:::: Time Out Bengaluru - city guide and fortnightly listing magazine ::::

Blue Fin suffers from a serious flaw – for an establishment that models itself after fast food chains, service here is glacial. The counter at which you place your order, the long aluminium-topped table set in the wall and the bright wall-mounted menu with photographs of unreasonably delicious-looking dishes are all reminiscent of places where you’d go to get a quick fix of oily, fried chicken or burgers dripping suspiciously coloured sauce. But on ordering you are likely to be told that it will take 20 minutes to prepare your food, and if your order is substantial the actual time before it is handed to you will probably be closer to half an hour.

Yet it isn’t slow service that is Blue Fin’s undoing. That distinction belongs to their prawn offerings, which comprise a major part of the menu. The people behind Blue Fin seem to have miscalculated a critical factor in planning a seafood café that largely caters to takeaway customers: prawns continue to cook in hot sauces after they’ve been taken off the flame. This means that a large number of Blue Fin’s patrons will have endured the same fate as this reviewer: taking home a packet of Serangoon prawns (with pepper and oyster and soy sauces, Rs 99) or Colaba prawns (with butter garlic sauce, Rs 110) in eager anticipation of a feast ahead, ripping the packet open and emptying the contents into a bowl, then biting into a prawn to discover that its texture can be described most easily by that adjective dreaded by purveyors of prawn preparations the world over – rubbery. All the other prawn dishes ordered (Koh Samui prawns, with honey and chilli sauce, Rs 99; Chowringhee prawns, with mustard sauce, Rs 99) confirmed this diagnosis when they were unwrapped and eaten with their complimentary Kerala parotas (Rs 20 per piece if ordered separately). The quality of the catch didn’t impress either; the prawns were thin and, rather than define the dishes, lay defeated in their gravies.

The whole fried mackerel (Rs 75), on the other hand, slathered in spices that had seeped through the flesh of the fish, was pronounced “pleasingly subtle” and “surprisingly plump for the season” by a companion. The crab cutlets (Rs 79), too, were satisfying, the soft brown outer shell breaking apart to reveal an interior of lightly spiced crab mince. The sole beverage on offer is Colber, a ruby-red Indian berry drink, and is recommended. While it may not cut through grease in the way that only cola drinks can, its salty-sweet taste is kinder to the palate, and at Rs 15 a glass, it’s also easier on the wallet. Ajay Krishnan