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Something to cheer about
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Cheers is a unique library that also doubles as a café. The books don't seem great, but the food here is certainly something to look forward to.
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The cafe is completely vegetarian
IT'S THE place and not what's in it that really counts at Cheers, the new library café and teetotaler's tavern on Residency Road named after — you got it — the TV serial. The owners loved the sense of cozy fellowship, camaraderie, and conversation that flowed in the serial and that's what inspired them to start Cheers. That and the kind of bookshops with cafes they noticed in America.
Cheers has books, magazines, and movies that you can either rent out or read/watch right there. It's air-conditioned, fairly comfortable, and has a café that serves, among other things, different pastas, mocktails, coolers, gourmet coffee, and organic tea.
The books are a disappointment — a clutch of bestsellers and some non-fiction, mostly the self-help kind. They also have audio books on CD-RoMs. Nice idea, but the books are mostly classics, nothing contemporary or even modern (though I did spot Ayn Rand's Anthem). The movies — on DVD and VCD — are again mostly just blockbusters. (They do have one set of specialised films — American TV serials and mini-series from the '70s such as Alex Haley's Roots and Three's Company).
The VCDs cost Rs. 30 to rent, the DVDs Rs. 70 — or you can borrow, say, 15 of them at a time and keep them for a month at the same rental charges. What's different then about Cheers (a branch of the Leisure Café off Airport road) is the food and drinks (which you have to pay for, the membership doesn't cover that) seems actually more interesting than the books and movies.
Another thing to cheer about this café is the food — it's totally vegetarian and the desserts are all egg-less. The ice creams here are `natural' — sugarcane, watermelon, sitaphal, and so on.
In a short while, Cheers will be the first café in Bangalore to serve flavoured mineral water! The mocktails are around Rs. 40, the soups and salads are Rs. 35 to 45, the pasta salad bar is Rs. 75, the main entrée is Rs. 80, and a special five-course meal with a glass of champagne and the house dessert costs Rs. 195. The menu also says that you can get an authentic Sindhi meal here.
The owners call Cheers, `a member-driven club'. Hopefully, it would be more than a club — that it would create community. Because that's what the original TV serial Cheers was all about: good conversation, warm friendships, and a sense of community.
PRADEEP SEBASTIAN
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Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Thiruvananthapuram
Visakhapatnam
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