What da Murph!

Rating 4/5

One of the best pleasures of life is the pleasure of food and one of the best points about food blogging is you get invited to enjoy the one thing you enjoy the most – eating ! So here I was at Murphies – a quaint place with an innovative offering called Murphs and hence the name Murphies.

So what exactly is a Murph? It’s a whole potato slowwwly baked for hours with the skin intact resulting in a mashed form inside while the skin gets all crunchy. These murphs are then topped/drowned in the various constituents like gravies and meat chunks of their various recipes, the recipe is quite unique to say the least and we’ll talk about it later in the review.

Hope this gives some idea on what the place is about, the attached pictures might help a bit however you need to be there and taste it in order to get the complete picture. You may or may not like the Murph based on your taste buds but there are other items to enjoy like the Smoothies, fries, some of the tastiest soups I have had in recent times and other tid bits.

Ambience & Location – I would rate them a good 4/5 on this parameter.
Located in Lane 6 of the Koregaon Park, the place is easy to locate and offers both outdoor and indoor seating. Wednesdays are the days of Jam sessions where people can bring their own instruments and well create a Jam.

There are board games to be played as well while you munch through their offerings, the overall atmosphere is pretty much casual. Coming to the Parking facilities especially for Cars one needs to rely on the adjoining lane parking and park accordingly.

Food – I would rate them a good 4/5 on this parameter as well. I found the soups to be really tasty and the Murphs itself interesting and filling, one Murph is definitely enough for one person so choose your order appropriately, like sharing it with your accompanied ones so that you could enjoy the other preparations.

Mushroom Cappuccino soup – Don’t be scared folks, the Cappuccino part of the soup is only because of it’s color otherwise it’s a pretty good Mushroom soup. It was a welcome break for me from the much cliched Tomato Soup – the redundant choice to fall back upon when talking about Vegetarian soups. The soup is medium spiced with ginger playing second fiddle to mushrooms and I can say it was flavorful and I liked it very much.

Cream of Chicken Soup – This was the milder of the two yet not to the extent of being bland and it was pretty decent in its own right as well. If you’re looking for a light and mild soup this is the one for you when you’re at the Murphies.

How to eat a Murph ? Well once the process of prolonged and slow baking is done, the end result is so tender that with a plastic fork you should be able to dig into the murph from top to bottom and attempt to eat the layered end result in one go and then top it off with the crunchy potato skin from the sides. This is what I exactly did for both the murphs I had during this meal.

Mutton Kheema Murph – The good part about this is the use of Mutton (Goat’s meat) rather than that of Lamb which is even more pungent and it’s the handling of this element which can make or break a dish. This one came with a topping of Cheese, beneath the cheese Mutton Kheema Gravy and finally the baked potato base. It was a fair enough preparation though can be improved with adding more flavors to the mutton keema gravy to further enhance the preparation.

Chicken Tikka Murph – This one I really enjoyed with the Makhni chicken tikka gravy playing its part nicely and the somewhat milder flavors from the previous murph were adequately topped up in this one. The Chicken tikka pieces were tasty and the makhani gravy was flavorful which was not too sweet and I liked this one quite a bit.

Green Apple Cooler – The only drink I had since I was recovering from a bad throat so couldn’t try their famous smoothies but this one without the ice (as per my request) was pretty refreshing and was a good way to end an otherwise good meal.

Value for Money – I would rate them 4/5 on this parameter and found the place to be a good deal and value for money for sure. They’re moderately priced given the KP standards and by taking the good taste and quantity, moderate ambience, service and prices into consideration I recommend the place.  However you still need to decide for yourself whether you’re with a Murph or against it 🙂

Credits – A huge shout out to Mr.Dhiren who shared the meal with me and who also happens to be the Recipe master and the brain behind their Menu. He took me through to the overall process of Murph preparation from a humble Potato in a farm / shop to that of the finished product in their Restaurant and it was good to learn about a new concept from scratch. Lastly, special thanks to Ms.Sonya for arranging the food tasting and inviting me for the same.