Mango cheesecake fratte overload.
Cool Story, a 250 square feet garage store selling frozen beverages, had a timely summer launch in Bandra this March. Its story, however, began over a year ago when founder Saurabh Malhotra, a former events professional, piloted his self-described hand-crafted drinks at shopping and food bazaars such as Kitsch Mandi and the StyleCracker Borough all through 2015.
Malhotra’s store, fitted with four hand-painted tables and chairs with knitted backs, is a great summer hideout. Here they encourage lingering by providing board games and books as well as free Wi-Fi. While you’re occupied with these distractions, Venkatesh Govindrajan, the store manager who prefers to go by Venky, or as his business card addresses him, the Wizard of Chill, processes orders, which take a fair bit of time. This is because Cool Story has crafted a range of unique beverages composed of multiple ingredients, garnishes and condiments, among them frocktails (frozen mocktails) and frattes (frozen lattes, only a handful of which are infused with coffee).
Venky supplies a passionate narrative about these elaborate concoctions and their inventive flavours to each customer, which is welcome as the choice is quite baffling. Cool Story also serves cold brewed teas; desi loves or frocktails spiked with masala; gelatos and fratte overloads, the last of which are desserts masquerading as drinks. Venky’s co-workers are Mario and Gelator, names they’ve assigned to a slushie machine and gelato maker respectively. Mario is responsible for the lemonade granita, the base ingredient in the frocktails and desi loves, and for the frozen mixture of milk solids infused with vanilla that’s the foundation of the frattes. The Gelator churns the gelato that is served by the scoop and dunked into the fratte overloads.
Barring the mango and guava flavoured drinks (for which they use actual fruit pulp), their fruity beverages contain Monin purees. We puckered until we reached the icy dregs of the Tropical Tango (Rs159), a pleasantly tangy peach and passion fruit mojito of sorts with a flotsam of mint. The Pink and White Guava Desi Love (Rs139) flavoured with chaat masala was quite like our street-side favourite kala khatta gola but with the distinctive flavour of peru.
The frothy Paan-e-Shaan fratte (Rs185) to which they add a ready paan mix was achingly sweet. Get the textured Butterscotch Crunch fratte (Rs185), a rich-as-Milkmaid beverage loaded with chocolate coated butterscotch pellets that are as fun to crunch on as it is to chew on the sweet tapioca balls dunked in boba tea. You’ll have to skip all of these in order to take on the four-layered fratte overloads, which live up to the hyperbole in their description. The Oodles of Oreo (Rs295), piled with crushed Oreo, whipped cream, Oreo fratte, French vanilla gelato and a final layer of more crushed Oreo, is very popular with the teens residing in the Pali Naka lane in which Cool Story is located, Venky told us.
Two gulps of the freckled drink were quite enough for us adults however. We made more headway with the seasonal mango cheesecake fratte overload (Rs295) a tiered drink comprising biscuit crumbs, whipped cream, mango fratte, cheesecake gelato, white chocolate chips and diced mango. The floating scoop of optimally sweet gelato in the beverage is worth ordering individually. As a whole, the drink is a mango milkshake on steroids, thick, creamy, fruity, sweet and a decidedly diet-damning preparation that will take about a week or two to work off.
Get: Tropical Tango (Rs159); Pink and white Guava Desi Love (Rs139); cheesecake gelato (Rs80 for a single scoop and Rs150 for a double).
Skip: Paan-e-Shaan fratte (Rs185).
It is our policy to wait at least a week after an establishment has opened before we review it.
Prices exclude taxes. This review was conducted anonymously.
Cool Story, Villa Queenie, near Bombay Salad Co. and Mini Punjab, 16th Road, Pali Naka, Bandra (West). Tel: 022 2604 4905. Open daily, from 11am to 11pm. Get directions here.