Big O Gastronomy: Masumi Sake and Jason Oh's Six-Course Dinner at Akira Back

A shorter version of this article appeared this morning in Fortune Cookie, my fortnightly column for Mail Today. Click on http://epaper.mailtoday.in/epaperhome.aspx?issue=1322014 and go to Page 17 to read the original.

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

Masumi's Keith Norum (third from left) with
Ankur Chawla, author and beverage director of
JW Marriott, New Delhi Aerocity, and the
Akira Back chefs, Kurt Nyren and Jason Oh

KEITH NORUM has the looks of a liberal arts professor and a CV that says he read English Literature at UCLA and then relocated to an Alpine village named Suwa in the Nagano prefecture of Japan. That was 20 years ago, when he was hired as a cross-cultural management trainer by the world's largest maker of computer printers, Seiko Epson Corporation. Why, then, was the Californian at Akira Back, the New Delhi Aerocity JW Marriott's trending Japanese restaurant, holding forth on the virtues of Masumi?

Masumi is one of Japan's top sake brands -- two gold medals separate it from the No. 1, Urakasumi, in the annals of Japan's century-old annual sake awards -- and it has been brewed at the same kura by Suwa's Miyasaka family since 1662. Masumi means 'truth' and there's a story behind the name. The Miyasakas have been traditionally supplying sake to Suwa's historic Shinto shrine, which has the 1,200-year-old bronze 'Mirror of Truth', the source of the brew's name. The Shinto regard sake and salt as the two purifying elements in this imperfect world. Well, as they say with apologies to the Latin masters, 'in sake veritas' ('in sake there is the truth')!

Norum's relationship with Masumi started when the company's president, Naotaka Miyasaka, who represents his family's 23rd generation, returned home after completing his higher studies in America. He needed to keep in touch with English, and Suwa is a small place, so it was easy for him to find Norum. The two became good friends and eventually Miyasaka hired Norum to head his overseas operations.

Life may present unexpected twists, but little has changed in the art of making sake. It is brewed only in the three months between December and February, because the temperature in these months is just right for sake production, and each stage is carefully calibrated. Water and rice, Norum explained, are the two critical elements -- sake is 80 per cent water and 16 per cent alcohol extracted from milled rice.

The water, drawn from mountain springs, must have a low calcium content, because it slows down the metabolism of yeast, giving it longer life and the ability to extend the fermentation period. Extended fermentation (six weeks in the case of Masumi) produces alcohol with a complex structure and superior aroma profile.

Norum was sharing his wealth of knowledge with me over a most spectacular dinner prepared by Jason Oh. Like his boss Akira Back, Jason is a Korean-American, but he grew up in New York, not Denver, and has taken to Delhi like a fish to water. We started with yellowtail jalapeno with yuzu (citrus) soy -- hot and tart in equal measure -- which Norum paired with the fresh and elegant Sanka ('mountain flower'), which, surprisingly, has a seductive floral bouquet and tropical fruit aromas. The JW Marriot's F&B Director, Tarun Bhatia, said it tasted like green ber, which made me crave for some of this elusive fruit. This is ber season, isn't it?

Next on the menu was an Akria Back classic, hot oil-seared salmon with mixed peppers, lotus chips (I could have these forever!) and yuzu sauce, which paired very well with the more austere and dry Karakuchi Kippon. "It is as dry as we go," Norum said about the sake, adding that it is made at Fujimi kura, which was built in the 1980s atop a mountain overlooking Suwa. Fujimi's water source, interestingly, remains a mystery.

Rice used to produce Masumi's sake is sourced only from two places -- Nagano and Hyogo, which is also famous for the marbled beef of Kobe. Sourcing is important because sake rice is expensive and sake rice is special because its high protein content is uniformly concentrated in the outer layers.

It is the extent to which the rice is milled (to remove the proteins) that determines a sake's place in the caste system -- 60-70 per cent is good enough for the standard or futushu sake; 50-60 per cent for the premium or ginjo range; and 40-50 per cent for the super premium or daiginjo variant. Brewing sake is perfect science and the fate of the brew hangs in balance every day it is in production. Once milled, sake rice is soaked exactly for 8:30 to 9:45 minutes -- it can't be a second more or less, which is why the sake master times every operation with a stop watch!

As I understood the intricacies of the production process, Jason produced a delectable melange of sous vide tenderloin with wasabi soy sauce, mushrooms, potato puree and blanched asparagus, dressed in the Korean sweet and spicy cho jang sauce. To go with it, Norum produced the much-acclaimed Tokusen, which he said was a honjozo, that is, a sake with a little bit of neutral alcohol added before the rice mash is filtered. Well, that's another sub-category of sake. Whether it's ginjo or futushu, your sake has to be either a honjozo or a junmai (no alcohol added during production). Tokusen can also be served warm, which made me ask about the protocol to be followed with warm sake. Norum said drinking warm sake was like washing a plate with an oil stain with hot water. Reserve the pleasure for oily preparations such as tempura.

I digested all this information with the sake-steamed flounder (thank God for another fish being added to Delhi's limited repertoire!) served with baby bok choy, nori seaweed and black bean yuzu sauce. The Kippuku Kinju ('Golden Happiness'), a junmai ginjo, served with it was deliciously fruity and full-bodied with a clean finish that made me sit back for a moment and savour the sensation. I had more of it as we went through the chef's selection of sushi and rolls, and the dessert selection -- the chef's take on the Snickers bar and coconut sorbet .

Masumi produces two million bottles of sake in a year, down from 2.5 million six or seven years ago, because the consumption of table sake has been dropping steadily as people trade up to the premium and super-premium categories. But it is table sake that gets brewed first because sake rice is expensive and only best is kept for the upper-end brews. Unsurprisingly, Masumi consumes substantial quantities of rice. A kilo of the finest, after all, goes into the making of each bottle of its sake.

Chez Nini's Nira Singh to Lay Out a Dinner at America's Culinary Capital, James Beard House

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

CHEF-RESTAURATEUR Nira Singh of Chez Nini fame is all set to be the first Indian to prepare a James Beard House dinner. The brownstone townhouse in the heart of Greenwich Village, New York City, where the man who transformed the American table lived and cooked for the TV shows that established his reputation as a tireless educator, typically hosts 200 dinners in a year by accomplished chefs from around the world.

Nira Singh with her favourite wines at Chez Nini,
Mehar Chand Market, Lodi Colony.
Picture by Subhash Arora

The dinners are priced at $130 per head for James Beard Foundation members and $170 for others, and to understand their far-reaching impact, you have only to order a tuna pizza at Korean-American chef Akira Back's signature restaurant at the JW Marriott, New Delhi Aerocity. Back owes his fame, as a brilliant purveyor of Japanese food with a Korean touch, to the big-eye tuna pizza that he had served at the James Beard House in 2008. He has since done dinners in 2010, 2011 and 2012, and is scheduled to lay out another on 8 February 2014, where the tuna pizza will make yet another appearance topped up with micro-shiso and truffles.

Getting to do a meal at James Beard House is not easy. A chef has to clear six tests before making the cut, which is to be expected when the calendar is studded with super chefs such as David Bouley and Marcus Samuelsson (in January) and in February, it has the likes of New York's white-hot new star, Bryce Shuman, and Peter Chang, the elusive genius who became famous after The New Yorker's Calvin Trillin discovered him. A computer engineer born and raised in Montreal, who survived a debilitating accident and relocated to Delhi to become the extraordinary chef whom everyone has an opinion on (increasingly positive!), Nira oozes perfection and passion; even her description of how she makes her Pork Belly Cubes taste like heaven has a sensual tingle to it. And now, she is in exalted  company.

Nira was to do her James Beard House gig in February, but she has postponed it to May because of her India Art Fair catering commitments. At a dinner with a group of friends (food critic par excellence Marryam Reshii, one of Delhi Gourmet Club's most aware members, Lavina Kharkwal, and Indian Food Freak's Pawan Soni), brought together by the encyclopaedic Subhash Arora, President, Delhi Wine Club, I ask Nira what she intended to do at James Beard House, she said she was planning to showcase her Indian adventure on the tables of her hallowed venue.

A firm believer in Indian ingredients (the only exception she makes is for chocolate), Nira surprised me by serving my double espresso (I needed it after that gastronomical tour de force) in a cutting chai glass! I am sure she'll have New York City eating out of her hand. Backing her is Susan Ungaro, the James Beard Foundation president who rescued the organisation from doom after her predecessor was indicted by the US Attorney General's office for fraud. "She has not only been encouraging, but also infused me with the courage to get adventurous," Nira said. Will Nira be able to cook up a storm in the core of the Big Apple? I am confident she will.

FORTUNE COOKIE: Meet the Man Who Invented Tuna Pizza

This column first appeared in the Mail Today edition dated December 19, 2013. Copyright: Mail Today Newspapers. If you wish to see the original page, please click on the link given here and then go to Page 17.
http://epaper.mailtoday.in/epaperhome.aspx?issue=19122013

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

Masaharu Morimoto strikes a pose
with his sashimi knives at Wasabi,
his signature restaurant at the Taj
Mahal Hotel, New Delhi.

A COUPLE of months back, Ankur Chawla, ex-Taj staffer and author of 14 Hours, a gripping first-person account of the 26/11 terror attacks, was remembering Masaharu Morimoto from the pre-opening days of Wasabi, the Japanese-American chef's signature restaurant at the Taj Mahal Hotel in New Delhi. Chawla said he was taken by surprise to see an internationally renowned chef with a ponytail moving around anonymously in a T-shirt, shorts and sneakers.

So, you can imagine my surprise when I sat down to interview Morimoto, looking just the way Chawla had described him, shielded by a neat pile of tempting petit fours on the layered dish that hoteliers call a 'charlie'. I started by asking him if he remembered his 'acolyte' Akira Back, the Korean-American who has just opened his eponymous restaurant at the J.W. Marriott in the Aerocity, and that was enough to draw the normally reserved chef into an animated conversation.

He said he had not seen Akira Back till he went to dine at his restaurant Yellowtail in Las Vegas and that the chef-restaurateur who insists he's Morimoto's protege is not the inventor of the tuna pizza. Of course, he said with an impish smile, he did not mind being flattered by imitators. "I am not a celebrity, but the media has made me into one," Morimoto declared, adding that now it seemed all he had to do was "just talk, talk, talk".

Well, he shouldn't be complaining about being a celebrity, for he owes his worldwide fame to the Fuji TV reality show, Iron Chef, and its U.S. spinoff, Iron Chef America. A shoulder injury had made Morimoto opt out of Major League baseball and start training as a sushi and kaiseki (Japanese haute cuisine) chef, before he got to own a restaurant in Hiroshima. He first wanted to go to America, to cash in on what he now calls the "sushi boom", during the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984. He had to postpone his plan by a year because he took that long to find a buyer for his restaurant. When he finally left for the U.S. in 1985, he had with him "the cheapest" round-trip ticket and his flight from Hiroshima to New York had three stopovers -- Osaka, Seoul and Anchorage. He had booked a round-trip ticket because he was certain he would have to go back home, but he never got to use it for the return flight.

After working at different restaurants in his adopted city, the as-yet-unknown chef took charge of the Japanese kitchen at the Sony Club, which was the private dining room of top directors of the Sony Corporation, and was hired by Nobu Matsuhisa, the man who's synonymous with modern Japanese cuisine, to open the first Nobu in New York as executive chef in 1994.

Having worked and trained under the master, Morimoto launched his own restaurant in Philadelphia in 2001. It became as famous for its Japanese cuisine with western touches as for its exuberant decor. "Food is only 30 per cent," Morimoto said to me, underlining the salience of "design, decor, music, atmosphere," and then quickly added the caveat: "But it is my 100 per cent. I can't control your mood, but I can make the taste of my food change it."

I asked him about his invention, tuna pizza, or why he calls sashimi, carpaccio on the menu, and he said, "I have made the entrance wider for people who were not aware of Japanese food. I want to bring the customer to my cuisine." Morimoto is a gifted chef with a sharp eye on business and the talent to manage talent, which, I guess, is the only way you can run multiple restaurants. "I am like a conductor of a symphony," Morimoto said, making gestures to show a conductor wielding his baton. "I manage different skills and talents."

He said that before a chef joins a Morimoto restaurant, he or she has to spend three weeks at either Philadelphia or New York. Before opening any restaurant, he trains the chefs personally for a month and only after he's satisfied with their work, he allows the ribbon-cutting. "I have good chefs in each restaurant," he said in reply to my question on being able to maintain consistency across his many establishments.

Since 2001, awards, accolades and new restaurant openings have been Morimoto's constant companions. Morimoto opened Wasabi at the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower in Mumbai when it was still early days for his restaurant empire, which now stretches from Philly to Hawaii, via Napa Valley and Tokyo, but the move worked.

The challenge was to maintain a consistent supply line for ingredients. "The important thing was how and from where to source fresh fish for the Indian market," Morimoto said, adding that he has managed the issue with his suppliers in Japan. The other departure for him was a menu that is 50 per cent vegetarian, but a creative chef finds his way around every speed-breaker. Morimoto created the corn tempura, for instance, as an alternative to his best-selling rock shrimp tempura. He has mastered the art of catering to the local palate. All he insists is that his ten signatures must be on the menu of each of the Morimoto restaurants. I asked him in what ways is Mumbai is different from Delhi. In Mumbai, Morimoto said, people have money, so they spend on good food; in Delhi, people travel, so they seek out the food they had on their last vacation.

Morimoto is a great believer in the TPO (Time Place Occasion) theory. You've got to be at the right time, at the right place, with the right product. There's more, though, to the success of Morimoto, and who can say it better than he? "If we have been successful, it is not because we are lucky," he said. "The timing of our entry may have been right, but we also have done a good job." People who've dined at Wasabi, although the meal may have set them back substantially, would agree with the Iron Chef.

COOKBOOK FROM THE CHEF TO WORLD LEADERS

HEMANT OBEROI can justifiably claim to have logged more frequent flyer miles than any other Indian chef. His celebrity status dates back to the late 1990s, when he first attracted media notice with his Californian Indian (Cal-Indian) cuisine topped by the famous 'naanzza' (naan baked like a pizza with butter chicken sauce, mozzarella and tandoori chicken).

Fame comes at a price -- in Oberoi's case, it has meant he lives out of airports, hotels and suitcases on most days of the year as he goes around the world serving heads of state and showcasing Indian food at international festivals. In return, the Ferozepur-born corporate chef of Taj Hotels has had the privilege of getting Bill Clinton to eat dahi vada at the Ambani residence and of inspiring the former Conservative prime minister of Great Britain, John Major, to depart from state banquet protocol and asking for a second helping.

With so many anecdotes to share (many of which he'll have to carry with him to his afterlife), and so much to offer to cookery enthusiasts, I had always wondered why Oberoi hadn't put his recipes, including those of his modernist interpretations of traditional Indian dishes, together in one book. Arvind Saraswat, another Taj veteran, did it before him, but his work, The Gourmet Indian Cookbook, where he floated the idea of fruit-based sauces, did not find many takers. Oberoi has finally taken the plunge and he unveiled The Masala Art: Indian Haute Cuisine (Roli Books) last week at the Taj Palace restaurant after which the book is named.

My first take-away from the book was Oberoi's long working day. How does a man manage to look so happy and not seem to age when he reports for work at 9 a.m. and calls it a day at 11:30 p.m., which is the time he reaches home and  goes to bed after having his customary cup of tea. What I like about the recipes is that though they come with a twist (Beetroot Lassi, Lemongrass Rasam, Crab Samosas and Masala Chai Kulfi, for instance), and the dishes look like works of art, they are easy to follow by hobby cooks who wish to add a dash of zing to their family meals or wow their guests at a family meal.

COINTREAU'S GENERATION 6

IT IS a privilege to be born with a surname revered in 165 countries and a fixture in the recipes of more than 300 cocktails. Alfred Cointreau represents the sixth generation of a drink that was born when Edouard Cointreau (not to be confused with the man who founded the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards) perfected the recipe for it in 1875. Unsurprisingly, Alfred, 26, who believes in travelling out of his home city, Angers in the Loire Valley, after every two weeks, is passionate about his official role: Cointreau Heritage Manager. He showed it on his recent visit to New Delhi, where he was a star at the popular speakeasy, PCO at Vasant Vihar.

"At the beginning you have an orange peel and at the end the 'heart'," Alfred said, describing the production process of Cointreau. The orange liqueur, or triple sec, depends entirely on what Alfred calls the "perfect balance" of the four ingredients -- sweet and bitter peels sourced from Brazil, Ghana, Haiti and Spain, and selected by the master distiller, Bernadette Langleis; alcohol derived from beetroots; and sugar. Peels of three oranges go into each bottle of Cointreau (and 15 million of them are produced every year) and these are macerated in alcohol and water for six months before sugar is added during the distillation process. It's amazing how the world's best things have the simplest origins.

TULLY NATION

MY personal dial-an-encyclopaedia for the pleasures of life that come in liquid form, Vikram Achanta of Tulleeho.com, astounded me the other day by pointing out Great Britain drinks three times more beer than India. The poms deserve the suffix 'Great'! Imagine a nation of 63 million people outperforming one with a population of 1.25 billion by three to one!

Now that I have entertained you with useless information, do follow Achanta's lead and order a 'In the Rocks' at The Aviary, the highly acclaimed Chicago cocktail lounge and restaurant of the famous Grant Achatz (of Alinea fame) and Nick Kokonas. This cocktail is not served on the rocks; instead, it comes in a sphere made with ice. Ice is so important on The Aviary's menu that it has an ice chef, entrusted with the job of devising newer ways to use ice in unheard-of ways!

FORTUNE COOKIE: Din Tai Fung's Amazing Success Story is a Lesson in Mall Dining for India

Fortune Cookie first appeared in the November 21, 2013, edition of Mail Today. I have tweaked the headlines and the order in which the individual items have appeared in the newspaper.
http://epaper.mailtoday.in/epaperhome.aspx?issue=21112013
Copyright: Mail Today Newspapers

Din Tai Fung, Taiwan's gift to dim sum lovers,
has shown that even a mall setting can't stop a
restaurant from getting coveted Michelin stars
Image: Courtesy of Taiwan543.com 

MANY eyebrows were raised when the news first broke of Yuautcha opening at Ambience Mall in Vasant Kunj? How could a pedigreed international restaurant open at a middle-market mall not particularly known for outstanding food offerings? I found the answers during a visit to the Din Tai Fung, the dim sum restaurant famous for its soupy dumplings (xiaolongbao), at its fifth-floor outlet in Taipei 101, the world's third tallest building whose steel-and-glass pagoda structure towers over the Taiwanese capital.

Like Din Tai Fung's growing legion of Indian admirers who lovingly call it DTF, I had discovered the brand in Singapore, before also finding it to my utter joy at Bangkok's Central World mall. But having the xiaolongbao, after piercing each one of them with a chopstick and seeing the soup ooze out seductively (if you eat it any other way, you'll be left with a scalded tongue), in the city of its birth is a different experience altogether.

It's a sprawling restaurant at a food court with not one vacant seat, but you'll ignore its regular appearance (and commonplace seating) the moment you immerse yourself into the delectable xiaolongbao with finely minced pork and crab roe cooking in the stock inside, and the star anise-flavoured beef noodle soup, which the Taiwanese revere as much as their oyster omelette, and the gently flavoured egg fried rice. A great food concept, you'll realise, doesn't need a plush appearance and credit card-burning prices to become an international sensation whose two outlets in Hong Kong (Tsim Sha Tsui and Causeway Bay) have won a Michelin star each.

The global network of restaurants spread across 11 countries had humble origins at the arterial Xinyi Road in Taipei, which acquired international celebrity status only after DFT was rated by The New York Times as one of the world ten best gourmet restaurants in 1993. It is also the road where Taipei 101 is now located. DFT's founder, Yang Bingyi, and his wife Lai Penmai, opened Din Tai Fung as a shop retailing cooking oil in 1958, but the rise of packaged cooking oil put them nearly out of business. They started selling xiaolongbao and steamed noodles from their shop to stay out of the red, but so popular was their food menu that by 1974 Din Tai Fung grew into a restaurant famous for its soup dumplings. Fortunately for its fans, it has only gotten better in the past four decades.

Two global celeb chefs raise a toast to our city

FOR THE first time after Wasabi, which introduced Masaharu Morimoto to the Nobu-obsessed city, Delhi will be home to restaurants of two international celebrity chefs -- Akira Back at the Aerocity's sparkling new JW Marriott and Aldo Zilli, who makes his Asian debut with Zerruco at the airy spot that was formerly occupied by Mashrabiya at The Ashok.

Back, a Korean-American who started as a professional snowboarder and acted in extreme action movies before becoming a student of Morimoto and an executive chef of Nobu Matsuhisa's Aspen restaurant, and Zilli, a celebrity TV chef and best-selling cookbook author who recently sold his successful restaurants in London and Dubai for a tidy pile, are alike in many ways. They are both intensely creative (an admiring JW Marriott insider was telling me the other night that Back can turn even a potato croquette, which he serves with seared foie gras, into a sensory experience) and they are also brilliant showmen with a celebrity fan following.

Back has had Taylor Swift, Eva Longoria and a host of other entertainment industry celebrities eating out of his hands at his Yellowtail Japanese Restaurant and Lounge at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. Zilli, whose last book, Fresh and Green, was on the Daily Telegraph's Top Ten Books of 2012, made headlines not so long ago by creating an a pair of edible stilettos from fresh pasta stuffed with spinach, ricotta and truffles for the multiple award-winning Manchester restaurant, Cicchetti, which is said to be the favourite of Coleen Rooney, wife of the England and Manchester United football superstar Wayne Rooney.

A regular on the pages of Daily Mail, a food columnist for Daily Express and a television food show host who has also appeared on Celebrity X-Factor, Zilli is the corporate executive chef (they call him the consigliere!) of the company that runs Cicchetti. Zerruco, though, is his independent venture, for which he has tied up with restaurateurs Kashif Farooqi and Prashant Ojha of Urban Pind fame, industry consultant Manish Baheyti, and three private investors. It was the Michelin one-starred London chef, Atul Kochhar, who introduced Baheyti to Zilli -- Baheyti and Kochhar know each other since their days as students at the Oberoi Centre for Learning and Development.

The entry of these successful international chefs seals Delhi's reputation as a foodie city that believes in spending good money on good food, but what do these chefs see in the city? I asked Baheyti this question and he said it is precisely this reputation that is drawing chefs of the calibre of Back and Zilli. Gone are the days when Delhi could be dismissed as the Republic of Butter Chicken. Yes, we (and I say this as a flag-waving Dilliwallah) do love our butter chicken (I'll have driven for more than an hour to Invitation, Ashok Vihar, to dig the best BC of Delhi), but we also have an adventurous, world-travelled palate.

More importantly, we put our money where are taste buds are. Another celebrity powerhouse of culinary talent, Mumbai's Rahul Akerkar, who's ready to open Indigo shortly on what was formerly a nallah on Africa Avenue, said as much when he described Delhi to me as a city of well-heeled, high-spending food lovers. For the new international imports, Delhi offers hope in a world where fine dining is yet to recover from the wallet-tightening aftermath of the economic downturn of 2008. Expect more to follow the road taken by Akira Back and Aldo Zilli.

Akira Back Lines Up His Best for Delhi Gourmet Club

AKIRA BACK'S restaurant at the JW Marriott opens with a Delhi Gourmet Club dinner on Saturday and the menu that the Korean-American celebrity chef has prepared for the evening will give you a foretaste of his inventive style. Back spikes his famous tuna pizza with ponzu mayo (ponzu is the citrus-flavoured soy sauce that the Japanese use extensively), kaenip (perilla leaves, which the Japanese call shiso and the Koreans use to make a kimchi) and black truffles. His other hallmark preparation, seared foie gras, comes with a corn croquette, tosaka (a seaweed that is either served cold or eaten with sashimi) and spiced litchi honey. And the supporting cast of his duck breast include a puree of kabocha (a white squash that the Japanese and Koreans believe to be an aphrodisiac), compressed Korean pear and the sweet soy-base Kabayaki sauce that an unagi or eel is dipped into. Ingredients Delhiites haven't experienced before.

Delhi-NCR's First Irani Restaurant is Chef Saby's Last Hurrah for AD Singh

I'VE BEEN constantly monitoring the progress of Gurgaon's Cyber Hub, which is evolving as the new must-go-to destination, but the new restaurant that's got the city chattering is Soda Bottle Openerwala. An AD Singh venture that is being justifiably billed as Delhi/NCR's first Parsi-Irani restaurant, the quirkily designed Soda Bottle Openerwala is also the last hurrah of the hugely creative Sabyasachi 'Saby' Gorai, who has spent more than a year researching a cuisine that most Delhiites equate with akoori scrambled eggs, and is now moving on to launch his own consultancy services.

The more discerning among us have been goading us to try out the amazing fare that Mrs Dhun Bagli serves at the Delhi Parsi Anjuman on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, but for those who can't think beyond Mumbai's iconic Irani restaurant, Britannia & Company, Soda Water Openerwala may be the best place to start for an understanding of the cuisine. I will review the restaurant at length, but I have not heard such a buzz accompanying any opening for a long time. With Zorawar Kalra's Made in Punjab drawing capacity crowds, Soda Water Openerwala doing better in its opening week, and Zambar with a new menu designed by the extremely creative Arun Kumar waiting in the wings, I can see all roads leading to the Cyber Hub.

Eva Longoria's Favourite Chef to Open Japanese Restaurant at Delhi’s J.W. Marriott

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

AKIRA BACK, the Korean American former executive chef of Matsuhisa Aspen, Matsuhisa Nobu’s namesake restaurant in the skiing resort town of Aspen, Colorado, will open Delhi’s newest Japanese restaurant, with a showpiece robatayaki grill and prized sake collection, a little after the curtains go up on the J.W. Marriott at the Aerocity some time in October.

Akira Back outside his restaurant, Yellowtail, at
the Bellagio in Las Vegas

Seoul-born, Aspen-raised Back, famous for his Japanese cuisine with a Korean American twist, is the culinary star of Las Vegas and a favourite of pop sensation Taylor Swift and Desperate Housewives star Eva Longoria. He runs two acclaimed and highly successful restaurants in Vegas — Yellowtail at the Bellagio and Kumi at Mandalay Bay. His style of contemporary Japanese food served in a laidback setting is bound to find many takers in the hotel being promoted by the industry veteran and well-known environmentalist Sushil Gupta and his son Sandeep. The hotel, strategically located within easy driving distance from South Delhi, is owned by Aria Hotels and Consultancy Services, a subsidiary of Asian Hotels (West).

A former professional snowboarder in Aspen, Colorado, who has appeared in extreme sport movies, the Korean American, now 43, decided to become a chef to supplement his income while he was still pursuing his high-adrenaline career. His first job as chef was to expand Aspen’s Kenichi restaurant, which is highly acclaimed for its sushi, to Austin, Texas, and Kona, Hawaii. But it was only after he took charge of Matsuhisa Aspen’s kitchen that Back started getting noticed across the United States. He has been invited four times to cook a multi-course dinner at the prestigious James Beard House, which is considered a big honour in the U.S., and appeared in an episode of Iron Chef America as well as several other cookery shows across U.S. television channels.

Famous for his innovative twists to traditional Japanese cuisine, and his fanatical love for novel ingredients, Back will recreate the tastes and flavours Tokyo’s backstreets at his J.W. Marriott Aerocity restaurant. Tokyo’s backstreets are known for down-at-heel but hugely popular restaurants such as Maisen at Harajoku (famous for its tonkatsu, or deep-friend breaded pork cutlets drizzled with the addictive tonkatsu sauce) and Aoya at Nakameguro, where people go for the Korean hot pots and Kyoto-style vegetable preparations. Of course, given the talented chef’s background, the highlight of the restaurant, to be named Akira Back, will be to offer the best sushi and sake.

The restaurant is to be managed by Rajat Kalia, who was the opening manager of Megu at The Leela Palace in Chanakyapuri, New Delhi, after a short stint at Wasabi at The Taj Mahal Hotel, Mansingh Road. Few Indian managers (apart from Akshay Tripathi and Ankur Chawla, the opening manager of Wasabi and his successor respectively) know about 'global' Japanese cuisine as well as Kalia, whose knowledge of sushi and sake impressed even seasoned diners a Megu.
Kalia reports to Director of Restaurants Tarun Bhatia, who earned his spurs as opening manager of the Agni nightclub at The Park New Delhi, then moved to the Aman (now The Lodhi), where he became F&B Manager, and thereafter to Eros Managed by Hilton at Nehru Place.
The J.W. Marriott’s other restaurants are K3, an all-day restaurant serving three cuisines —Tuscan, Cantonese and Indian, and the “part coffee shop, part cake shop and part retail store” named Delhi Baking Company, whose big attraction, according to the hotel’s Director of Operations, the Austrian ex-chef and hotel openings expert Josef ‘Peppi’ Schuppler, will be the mithai with a western twist. The opening of a J.W. Marriott is a cause of excitement, but given the way the Aerocity story has panned out so far, let’s keep our finger crossed and hope for the best till the hotel officially welcomes its first guests.

Artist's impressions (left) of the upcoming Akira Back
restaurant at the J.W. Marriott, New Delhi Aerocity (above),
which is expected to open some time in October