Daiquiri, Santacruz; The Dive Bar With Zomato Gold

We don’t mean to brag or anything, but our website, The Bombay Report has some serious street cred. It’s because we provide people with useful consumer advice that the liberal media doesn’t want you to find out about, but everyone else insists it’s because we made one video parodying Insider that Curly Tales thinks is all about them. Either way, we’re stunning and brave.

After hours of navigating the chaotic slums of Santacruz, we arrived at a dive bar called Daiquiri, and our fears weren’t alleviated when they had to unlock the front door to let us in even though there were already people inside, then lock it again behind us. To our surprise, it wasn’t all that shabby from the inside. In fact, it’s one of the best looking dive bars we’ve ever seen.

With framed, abstract paintings on the walls, table mats, an excellent bar displaying their most prized vintage, which happened to be a bottle of White Mischief, and potted plants covering one of the walls; it could have easily passed off as a mid level restaurant. None of it made sense. Despite the fact that it was quite clean and well lit, we didn’t see any women in the bar. Owing to the extremely shady and dangerous area the bar was in, we were pretty sure there were no females within a 300 metre radius from where we were sitting. This meant we could finally relax and discuss the real issues, like a detailed analysis of the legendary early 2000’s rivalry between Randy Orton and The Undertaker.

As if the good looks weren’t enough, Daiquiri also has pretty good deals on alcohol, and is the first dive bar we’ve been to that has Zomato Gold. We love making deals, because it helps us save a little cash to fund new, exciting videos, and partly because Derrick has sexual harassment claims to settle out of court. Even if you entirely forgo the shady deals, the alcohol is still pretty cheap. A bottle of Kingfisher cost us Rs.270, and a quarter of Old Monk was Rs.250.

Browsing the menu of this obscure little bar in a part of the city we’ve spent most of our lives actively avoiding was both strange and genuinely heart-warming, and this feeling of pleasantness was complemented by the fact that they have some excellent schezwan sauce to go with your chakli, worthy of a legitimate Chinese restaurant. We spent the entire night waiting for something to go wrong, no place could be so perfect. Surely something had to give way; then our orders arrived.

Bombil Rava Fry

Rs.140

The Bombil Fry at Daiquiri is diced into little bite-sized pieces so you aren’t forced to dismember the fish like some kind of savage. Although it was pretty oily, it was crisp and fresh, and looked presentable thanks to the unnecessary amounts of garnishing. It may not have been the best bombil fry we’ve ever had, but it’s certainly up there.

Dilkhush Kebab

Rs.260

Imagine some of the finest chicken tikka kebabs you’ve ever had stuffed with what felt like half a kilogram of piping hot cheese. That’s basically what the Dil Khush Kebab is. The chicken is cooked to perfection, & even though there were a few toothpicks hidden in the meat which caused us severe pain, if we had the choice we’d do it all over again.

Chicken Chilly

Rs.150

A lot of dive bars have nice food, but few if any hold up when pitted against genuine restaurants. Then we have Daiquiri’s Chicken Chilli, which could easily pass off for something you’d find at a very good Chinese restaurant. And that isn’t an exaggeration.

The Decree: In our line of work we do occasionally come across great bars in places we least expect to find them, but somehow, the discovery of Daiquiri shocked us like no other. It is by every single parameter the perfect dive bar in the most unassuming of places. It’s cheap, dangerous for women, the service is excellent, and the very terrain itself is an excellent defence against any sort of gentrification. It looks like we’ll be spending a lot more time hanging around Murugan Chawl, and we highly recommend you do too.

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