Christmas in Bangalore at Taj Vivanta

Bangalore has a long tradition of celebrating Christmas with Christmas cakes, plum puddings and other Christmas goodies. One of the places where you get to see Christmas celebration and goodies is at Taj Vivanta on MG Road in Bangalore.

We got to spend  our Christmas morning at Cafe Mozaic at Taj Vivant as guests of the hotel. When we stepped into the lobby my eyes were instantly drawn to the Ginger Bread House. That Ginger Bread House was like a magnet and of course, I had to step into this delightful creation that was filled with Christmas cakes and plum puddings.

After a quick peek at the Ginger Bread House we headed to Cafe Mozaic, one of the 3 restaurants at the hotel. Cafe Mosaic is a 24-hour restaurant that serves an astonishing variety of dishes from Indian to Continental to Tex-Mex. You raised your eyebrows at Tex-Mex food? Well, so did I since it came as a surprise. Turns out Tex-Mex is very popular in Bangalore.

We decided to have a traditional Indian breakfast of appams and vegetable stew and rounded off that meal with a serving of Christmas plum pudding. Appam and stew are so hard to get in San Francisco Bay area that it seemed only natural to gravitate towards it. We also got to savor a freshly tossed salad prepared by Chef Thomas. We polished off our breakfast with a cup of fresh filter coffee.

Curious to find out on how they were setting up their Christmas lunch I spoke Executive Chef Ramasamy Selvaraj, who offered a tour of his kitchen and a walk-through of how they set up their lunch. This was an eye-opener of a kitchen tour. I was impressed to see the methodical manner in which dishes are prepared and set out at the buffet table. They had 150 dishes and over 20 desserts for the brunch. I have a video of that Christmas lunch coming up. In the meantime here are some pictures I took with my iPhone.