Going "Home" to Bollywood Tandoor, After Little India Permanently Closed in Cebu City

It's was sad for me to realize that Little India (Cebu) has permanently closed. So far, the Manila branch has not closed yet. I wrote an article where I explained why vegetarian restaurants tend not to last long in the Philippines. The closure of Kongtiak Restaurant in Quezon City was just one. Little India Cebu City closed (eventually) due to constant losses. I was thinking about it that I usually ate vegetarian food at Bollywood Tandoor (which served meat) while I soon got into Little India (read my review here), to eat their delicious vegetarian foods. However, things changed when they started to stop having dine-ins closed altogether.

I thought about the comparison between Little India Cebu City (closed), and Bollywood Tandoor. I looked into the fact that Bollywood Tandoor is very mainstream. Little India Healthy Cuisine is hard to market, especially when several Cebuanos may not be that health-conscious. Little India Cebu City was a vegetarian option, as they allowed meat eaters to try the alternative, and didn't require people to go vegetarian. Going to Bollywood Tandoor also meant a huge change in business model. Before, the interiors of Bollywood Tandoor felt more like a Hindu/Buddhist temple. However, the post-pandemic Bollywood Tandoor lived up to its name, Bollywood! Little India Cebu City remained in the Buddhist temple type of design.

Bollywood Tandoor Facebook Page

Here's a photo of the more recent Bollywood Tandoor interior design. The older interior of the dining area felt "more serene" at first. However, by going more "Full Bollywood", it certainly attracted not just curiosity but also more customers. Old-time customers came back for some newer meals, the menu gets modified every now and then, and it serves a wider customer range. As a non-vegetarian who eats vegetarian meals, Bollywood has given me more options than Little India Cebu City. I enjoyed Little India Cebu City's vegetarian meals. I enjoyed the vegetarian stuff they had. However, Bollywood Tandoor's ever-growing model was just hard to beat. Little India Cebu City's primary market, the vegetarians, are harder to find. Meat eaters were often a secondary market.

As I went back to Bollywood, I started eating more of their meals, both vegetarian and non-vegetarian. I could eat a vegetarian meal on one go and a meat dish on the next. In fact, it was their older, now closed, restaurant, Mr. India, that got me into the Indian food craze. Mr. India was too small to accomodate the success that Mr. Soni Vasnani was having. Bollywood Tandoor was soon born and has evolved into a much better model.

I'm back at Bollywood now. It's sad for me that Little India Cebu City had closed, since I was always looking for vegetarian options on certain days.

The OFW Working Abroad and Their Family on Christmas

It's a few days before Christmas. I don't like December because of heavy traffic, some people prefer Christmas shopping at the last minute (since procrastination is a common habit in the Philippines), the stress of year-end work, and December is the end of the year's cycle. I decided to write this entry. There's nothing wrong with celebrating Christmas or having a good time. The problem comes when one celebrates beyond one's means (read here ). That means having extravagant Christmas parties that require a music band that one can't afford, inviting the whole village, etc. when one can't afford it. Speaking of which, these incidents remind me of OFW families. I remember a study presented at the University of San Carlos. If I remember correctly, it was done by accounting students. It was a study showing the spending habits of OFW families. Outstanding Filipinos Worldwide Facebook Page Here's a meme on Facebook that I found. For the sake of non-Tagalog spea...

Having the BADLY NEEDED Tenacity to Hold My PSEi Related Investments During INEVITABLE Paper Losses

I decided to do a portfolio review, especially because Christmas to New Year is around the corner . I thought about checking my AXA Chinese Tycoon Fund. For the sake of confidentiality , I wouldn't give out the exact loss. I was tempted to sell my AXA Chinese Tycoon Fund (which was at a paper loss , not an actual loss) and go for cryptocurrency . However, after looking at the ghost of Quadriga-CX Crypto Scam made I said, "I need to stick to what Warren Buffett said about the stock market." Buffett's advice doesn't require an MBA or even a PhD in business administration to understand them. Instead, I was looking at these lessons that Buffett such as: If I'm not willing to open to own a stock for 10 minutes, I shouldn't think of owning it for ten years! Definitely no day trading for me! The stock market is a device that transfers money from impatient people to patient people. I have to be more patient as the stock market inevitably corrects itself, unless t...

COMMUNIST Vietnam Has Defeated DEMOCRATIC Philippines Again This 2025

Cổng thông tin Trung ương Đoàn TNCS Hồ Chí Minh A few days ago, I wrote about warning Filipinos that they shouldn't wait for more unmitigated typhoon disasters, before realizing that the Filipino First Policy isn't working ! There's a statement that says, "Just because being tanga (inattentive) is libre (free), doesn't mean you should be tanga!" Analyzing the different policies: why policies matter I found a Business World article, written by Cesar Polvorosa, Jr., on my Facebook news feed discussing the Vietnamese economy . In fact, it would be better to share some hard truths that the article offers about what really went wrong with the democratic Philippines compared to Communist Vietnam : DIVERGENT ECONOMIC MODELS Vietnam pursued an export-oriented manufacturing strategy which has proven significantly more successful over the past half century than the Philippines’ service-heavy, remittances-dependent model . Export performance alone tells a compe...

External Validations, like Masters and Doctorate, Mean NOTHING with a LOUSY Education System

I have the tendency to use my MBA as a license to avoid criticism. It's a real problem that some people use their credentials and/or academic achievements to try and win an argument. One incident I wrote about was Rep. Raoul Abellar Manuel flexing his "smarts" by using his cum laude degree to win the argument . It was all about how I would often say, "You're the moron because I have the MBA and you don't." There are times I felt like taking an MBA would make up for my "moral shortcomings" during high school when I was barely passing (and the passing rate was 80% , which is rather high), that I wasn't having honors, and that there was this saying, " Thou grades shalt determine thy future! " That, of course, has led to the reality where cheating is prevalent . I wanted to make a review. I took my MBA in 2011 and graduated in 2014. I always felt that the MBA program was what I needed to become "invincible". It was also at ...

Economics 101: Pre-Colonial Philippine Natives Already Did Business with Foreigners

Art by Hugo Yunzon It's finally August or Buwan Ng Wika (Month of the Language), though it may be better to call it Buwan Ng Kultura (Month of the Culture). Buwan Ng Wika programs tend to focus more on the uniqueness of several types of Filipino people. What I recall back in my high school days (late 1990s) is how I was asked to play an "American" in a Buwan Ng Wika program. There were also other people asked to portray the Chinese traders, Arab traders, Indian traders, and the Japanese occupation. It would be good to do a review of the pre-colonial Philippines. The name Philippines was derived from the Spanish king, King Philip. Back then, the natives were called Indios which sounds very similar to Indonesia . Yes, most Filipinos are either Malay or Indo. A look at the Indonesians and Malaysians would have one mistake them for Filipinos. A note is that the Chinese population there usually speaks Hokkien. From Purdue Filpino --here's some basic information about Fili...

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