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We first discovered Pho Cyclo Café’s delicious banh mi chay (tofu sandwich) in the Building 26 cafeteria. We had been to the Broadway restaurant before, but hadn’t noticed the banh mis on the menu (turns out they’re hidden away in a small corner). We had sampled their bun, lemongrass chicken, and a few other Vietnamese standards. Those were fine, but not particularly memorable. The tofu sandwich is a different matter. They’ve become a regular part of our weekend lunch rotation, especially now that they’ve closed their Building 26 counter to focus on their SoDo storefront.

We had 15 minutes in between a storage errand on First Hill and massages to grab lunch. We figured, let’s try and squeeze in a Pho Cyclo sandwich! They’re right across the street from Massage Envy, and the banh mi are light enough to avoid digestive discomfort during a massage.

The sandwiches are chock full of spicy green chilies, semi-firm marinated tofu, cucumbers, carrots, cilantro, and tasty fish sauce. Pho Cyclo uses fresh, crusty baguettes, and you get all of this yumminess for only $3.25!

Enjoying our tofu Banh Mi in the car

Pho Cyclo Café
406 Broadway East
Seattle, WA 98102 
(206) 329-9256

Daily: 10:00AM-9:45PM (Lunch, Dinner)

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A block from Sean and Archana’s place is a little South Indian food stall, Veena Idly.  Sean took us there on our first morning in Bangalore. I remember enjoying it, but my memories of that breakfast were quite hazy due to our exhausting travel day.

For some reason, we didn’t make it back to Veena until yesterday. I’m not sure why, as we talked about going a bunch. Maybe it’s the same reason that Floridians never use the pool in their backyard. One day while driving to work, we even ad-libbed a jingle for Veena. I think it went something like this (it changed a bit every time):

Veena Idly, for all your idly needs
Veena Idly, hooray for you and me
Veena Idly, for all your idly needs
I want some Veena Idly! (and vada too!)

However, we did have our final two Bangalore breakfasts at Veena, and they were fantastic. The menu is similar to many other south Indian breakfast stalls, but the execution was far above the competition. Someone said they have a special high-end idly steamer. I don’t know what it is, but I do know that I love it.

Idly/vada, the classic south Indian breakfast served with amazing coconut chutney

Chow chow bath. There are two sections, sweet and a savory. You are supposed to get a little of each part in each bite.

Veena Idly
No. 183, 15th Cross, Margosa Road
Malleshwaram, Bangalore, India 560 055
+91 23344838

Daily: Breakfast, Lunch

Sometimes I think I should run a signspotting campaign for error messages. In this particular case, the error happens when trying to install or uninstall a Windows service.

Since there was nothing actionable in the error message (sigh), it was off to the web. On MSDN, the only “fix” was to reboot your machine. Boo. Fortunately after digging deeper it turns out that all you really need to do is close services.msc if it’s open.

Given that this is a fairly common situation for services development, hopefully this post will save a few reboots. And maybe the next version of Windows will say something to the effect of “service was unable to install/uninstall because services.msc is open, please close the control panel and retry your installation.”

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The full service Indian airlines (Jet, Kingfisher, Air India) have amazing food on all of their flights, no matter what the length. However, on the way back from Goa we flew on IndiGo (a budget carrier), where the food options are anemic.

We left Mandrem sated from a great breakfast, but after 2 hours from Mandrem to GOI, a lack of decent food options at GOI, and an hour flight to Bangalore we were famished. Since BLR is about an hour outside of town, we grabbed a “jumbo” chicken tikka roll outside of the terminal. It was surprisingly good! The chicken was decently spicy, the roti was fresh off the grill, and prices weren’t heavily airport-inflated.

I don’t know if I would choose Kaati Zone Express if I was in the city and had other options available to me, but If you arrive hungry to Bangalore airport, it’s a solid choice.

Kaati Zone Express
Bangalore International Airport
Devanahalli, Bangalore, India