CHENNAI CHRONICLES: This idli is fair and lovely, and well, it flies as well

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

The flying dosa of the ITC Grand Chola's Madras Pavilion

Three of the all-day restaurant's 14 specialty dosas 

The restaurant's colourful dispenser of
filter coffee does a pretty good job of
making the brew do the 'metre dance'

THERE’S nothing like a perfect dosai and idli to give your day that rejuvenating special pep, especially when you’re alone in a city, commuting between your hotel and your place of work. And when the idli is as light as the flying idli at the ITC Grand Chola’s Madras Pavilion, your day won’t get just a special pep, but a very special pep.

It takes a lot of courage on the part of a ‘North Indian’ hotel chain to lay out an elaborate ‘South Indian’ breakfast in a city that swears by its dosai and idli, pongal and thayir sadam. ITC Grand Chola’s Senior Executive Chef Ajit Bangera and his team have taken up the challenge with the seriousness it deserves. It would have been foolish not to do so. A dosa or an idli gone wrong would lead to serious consequences for the majestic hotel.

But the hotel has taken its chances by getting a little playful with its 14 specialty dosas, without compromising the authenticity of the original breakfast item. The fillings of the specialty dosas are as diverse as feather-light scrambled eggs (my personal favourite), or tangy soy nuggets (this dosa was invented for a guest recovering from a throat operation and therefore in need of a high-protein diet), or the sweat-inducing Nellore chillies, or roasted garlic, or even sprouts. Normally, when fillings such as these used, they ooze oil and make the crust soggy. The beauty of these dosas is that their crust doesn’t lose their crispiness despite the unusual fillings.

But the star of the table, without doubt, is the ‘flying idli’ (Philippe Charraudeau’s name for it has been inspired by its lightness!), which is as white as truth and simply melts in the mouth. At the core of the idli is the fragrant, lily-white, short-grained rice known as Ponni, which was developed by the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in 1986. The lightness of the rice variety carries on to the idli. It also reflects the effort and the care that has gone into the idli. It shows in the recipe that I have added at the end of this post. Try it out at home and see if your idli flies.

MADRAS PAVILION’S FLYING IDLI

INGREDIENTS

Ponni rice, 1 kilo

Urad dal, 300gm

Salt to taste

METHOD

Soak idli rice and urad dal separately for two hours.

Wash the rice and dal at least six to seven times.

Make sure the idli rice and urad dal appear clean when you add water to them. No milky residue must be left over before you put the two in the grinder.

Grind the urad dal to a very fine paste.

Grind the idli rice to the consistency and texture of semolina.

Mix the two well along with salt.

Let the mixture rest for 12 hours at an ambient temperature of 28-30 degrees Celsius.

Now line the idli tray with a clean cloth and pour over the mixture into the mould.

Steam the idlis for 20 minutes per batch. Serve steaming hot with chutney, podi (‘gunpowder’), ghee and sambhar.

CHENNAI CHRONICLES: What It Takes For A Restaurant to Top TripAdvisor Rankings

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

HOW DOES a restaurant, which is barely five months old, reach the top of TripAdvisor.com’s Chennai rankings and stay there? When I asked this question to Vikramjit Roy, who was discovered by Vice President (Operations), ITC Hotels, Gautam Anand, at Wasabi in New Delhi and transplanted to ITC Grand Chola in Chennai as leader of the newbie hotel's Pan Asian team, the young chef launched into a long discussion. Then he said something that has stuck in my mind: “We cook with a mother’s love. We have systems and recipes, but our secret ingredient is love.”

Chef Vikramjit Roy explaining to yours truly and Philippe
Charraudeau, Vice President and General Manager, ITC
Grand Chola, how to unveil the seared foie gras from
its orange peel quilt. That was sheer inventiveness. 

It was this past Friday, around 9 p.m., and Pan Asian was abuzz with people. The early-bird Japanese diners had already come and left, yet the restaurant was packed. A prominent family of Gujarati diamond merchants had occupied one long table to celebrate a birthday in the family. And it was hard to find a vacant table at the 176-seater restaurant.

I wondered why and I got my answer in the course of my meal. It was better than what Vikramjit had ever done at Wasabi — and I have maintained that his ‘swansong dinner’ for the Taj, the one he created for the Delhi Gourmet Club and it was attended by Anand, to be in a league of its own. What he laid out for us at on Friday was deserving of a Michelin-star. His team had transformed even the humble fish cake, a common feature of any Thai menu, by hoisting a stopper full of spicy mango puree on top of each. Before eating, you are meant to squeeze the stopper so that the mango puree oozes out into the fish cake, giving it a dramatically different taste profile. Anyone who can do that gets my instant respect. “It’s a complex affair to make a simple dish,” Vikramjit says, and I believe him entirely.

‘Progressive Asian’ is how Vikramjit describes the menu of his restaurant. Each dish is authentic, but it comes with a twist, or, as Vikramjit puts it, with “layers of elements”. The traditional banana blossom salad gets a young and contemporary twist (apart from another texture) when it is made to sit atop wasabi mash. The Sichuan-style crispy prawns arrive on a bed of avocado puree, with a crispy caramelised pineapple on top and ikura (salmon roe) on the side. Eaten together, they tantalise the palate with a bouquet of flavours and taste sensations.

Vikramjit explaining the intricacies of the
tuna (chu-toro, not less!) tataki spiked with soy
salt and served with wasabi mash. Yours truly
is seen with Atul Bhalla of the ITC Grand Chola.

Likewise, the duck carpaccio with a scoop of yuzu (citrus) sorbet on top was a brilliant reinterpretation of duck with orange sauce, an old-world French recipe. The topping not only added another flavour dimension to the carpaccio, but also made the act of eating raw meat more palatable. We see the same inventiveness in the ‘scallop in onion shell’ (the scallop actually comes in a quilt of onion!) and the baked chicken puff pastry, which looks like a miniature wine barrel and has a film of wasabi wrapping the chicken inside: the competing textures and tastes of the puff pastry, wasabi and chicken make it a treat for the palate and a trigger for the mind’s amphetamines.

In my view, it is dim sum chef Raju’s finest piece of work — he has brought back the best from the three months he spent at The Peninsular Beijing to master the art. He has indeed come a long way since he left his home in Pokhara, Nepal. “My entire team of 14 is from Delhi. We have all left our individual comfort zones with the intention to cook from our heart and connect with our guests,” says Vikramjit. Of course, without the support of ITC, which has a tradition of setting food benchmarks in the country, he may not have gone this far.
The IHM-Kolkata graduate (he talks about Sabyasachi ‘Saby’ Gorai as his super senior, so you can imagine how young he is!) was a part of the pre-opening team at threesixtydegrees at The Oberoi New Delhi, has worked under the brilliant Thomas Wee at Empress of China during its heyday at the hotel formerly known as the Parkroyal at Nehru Place, New Delhi, and been exposed to the best of Japan when he went to the Okura in Tokyo for an exposure to the classical hotel’s two Michelin three-star restaurants — Yamazato, which specialises in sushi, and the teppanyaki place named Sazanka.

Pan Asian is an old ITC restaurant brand. Vikramjit has just reinvented it, but he couldn't have done it so effortlessly had he not been at an ITC hotel inspired by the irrepressibly brilliant Gautam Anand. I hope Anand will now make it a national trend-setter like Dakshin. Fortunately, he has a chef we’ll hear a lot about. We have only seen the tip of his creative iceberg.

CHENNAI CHRONICLES: Gastronomic Tour of Five States in One Meal at Cafe Mercara Express

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

Cafe Mercara Express at the ITC Grand Chola has the look
of an opulent gentlemen's club, but its jukebox, milk shakes
bar and eclectic menu set it apart from the competition

A WINE, it is said, is as good as the intention that goes into making it. The word ‘grand’ in ITC Grand Chola, Chennai, expresses one such lofty intention — the intention to be bigger and better than the competition. Being bigger is the least of all challenges — it’s the job a builder of buildings can accomplish with the help of an architect’s drawings. Being better is what sets apart builders of institutions.

I will have plenty of opportunities to discuss the architectural marvels of the ITC Grand Chola, but I must begin with my impressions of Café Mercara Express, where I had a grand lunch in the company of the hotel’s Vice President and General Manager, Philippe H. Charraudeau, Atul Bhalla, who has moved to Chennai after serving as General Manager, ITC Windsor, Bangalore, and my dear friend, Richa Sharma, who’s the General Manager, Media Relations, ITC Hotels.

We conversed like old friends, with Charraudeau, Atul and I exchanging notes on Dubai — Bhalla had worked in Dubai in 1994-95, Charraudeau was at the Burj al-Arab in the early 2000s (he still remembers a young Rishi Raj Singh, now the F&B chief of ITC Maurya, as a newbie at Dubai’s landmark hotel) and I had been to the emirate with my Delhi Gourmet Club co-founder, Atul Sikand, to attend Gulfood 2013 in February. As our conversation at Café Mercara Express, the 24-hour restaurant that looks more like a fashionable gentleman’s club, veered from Chennai and Dubai, lubricated by a Gewurtztraminer from Chateau Ste Michelle at Columbia Valley in Washington, USA, selected by Wine & Beverages Manager Shaariq Akhtar, the food just kept coming in, wowing us with every bite.

Mercara is the old name of the lush green hill station now called Madikeri, and like the place it has been inspired by, the 24-hour restaurant has a languid pace. You can be there for hours and not know how time has gone by. Its tables have amusing decorative pieces with multi-coloured frolicking cows (including one splayed like a pasha in a tub spilling over with chocolate). That’s because this is one restaurant that takes its milk shakes seriously. But we weren’t there to have milk shakes. Our meal had a representative dish from each of the five southern states — and what a treat it was!

We started with the Madras Fried Chicken (juicy, slightly hot and deliciously reminiscent of Chicken 65) and Meen Varuval, or griddle-fried kingfish marinated lightly with red chilli, lemon juice, ginger and garlic (a delicately flavoured beauty). With the two getting our gastric juices racing, we couldn’t just wait to have the Mangalorean fish curry (gassi) that arrived on a bed of rice-batter string hoppers (idiappam). Believe me, I have not had a better gassi in a long time — not that you get anything half-way decent in Delhi, not even at Swagath.

Immediately after the gassi, Shaariq produced a 2008 E. Guigal Crozes Hermitage from the Rhone Valley — this plump red wine, critics say, is getting better with age; it’s certainly great value for money. Its peppery notes and spicy nose were just right for the trio of dishes that followed — Chemeen Mapas, prawns in a luscious coconut milk and green chilli curry from Kerala, which I couldn’t stop licking; Venchina Mamsam, the dry lamb preparation from Andhra Pradesh, which left a sweet and tangy aftertaste because of the caramelised onions; and the Keeral Kootu, a silken urad dal with spinach.

The wine danced with the food, but then came the surprise of the meal — a Indochine liqueur from Domaine de Canton prepared from baby Vietnamese ginger. It was a palate cleanser, Shaariq informed us. Well, it certainly set us in the right frame of mind for the divine Elaneer Payasam (sweetened coconut milk simmered with pods of cardamom). And for the evening, which promises to be even better (if it’s possible!). You’ll have to read my next blog post to find out about it.

Ex-Wasabi Chef to Roll Out Sushi-Sashimi at ITC WelcomHotel Dwarka’s Shanghai Club

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

Shanghai Club has opened at the ITC WelcomHotel, Dwarka

AFTER the successful opening of the notches-above-the-rest kebabs and curries restaurant, K&K, at the ITC WelcomHotel Dwarka, it’s the turn of Shanghai Club — and it will be different from the original at the ITC Grand Central at Lower Parel, Mumbai, in one important respect. It will also serve sushi and sashimi prepared by a gifted young chef who, the Indian Restaurant Spy has learnt, has migrated from Wasabi by Morimoto at The Taj Mahal Hotel, Mansingh Road, New Delhi.

That’s the second big ‘transfer’, to use Premiership League football lingo, from Wasabi — the first being the extremely talented Vikramjit Roy, who has catapulted the Pan Asian at the ITC Grand Chola, Chennai, to TripAdvisor’s No. 1 (out of 675 restaurants in Chennai). It has an overall rating of 4.5/5. Now, that’s a headline-making coup for a newbie in a city dominated by established heavy hitters, from the ITC’s very own Dakshin and Raintree to Annalakshmi and Hip Asia.

Coming back to Shanghai Club, I am told that the restaurant will serve good, old-fashioned Chinese food. Are we, then, going to see the return of the glory days of Bali Hi, which under Master Chef Liang used to rock the rooftop of the ITC Maurya? Your hard-working spy will have the inside story soon.

The big anticipated opening at the Dwarka hotel, though, is Ghungroo, which is set to return with a music menu being put together by the man synonymous with the nightclub — Sunny Sarid. With the Dwarka Vivanta by Taj, which has been placed under the charge of Anil Malhotra, who was till recently the general manager of Taj Chandigarh, on the road to completion in the next eight months, the ITC WelcomHotel is seriously turning on the heat. But before you bring out your dancing shoes, check out the Shanghai Club.