Halo Cocktail bar and kitchen opens in Hyderabad

The baked mud crabs at Halo in Hyderabad
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Special arrangement

Halo’s culinary offerings range from succulent salmon skewers, punugulu with smoked tomato chutney, BBQ 5 spice chicken and mushroom kofta skewers with Truffle ricotta cannelloni. What I had was Karimnagar prawns and Calamari rings for starters. The prawns, a recommended dish, finished with a spicy powder, was quite something. Spicy and hard to stop at one! The generous serving of fried curry leaves as garnish added that extra South ‘Indianess’ to the dish. The Calamari rings were batter-fried, but the batter was a tad more than what I would have liked. Nevertheless, the rings were firm and chewy and not rubbery. The slightly sweet meat went well with the sweet-sour dipping sauce. 

Pretty cocktails are a crowd-puller at Halo Cocktail bar and kitchen
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Special arrangement

As I sat licking the spice from the prawns off my fingers, I noticed the adjacent table ordering something with cute little pavs. Apparently, the outlet’s pav combinations are their best sellers. So, I asked for keema pav. It was a spot-on classic dish, a delicious blend of minced mutton and peas, a mildly spiced dish. I mopped it up with the pillowy homemade bite-sized warm buttered-pavs. The other recommended dish was the Baked mud crab meat served in its shells and baked with cheese topping. Going easy on the dressing will enable crab meat lovers to relish the actual sweet crab meat.

The Asian pot curries are a must try
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The main course was Jungle Indonesian Pot Curry with prawn served with chilli garlic coriander rice. The pale yellow curry was flavour-packed. The coconut milk gave it a creamy texture and it tasted like the Burmese Khowsuey.

We rounded our meal with a very in dessert — the Tres Leches, a popular Latin American dessert. Almost every eatery in Hyderabad makes a version of this dessert these days. The name essentially means “three milk”.  It is a light sponge cake soaked in a sweet milk mixture topped with cream and a sprinkling of pistachios. Do try it here.

Halo also takes pride in their cocktails which comes in many different sizes and styles. I tried Lush, a cocktail with sage, gin and prosecco. This was followed by tea, a blend of earl grey tea and elderflower. Lush was a heady mix of flavours — earthy taste of gin, white wine flavours of prosecco and the slightly minty and bitter notes of sage. Tea, served in a teapot, was poured into tea cups on the table. It was mildly flavoured, with slightly floral and fruity notes and was a cloudy white coloured drink.