“The Lassi Shop” is a chain of 200 sq. ft café outlets, spanning over 50 locations in Bangalore and also extending to a few other cities in India like Hyderabad and Cochin. The primary aim of these outlets is to provide beverages like lassi, mocktails, juices and ice cream and provide some other combinations (some being experimental) drinks at affordable rates to willing consumers.
The diverse menu sports drinks of several flavors of the above mentioned categories and tries to provide and promote intake of hygienic drinks based on not too unnatural products like cake, cream, nuts, fruits with natural coloring instead of artificial ones. It is believed to have started with a couple or so outlets in Koramangala but is now spread throughout the city.
Regarding the menu, there are quite a few options.
As far as “lassi” is concerned, one has the options of “sweet regular lassi”, “mixed fruit lassi”, “mango lassi” and “banana lassi” although it appears that the options may vary a bit, based on the outlets. As the name suggests, it essentially has lassi flavored with the respective mashed fruits. “Mixed fruit lassi” consists of papaya, pineapple and apple and the other drinks are quite self explanatory from the name with regards to the lassi flavour.
Among the mocktails and other milkshakes, the ones which made an impression on me are:
A> “Walk like an Egyptian” which is a Ferrero Rocher Chocolate – Butterscotch combination drink. This one is not richly sweet in pure form but gives you a good feeling with the combined flavour of its ingredients.
B> “Doky Doky Cocktail” is a strawberry flavoured drink. Very nice with a thin sort of, although prominent strawberry flavour. Although quite yummy, somehow I tended to feel a bit sleepy every time I had this.
C> “Body Cooler” consists of rose water with some kind of fruity black seeds combination. Although it tastes nice, somehow I was left with a strange lingering taste afterwards.
D> “Mississippi Mud” is a very good drink combination consisting of cake, Ferrero Rocher, chocolate nuts, cream and milkshake. I think this is slightly more filling as a drink and leaves you with a nice feeling.
E> “Pista Milkshake” like the name suggests, is pista and flavored milkshake. A nice one to have.
F> “Kaju Anjeer” consists of Kaju, Anjeer and date seeds in the milkshake. Another nice one which gives you an evident flavour of its ingredients.
G> “Hopscotch Butterscotch” is a drink which includes butterscotch ice cream, normal cream and cake.
H> “Monte Carlo Vanilla” is a combination of vanilla ice cream, cream and cake.
I> “Mango Strawberry” as the name suggests, is a milkshake with the flavoring of both fruits.
There are some other drinks available like “Lindt & Springli”, “Mango Avocado”, “Strawberry Avocado”, “Belgian Chips”, “Musk Melon” and “Chiku” – most of them self-explanatory from their names. I may have tried some of them. In any case, all of them are good. It sort of also depends on your preference.
Other than the mocktails and milkshakes, there are some known varieties of ice cream like “Chocolate Fudge”, “Death by Chocolate”, “Fruit Overload” etc and some regular fruit juices if one chooses to sample some. I have tried some, on occasion and found them to be good.
One also has the option of coffee, kulfi and smoothies although I’ve not tried the same till date.
Regarding the ambience one can’t really talk much about a 200 sq. ft café outlet as it is basically a counter with a drink preparation space inside with some seating outside for its consumers kind of setting. So, it entirely depends on the outlet location being talked about. Some of the Koramangala outlets feel good but it must be noted such outlets are not primarily about the ambience as such.
I would recommend this to people interested in these kind of drinks, who are more inclined towards trying out experimental combinations of more natural products and various creams among others.