Gaggan Shows India's Centurion Club How To Do 'All Things Unimaginable to Indian Cuisine'

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

YOU KNOW a great chef when you see him at work. He makes even the most complicated operation seem like Cooking 101.

Most chefs of the stature of Gaggan Anand -- one-time acolyte of the Spanish maestro Ferran Adria and the lead chef/co-owner of the world's highest-rated Indian restaurant, Gaggan of Bangkok (Asia's No. 3 and the world No. 17) -- do not venture into an unfamiliar kitchen to feed 30 world-travelled, potentially hyper-critical diners, all carrying the most precious, and prestigious, strip of anodised titanium -- the American Express Centurion Card.

Not many hours after the dinner, Gaggan Anand
put up a cookery demonstration for journos. You
can see him assembling his Matcha Ice-Cream
Sandwich with his 23-year-old associate, Sergi
Palacin Martinez from the Basque country.

On Thursday, September 4, Gaggan turned ITC Maurya New Delhi's Executive Club dining room, which is essentially used for breakfasts and cocktail hours, into a show kitchen that provided these 30 diners a ringside view of the effort and imagination he invests in his art. From hand-crafted, 180-euro tableware custom-made for him in Spain to wooden sake cups from Japan with his name carved on them, to sleek liquid nitrogen dispensers and mini portable frozen teppanyaki counters, Gaggan and his team -- one Indian, two Spaniards, one Frenchman and two Thai nationals -- have come armed for eight consecutive meals to show India's high and mighty what the genius from New Alipore with the flying ponytail and shaggy beard means when he says it is his dream to do "everything unimaginable with Indian food". All team members were required to pack their clothes and personal toiletries into their carry-on bags, all within the seven-kilo allowance, because there were 260 kilos of ingredients to be lugged.

The highlights of Gaggan's evening of dreams were the 'Indian foie gras' with bheja (goat's brain) mousse, the faux steak tartare for vegetarians with liquid nitrogen-chilled baigan bharta, 'false egg yolk' and vacuum fried onions, the sponge-like deconstructed dhokla served with coriander chutney foam and coconut ice-cream, which made hotelier Ranjan Bhattacharya (Country Inn & Suites) comment in jest that Gaggan would put Haldiram's out of business, and the 4G version of the Kheema Pav with minced lamb curry mousse at the centre of two dehydrated buns.

Even the 'Bird's Nest' is a work of inventive art made with what Bengalis call jhoori bhaja (fried potato shavings), chutney and 'egg' created out of a potato mousse sphere. And the idea of eating with one's nose blew my mind. Gaggan's Poor Man's Porridge (jasmine rice ice-cream and pistachio gel served with almond and rose 'glass') actually tastes different when you eat it with your nostrils blocked. Reason? You don't get to breathe the rose-flavoured room freshener that is sprayed when the ice-cream is sprayed. What you breathe does make a difference to what you taste.

In Gaggan's repertoire, technique is not allowed to transform taste -- jhoori bhaja tastes just like it should, as does the aloo chokha that fills in for the 'Indian foie gras' for vegetarians. Form, likewise, doesn't intervene in the interplay of flavours, so the gunpowder (or milagai podi in Tamil) expresses itself with all its fierceness, and the curry leaf powder adds its zest, when put in the company of poached fish (basa, unfortunately!), Basmati rice porridge (actually, a curd rice, or thair sadam, mousse) and tamarind sugar.

The same authenticity of flavours is evident in Gaggan's Down to Earth 'soup' -- asparagus, morels, mushrooms and artichokes with 62 degrees C egg yolk (if it's 63 degrees, it gets runny -- that's molecular gastronomy for you) and truffle chilli air. And in his Khichdi, or risotto made with nine-year-old rice, forest mushrooms, morels and fresh truffles with a hint of chilli (Gaggan's only concession to carb cravings), the distinctive presence of each ingredient plays on your senses and gets your neurons on overdrive.

The lamb chops were the only disappointment -- they seem to have come straight out of Bukhara and Gaggan, with an honesty and a complete absence of arrogance that we have come to associate with star chefs, promised to take up the matter with the hotel and not repeat the error again. We were too overwhelmed by the evening to really care about the lamb. Gaggan is a magician. He has you in his spell -- each course came with a story, which he narrated with a dose of his impish humour before the dish was served, and was an experience in itself. And he wowed the guests by personally serving each one of them. He's not only the master of the back of the house, but also an efficient manager of the front end.

Gaggan Anand Sets Out to Reinvent the Cuba Libre at his 11-Course Theatre of Molecular Gastronomy for Centurion Card Holders

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

A CULINARY team representing four nationalities -- Indian, Thai, Spanish and French -- is working overtime at the ITC Maurya even as I write this post to put together the first-ever Progressive Indian feast being curated by the inimitable Gaggan Anand in his mother country.

Gaggan Anand is all set to unveil
India's gastronomic event of the
year on September 4 in New Delhi.

The 11-course meal, priced at Rs 15,000 per person for owners of the American Express Centurion card, will feature items that are not on the menu of Gaggan's eponymous Bangkok restaurant ranked No. 3 in Asia and No. 17 in the world. These are being created especially for the two-city (Dellhi and Mumbai), eight-dinner event, facilitated by Mangal Desai and Nachiket Shetye's Cellar Door Kitchen. Among them will be a drink that Gaggan proudly calls the Indi Libre. An exciting take-off from the Cuba Libre, the concoction consists of the famous rum that Gaggan appropriately describes as "Rocky Mohan's Old Monk", ginger, kala namak and Thums Up (a far better choice, I believe, than the standard, sweeter Coke).

I met Gaggan at the hotel's 28th Floor Executive Lounge, where he'll present the four back to back dinners starting from Thursday, September 4. A bundle of positive energy sporting his trademark unkempt ponytail, Gaggan talked excitedly about the 250 kilos of ingredients that he and his team had carried with them from Bangkok to New Delhi. These include fresh yuzu and wasabi and one of Japan's best sake from Tokyo, fresh coconut milk extracted out of burnt Thai coconut from Bangkok, and white asparagus from Chiang Mai. For his genre-defining white chocolate paani poori, he contacted Cocoberry's Asian region head and got her to source for him the world's best white chocolate shells. And he has also brought along his dehydrator, his liquid nitrogen mixing bowls and a host of other gizmos from his kitchen, apart from customised Gaggan-endorsed sake cups made in Japan.

Foie gras was the only favourite ingredient of his that Gaggan could not get. "But why has the government issued a blanket ban on foie gras?" he asked -- and added: "Not all foie gras is extracted out of force-fed geese. I get my supplies from the Spanish ethical farmer, Eduardo Sousa, who produces the world's best foie gras without force-feeding his birds." At Gaggan's restaurant, no farmed fish is allowed and 70 per cent of the fresh ingredients used are organically grown.

Gaggan's 11-course meal will be more or less carb-free, so there'll be no "naan breads", he warned, though a truffle oil risotto will take care of carb cravings of the guests. Among Gaggan's exclusive creations for this series of meals is a drink he has named Yos (Japanese for 'drunk') Samurai -- it comprises an exclusive sake, umezu (pickled plum 'vinegar') and fresh juice of a yuzu, the tart citrus fruit that physically looks like a small grapefruit. Coconut lassi is the other one, but the matcha (green tea) ice-cream sandwiches with a topping of freshly grated wasabi are designed to take the privileged diners by surprise.

For Dalal, who first met Gaggan two years ago when both were in Copehagen for an internship at Rene Redzepi's Noma restaurant, and Shetye, it's the first big step towards "taking Indian cuisine to the world". Of course, they had their moments of fun (and creative tension) -- "our WhatsApp exchanges, if not R-rated, are certainly Not Safe For Work!" Dalal said with a chuckle -- but they were surprised by the spontaneous interest in the event. "We didn't have to scream and shout that Gaggan is coming," Shetye said about the response to the sold-out event. "I am surprised by the buying power of Delhi," Gaggan added.

Unsurprisingly, Dalal and Shetye are planning four pop-up events next year. Gaggan has already mentally mapped out his next outing in India -- a picnic brunch at a Himalayan resort with freshly sourced local ingredients (you can't get any cooler than that!). With such electric excitement in the air, it was hard to let Gaggan get back to work. He returned to the kitchen with one worry hanging over his head. Would all his guests arrive sharp at 8? Forewarned about Delhi's habit of being always fashionably late, he said with a degree of finality: "Those who come late will have to start at the course that is being served." Consider yourself cautioned.

Progressive Indian Cuisine's Foremost Exponent Gaggan Anand to Curate Rs 12,500-Per-Head Meals for India's Most Exclusive Club

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

GAGGAN ANAND was a little-known chef when he left India to take up a job at a restaurant named Red Bangkok in a city where he's now among its culinary superstars. On September 2, Kolkata-born Gaggan, whose eponymous restaurant in Bangkok is ranked No. 3 in Asia and No. 17 in the

Gaggan Anand at work in the 'laboratory' of his
eponymous restaurant located in one of
Bangkok's upscale neighbourhoods.

world, will land at the Indira Gandhi International Airport for his first professional assignment in Delhi, where he once fed Bill Clinton during his days as a junior chef at Orient Express. And he'll be laying out an 11-course tasting menu for India's most exclusive club -- the uber-wealthy people who possess the American Express Centurion Card.

"I will recreate the Gaggan experience as much as possible with the ingredients available in Delhi and Mumbai," the chef said on phone from Bangkok. On many occasions, Gaggan has said that it is dream to launch a restaurant in Mumbai. Will his Indian experience bring him closer to his dream? That's a question up for speculative answers.

No bank in the country has taken the entertainment of its key customers to this level. But then, the people who own the anodised titanium card, famously known as the Black Card, are in a league of their own. Amitabh Bachchan is the owner of one and so are members of the Bhartia, Burman, Godrej, Munjal and Oberoi families. The charge card comes with annual fee of Rs 2.5 lakh and a joining fee of Rs 2 lakh, with there's no spending limit globally. Unsurprisingly, a Centurion card holder bought a Bentley with the world's most hallowed piece of titanium.

Arriving with his team of chefs and sommeliers, the Master of Progressive Indian Cuisine, who's the only Indian to have interned under Ferran Adria at El Bulli, will curate eight meals, four at the ITC Maurya and the remaining four at the Four Seasons Mumbai. Each wine-paired meal, according to sources, has been priced at Rs 12,500 per person.

Cellar Door Kitchen, a platform for pop-up restaurant events founded by Mumbai-based culinary consultants (and creators of Citibank Restaurant Week India) Mangal Dalal and Nachiket Shetye, is the organiser of this eight-day event, which promises to a set a new benchmark for food events across the country.

DINING OUT: Diya Turns Five with the Menu of a Masterchef

QUICK BYTES

WHAT: Five Years of Diya with Kunal Kapur

WHERE: The Leela Ambience Hotel, NH-8, Gurgaon

WHEN: Till July 27. Open only for dinner (6:30 to 11:30 p.m.).

DIAL: (0124) 4771255

PER PERSON: Four-course meal (vegetarian) Rs 3,350++; (non-vegetarian) Rs 3,850++

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

Masterchef India co-host
Kunal Kapur earned his spurs
as chef de cuisine at Diya, the
under-rated Indian restaurant at
The Leela Ambience Gurgaon,
where he's now the executive
sous chef.

FIVE YEARS AGO, after dining at Diya at The Leela Ambience Gurgaon, I'd hailed the restaurant as the next big thing in Indian fine dining, without knowing that the chef who had sweated it out to inspire me to write that glowing review was the now-famous Kunal Kapur, the endearing (and enduring) face of Masterchef India.

Kunal was then an uncelebrated chef de cuisine, but he brought with him the experience of working at some of the finest Indian restaurants of the Taj Group hotels -- the old Handi and Haveli in Delhi; Southern Spice at Taj Coromandel, Chennai; Karavalli at The Gateway Hotel on Residency Road, Bangalore; and at the Holiday Village, Goa, under the greatest exponent of the state's cuisine, the inimitable Urbano Rego. Yet, Diya hardly ever figures in drawing room conversations, or in animated Facebook food group discussions. Neither does Made in India at the Radisson Blu, Noida, where Kunal worked shoulder-to-shoulder with the under-rated master chef, Arun Tyagi.

In the last five years that Diya, and the hotel, has been around, Kunal has become a celebrity TV show host and best-selling cookbook writer (he has moved up the corporate ladder as well), and the restaurant is now headed by Angshuman Adhikari, a former acolyte of the Michelin-starred, UK-based chef-restaurateur, Atul Kochhar. You can imagine my joy therefore when the hotel invited me for a meal cooked by Kunal, who has returned to his old kitchen to showcase the cooking skills that got him the ticket to fame. Giving me company were the hotel's friendly (and hands-on) General Manager, Michel Koopman, and the charming Nidhi Verma, the marcomm manager, who's a fund of stories.
I have had a lunch orchestrated and served by Masterchef Australia co-host Gary Mehigan at the Grand Hyatt, Mumbai, where I shared my table with a media baron who had just made a lot of money selling his popular afternoon newspaper, but who insisted on describing himself as a farmer from Alibaug (of course, he knew more about farming than all of Delhi's farmhouse owners put together, so he could qualify to be a farmer!). Mehigan wasn't cooking; his executive chef was. On July 15, however, it was Kunal who prepared dinner for me and at the end of it, I was happy to see my long-held view -- that TV chefs can't cook, so they are on TV -- lying in ruins around me.

The mutton shank guddu kurma
is one of Kapur's stand-out
dishes, which showcases his
ability to meld the influences
and flavours of India's many
kitchens into an unforgettable
taste experience

Kunal surprises you not in the Gaggan Anand or the Manish Mehrotra way, with modernist drama and molecular gastronomy, but in his orchestration of flavours and influences he has imbibed from across the country. His style of cooking is classical with a contemporary twist, a touch I find missing in my favourite Indian fine-dining restaurant, Dum Pukht at ITC Maurya. The most eloquent representative of his style is the multi-textural haleem kebab, where the solidity of the mutton boti is balanced by the slight mushiness of dal, daliya and jowar -- biting into one is like having a generous helping of the Hyderabadi dish (a Ramzan must-have), whose taste is reinforced by the quenelle of haleem that is served along with the kebab.

The Hyderabadi influence kept showing up, first in the grilled scallops served with the saalan of a baghare baigan, and then in the guddu kurma, where mutton shanks were cooked in a rich bone marrow gravy. If the surprise of the evening was the 'Punjabi bruschetta' -- liver, kidney and diced mutton cooked in the tak-a-tak style, topped up with a kachumbar salad, and served on toasted French bread -- the murgh malai shorba with a vol-au-vent island stuffed with murgh khichda was a treat for the senses: an explosion of flavours that did a tango with the taste buds. But the desserts blew my mind: cinnamon-flavoured shrikhand with juliennes of a Granny Smith apple (its tartness the perfect counterfoil to the shrikhand's sweetness) and the Bailey's chhena payesh must at once be declared the national dish of Greater Bengal! Kunal is not just the co-host of Masterchef India; he's the master of his craft.

This review first appeared in the Mail Today edition dated July 18, 2014. Copyright: Mail Today Newspapers.

FORTUNE COOKIE: A Bold New Avatar of Indian Cuisine 2,0

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

When it opens on July 20, Farzi Cafe at Cyber
Hub, Gurgaon, promises to give Modern
Indian Cuisine a bold creative thrust with its
new-generation menu and presentation styles

WHEN the Taj veteran, Arvind Saraswat, wrote The Gourmet Indian Cookbook in 2004, I could not stop admiring the beauty of each dish whose recipe was presented in the slim, glossy, hardcover volume.

Saraswat would say that he had been inspired to devote many years working on the recipes because of a barb from the father of French nouvelle cuisine, Paul Bocuse. On a visit to India as a guest of the Taj, Bocuse had said to Saraswat that Indian food tasted great, but it didn't excite the eye and make one want to eat it. Saraswat rose up to the challenge, but his cookbook sank without a trace, just like Michelin-starred Vineet Bhatia's Mushk restaurant, which opened in 2002, where he courted Delhi's palate with novelties such as truffle oil-flavoured naan or his favourite squid ink-infused black chicken tikka.

Both efforts were way ahead of their time. It was five years later that Varq at the Taj Mahal Hotel and the now-famous Indian Accent opened to a tepid response, and another five years had to lapse before Gaggan Anand, Saraswat's former acolyte, dazzled the world from his Bangkok restaurant, ranked 17th in the world, with his brand of Progressive Indian Cuisine.

Himanshu Saini, who's all of 26, has worked hard
to translate Zorawar Kalra's vision on the menu

These thoughts raced through my head as I stepped into Farzi Cafe at Gurgaon's Cyber Hub for a sneak preview a couple of days ago. A project of Zorawar Kalra, who has seen complimentary reviews (the latest in The New York Times) pour on his Masala Library in Mumbai, Farzi Cafe promises to give Delhi-NCR's dining culture a new direction. The young man behind the show is 26-year-old Himanshu Saini, who had his first date with fame when he won Chicago/New York restaurateur Rohini Dey's much-publicised 'chef hunt' last summer by dishing up a sarson da saag quesadilla with butter milk foam.

To a traditionalist, Saini's creations, and the artefacts they arrive in, may seem straight out of Mad Hatter's tea party, but their beauty lies in the way they tantalise the imagination using the tools of molecular gastronomy (notably liquid nitrogen) without deviating from the real flavours of Indian cuisine. That is exactly what Modern Indian Cuisine is all about. Its practitioners don't use, for instance, squid ink because it has no Indian connect.

When at Farzi Cafe you are served a mini raj kachori stuffed with kurkure bhindi surrounded by islands of chutney foam, each element tastes just how it is supposed to. As does the idiappam sushi with prawn pepper fry, or the sarson da saag gilawat kebabs, corn tostadas, chhaas spheres and masala popcorn, which may sound like a gimmicky reinvention of the Punjabi winter staple, sarson da saag-makke di roti, but actually tastes right while looking oomphy. This combination of the right marriage of flavours and the elements of surprise is the leitmotif of the Farzi Cafe menu.

The bhoot jholokia spare ribs not only melt in your mouth, but also make you feel braver after having the world's hottest chilli; the chilli duck samosa with hoisin chutney and the galouti burger with mutton boti will leave you admiring the sheer ingenuity of the medleys of flavours and textures; the pumpkin khao suey, yet another flash of inspiration, will awaken you to the limitless possibilities of the humble kaddu; and you'll smile when the chicken tikka masala with Cornish cruncher cheddar cheese naan arrives in a replica of a public telephone booth you'll see all over London.

The same streak of innovation runs through the desserts (Parle-G cheesecake on a pool of rabri studded with Gems chocolate spheres) and the molecular cocktails (mixologist Aman Dua left me groping for words of praise with his mango spaghetti in gin with a grape infused in a red wine reduction), but the cherry on the icing is the paan gujiya, which is a dehydrated paan inside a candyfloss casing. That, in a sense, defines the Modern Indian experience: quirky but not contradictory.

MISTRAL MENU INTRODUCES DELHI TO THE JOYS DUCK'S EGGS

Renaud Palliere of PVR Cinemas is anything
but your stereotypical finance man

A MEAL with Reynaud Palliere, CEO (International Development), PVR Cinemas, is a lot of fun, for he may be crunching numbers for a living, but he brings a Frenchman's passion for food to the table when he's not running marathons (he has done New York, London, Tokyo and Sydney; Mumbai and Capetown are his next stops).

As Executive Chef, Mayank Tiwari has given
Mistral's menu a new direction -- I recommend
his gazpacho soup and pumpkin risotto 

When we met earlier in the week, at Mistral adjoining PVR Director's Cut at the Ambience Mall, Vasant Kunj, our conversation started with the amazing weekend Palliere had just spent at Tikli Bottom, the Chhattarpur hideaway run by a British couple, Martin and Annie Howard, at the far end of a village named Tikli (it's a pilgrimage for every expat who lives in Delhi). I then got fixated on the fried duck's eggs, which are a part of  the restaurant's all-day breakfast menu, served with a summery salad, hollandaise, toasted bread with parsley butter, and an orange-pineapple relish.

As I looked at the fried eggs, their perfectly semi-circular yolks appearing like twin images of the setting sun, memories of the summer vacations I had spent in Kolkata as a child flashed in my mind's eye. Duck's eggs are a delicacy among Bengalis -- you get them fresh every morning in Kolkata, brought to the city by women from neighbouring villages who pick up what they find by the side of ponds where ducks, a strain of the Muscovy variety known as Chinae Hans (the name indicates the ancestors of these birds came from China), live in good numbers across rural West Bengal.

Mistral gets its duck's eggs from the French Farm in Manesar, which is run by a temperamental yet much sought-after Frenchman named Roger Langbour (and his Muscovy ducks have nobler strains). The restaurant's executive chef, Mayank Tiwari, a graduate of what I call the AD Singh school of hospitality, took nine minutes to get the perfect fried eggs, their uniformly proportioned whites balancing the bright orbs at the centre. There's more to recommend the restaurant for -- the gazpacho, pumpkin risotto and the Persian koobideh (seekh) kebabs are my personal favourites -- but I can keep going back only for the duck's eggs.

HAVING DUCK EGGS THE BENGALI WAY

DUCK EGGS seem to be in vogue, especially because they have thicker shells, which means they stay fresher longer; more albumen, which makes them best for cakes and pastries; and more Omega-3 fatty acids, which are good for the brain and the skin. There's one catch, though. They have double the amount cholesterol in chicken eggs, which is bad news for the heart. They also have very little moisture, which can be a problem if you are trying to whisk a duck's egg, and fried eggs can become rubbery if you aren't a skilled handler of duck's eggs. I just love the way they are cooked in West Bengal -- as a curry (dimer dalna). Duck's eggs, funnily, entered old-fashioned Bengali kitchens much before chicken eggs were allowed!

MANJIT GILL'S QUEST FOR AN INDIAN DATA BANK OF RECIPES

Manjit Gill, Corporate Chef of ITC Hotels and
President, Federation of Indian Culinary
Associations, was inspired by the International
Congress of Culinary Traditions held at
Bucharest, Romania, earlier in the year

WE LIVE in a cornucopia of cuisines, yet the world knows so little about our country's culinary heritage. To bridge this knowledge gap, the Ministry of Tourism has teamed up with the national body of chefs, Federation of Indian Culinary Associations (FICA), to launch a multi-disciplinary effort to create a central databank of recipes (at least ten of them) from each of the country's 640 districts. We owe this idea to FICA President and Corporate Chef, ITC Hotels, Manjit Gill, who was inspired by his visit to Bucharest, Romania, for the International Congress of Culinary Traditions earlier this year. And he found an eager listener, and doer, in Parvez Dewan, Secretary, Tourism.

Gill says his team will have 600 recipes, a tenth of what is intended to be collected, ready for the Modi government's 100 days in power. Imagine the world this exercise will open up. Where else are you going to find the kind of variety we are able to savour even among jalebis! A Gohana jalebi weighing 250 gms apiece (almost like the ones dished up by Chandni Chowk's Old & Famous Jalebiwala) is a story by itself, as is the dark brown Burhanpuri mawa jalebi, which is a Ramzan must-have at J.J. Sweets in Mumbai's Bohri Mohalla. The national databank will make us understand this diversity and treasure it.

This column first appeared in the Mail Today edition dated July 17, 2014.
Copyright: Mail Today Newspapers.

Gaggan's is Asia's No. 3 & Continent's Best Indian Restaurant; Indian Accent Rises 12 Notches, But At No. 29, Behind Bukhara's No. 27

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

WHEN I last met Gaggan Anand, the high priest of Progressing Indian Dining, at his namesake restaurant in Bangkok last year, he said it was his dream to reach the top of the World's 50 Best Restaurants -- in the footsteps of his icon Ferran Adria, at whose laboratory he had mastered the techniques that make his kitchen special. He was then at No. 66 on the hallowed world list -- the only Indian restaurant to make it to that pantheon of greats -- and I thought he had a long way to go.

The winners pose for the photo-op on the Asia's 50 Best
Restaurants awards night at Capella Hotel in Sentosa,
Singapore, on Monday, February 23.

Not anymore. Gaggan, a Kolkata-born Taj alumnus who made Bangkok his home in 2007, is today at No. 3 of the Asian's Best 50 List, which was unveiled at a glittering awards ceremony at the Capella Hotel in Sentosa, Singapore, on the night of Monday, February 23. He's up by seven notches from his 2013 ranking, next only to the list leader, Australian expat David Thompson's Nahm (also in Bangkok), and the No. 2, Yoshihiro Narisawa's eponymous Tokyo restaurant. That makes Gaggan's, without doubt, Asia's Best Indian restaurant.

That's also where the good news ends. For, India's Best, Bukhara at the ITC Maurya, figures 24 notches below Gaggan's, at No. 27. And Indian Accent, which is the closest to Gaggan's in style and deserving of a far better ranking, is at No. 29, thankfully up by 12 notches from its No. 41 in 2013. I still cannot fathom how you can have Bukhara, the last outpost of predictable dining that hasn't changed as long as Mount Everest has been around, Gaggan's, Indian Accent, Nahm and Narisawa on the same list.

I also wonder why Zorawar Kalra's Masala Library (Mumbai), which is Indian Accent's most serious challenger, Abhijit Saha's Caperberry (Bangalore), Rahul Akerkar's Indigo (Mumbai), the magician Vikramjit Roy's gastronomical laboratory, Pan Asian at the ITC Grand Chola, Chennai, or the brilliant Mickey Bhoite's creative playground, Le Cirque at The Leela Palace, New Delhi, not on the list. The Indian jury seems to be terribly out of sync with the country's changing reality, or it's too five-star-centric, that too stuck between ITC and Taj.

India is represented by six mostly uninspiring restaurants -- Dum Pukht at ITC Maurya, New Delhi (No. 30), which has lost its creative sparkle; Varq at The Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi (No. 32), which has quietly given up any claims to leadership on the Progressive Indian front; Wasabi by Morimoto at Taj Mumbai (No. 36), which is without doubt one of India's finest restaurants; and the has-been Karavalli at the Gateway Hotel on Residency Road, Bangalore  (No. 40).

India, like a patchy middle-order batsman, has been fumbling in the lower end of the list. Bangkok also has six names on the list, but the rankings of its restaurants, starting with Nahm and Gaggan, are far more impressive. Singapore leads the list with eight restaurants, followed by Japan with seven and Hong Kong with six.

Hong Kong's Fook Lam Moon, the unpretentious traditional Chinese restaurant that opened in Wamchai in 1948, has been the most spectacular climber, going up by 29 notches on a list where most restaurants have slipped. Barring Indian Accent, which has seen its ranking climb, the other Indian restaurants on the list have fallen behind -- Bukhara by one, Dumpukht by 13, Varq by two, Wasabi by Morimoto by 16 and Karavalli by five. The Best Indian Restaurant is now at No. 26, compared with No. 17 (Dumpukht) last year. But Indians at least have the consolation of savouring Gaggan's spectacular rise.