of our order but no, he disappears again. In 3-4 attempts we managed to give the complete order.

janta1

The place is good enough for college kids and young people. But other than them, you can’t stay there for more than an hour. Unless of course you are having a boy’s night out with the main agenda of drinking till you pass out. Another point to note is, Janta has table sharing principle so be prepared to share your table with strangers. Two, three couples can found themselves sharing one table.

Food is good there. In the starters we have ordered, prawns Manchurian, chicken chilly, veg crispy, aloo chat (yes there was a vegetarian in the group), and few other. One of our friend has ordered main course as well, but we had no time for him to finish it so he was forced to pack it and take it with him. Our bill came close to 5k among the nine of us. We definitely left the place around midnight to go to a happening elite club, Kitty Su situated in The Lalit. Read about that in the next post.

Food: 3/ 5  |  Ambience: 1.5/ 5  |  Service: Haha, you read the post, right?

Value for money: 3/ 5 |  Overall: 2/ 5