#6 - Little Black Book

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You know when you live in a city for a while, you start to scope out a few things that become your go to places. It could be your favorite coffee place who by now recognize you as the caffeine lady and know how you like your coffee, your go-to bookstore where you pestered long enough for certain books, your favorite delivery restaurant on swiggy that you know so well so much that you know how will your midnight egg roll taste like, that theatre where the popcorn is just the right mix of salted and cheese or even a particular petrol pump you like to go to.

You accumulate these certain things that have your personal stamp of approval and over time they become a part of your routine and your life. No more scrolling on swiggy for hours on end deciding what to order from what place and how it will turn out to be because you already know what you like and what would make those Monday blues go away.

When you move to the city, in the initial days, it's like a testing phase, you try a lot of things, go to a lot of places and unknowingly keep tabs on everything you like, which later you pass on as jewels to the people who are new to your city. "Haa go on try that biryani place, it is the best!" (Sorry I was in Bangalore for 2 years so hence the spontaneous biryani reference!)

After a while, you have everything in place. It's like your own Little Black Book of the city. You are better than zomato and google maps! The same thing happened for me in Bangalore. I have a think book of places that I just adore and the right petrol pumps! Here is a list that might help you out:

If you are looking for places to go (mind you, quite a lot of these places are not my personal find but have been passed down to me by someone I still like to call one of my best friends, the girl I can never figure out!) you might want to try these

  • Pasta Street, Cunnigham road - A quaint little cafe with one of the best Italian food in the city!
  • Dolci - I am not a big dessert fan myself, but believe me even I couldn't resist myself here!
  • Hole in the wall - Best food ever. Period.
  • Bombay Brasserie - I love the place for their decor and their papad tokri
  • The white room - Some of the best coffee you will ever have
  • Bikaner - The best poha in all of Bangalore!
You know this list can go on and on! I will write a separate post for this! The survivor's guide to fresh college grads working in Bengaluru or as I would like to call it Shiro's little black book!

The whole point of me writing this post was that, when you move to a new city, you have a fresh book! Everything is new and you get to try everything, you get to build your ecosystem from scratch! This might seem like a giant pain, ugrh you order something online and it turns out to be horrible! But you can't get to the best of things without going through the horrible ones first. Here I go off topic again. But I guess you get my point!

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