Zorawar Kalra Set to Unveil Farzi Cafe in Gurgaon & Woo Market for $8m Cash Infusion

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

IT IS difficult to be Jiggs Kalra's son because of the gastronomical legacy you carry on your shoulders, but Massive Restaurants Managing Director Zorawar Kalra wears his heritage with elan. As he gets ready to open his newest concept restaurant, Farzi Cafe at the Cyber Hub, Gurgaon, reinventing the coffee shop culture with the tools and techniques of molecular gastronomy, Zorawar is carrying forward his father's tradition of innovating with imagination.

With Farzi Cafe, Zorawar Kalra is all
set to firmly establish himself as the
young and credible new face of
Modern Indian cuisine

Jiggs Kalra turned the salmon tikka and galauti kebab into national favourites; Zorawar Kalra is pushing the envelope with boti kebab tacos, dal-chawal arancini, karela calamari and anda bhurjee with chilli con queso (or molten cheese dip spiked with chillies) -- all invented dishes that may seem to a traditionalist to be straight out Mad Hatter's tea party, but which, without doubt, will bring the young back to the cuisine they had forsaken because it had become too predictable to tickle their taste buds.

And as he goes about giving Modern Indian cuisine a new direction with his talented team of Varun Duggal, the strategist, and Himanshu Saini, the star chef who (with Saurabh Udinia) has made Masala Library the go-to restaurant of Mumbai, Zorawar is working to a five-year business plan loaded with ambitious targets. He had set out with an infusion of funds from Gaurav Goenka's Mirah Hospitality, which has also made big-ticket investments in Riyaz Amlani's Impresario Entertainment and Hospitality and the Rajdhani restaurants, but with this  money exhausted by his first round of projects (including Made in Punjab), Zorawar is going back to the market to raise $8 million (Rs 48 crore at the present exchange rate) to finance his expansion plans.

Zorawar's plan is to take Made in Punjab to Tier-II cities, with 15 of them up and running in the next three or four years, open at least eight Farzi Cafe outlets in the same period, starting with the next one in Dubai, and go international with Masala Library with a network franchisees extending all the way to Dubai. "I am looking at Massive Restaurants notching up a turnover of Rs 225-250 crore at the end of five years," Zorawar said in an interview with the Indian Restaurant Spy.

Money does matter, but it's food that gets Zorawar most excited. He seems to be firm believer of the old restaurateur's adage, "Good food gets good money." Farzi Cafe, he says, has been an idea he has carried with him for eight years ("the first cafe in the world to showcase molecular gastronomy"), but it took shape only over the last six months, after extensive food trials.

Zorawar's vision was given a shape and form by the highly talented Himanshu, Manish Mehrotra's former protege who first came into the limelight when he won Chicago/New York restaurateur Rohini Dey's much-publicised 'chef hunt' last summer with his sarson da saag quesadilla served with butter milk foam. It was in that moment in the spotlight that Himanshu made a couple of telling comments that foretold his future. “There is a thin line between fusion and confusion," he said. "Once that is sorted, half the battle is won." He then went on to pay a tribute to his original guru: "You can’t think straight with food. Every dish must be prepared  like a story. That’s what I learnt from Manish Mehrotra.”

Farzi means 'fake', but it could also be an illusion, which is what Zorawar wants to serve on the plate -- a dish that doesn't taste the way you'd expect it to from it looks. The cafe's bar menu has a dozen molecular gastronomy-inspired cocktails and its tapas selection is crowded with surprises, from spare ribs spiked with the world's hottest bhut jolokia chillies and a double- deck galauti burger to tandoori lamb served with maple-soy sauce and whisky sour cream and a Philly cheese raan hot dog.

For the mains, some of the options are Thai green curry khichdi, roomali roti ravioli with eggplant mozzarella bharta and poha Pad Thai with wok-tossed red snapper. A couple of the desserts seem straight out of science fiction -- phirni oxide, for instance, or Bailey's lollipop prepared on Zorawar's favourite new toy, the anti-griddle, which can reduce the temperature of any liquid to minus-30 degrees Celsius in a flash -- but there's also the Parle-G cheesecake or the Cassata Indiana served with Magic Pops. It's as if Zorawar and Himanshu just let their imagination go on a free ride on the wild side.

Diners in Mumbai have savoured the creative repertoire of Zorawar's team, but at Cyber Hub, sadly, he's invariably measured by the day's lunch buffet at Made in Punjab, which not only is a steadily popular restaurant, but also has an a la carte menu studded with gems. Farzi Cafe, I hope, will allow him to be judged for what he and his young, talented and turbo-charged team are really worth.

As Dakshin Turns 25, Its Creator Praveen Anand Recalls His Long Journey of Discovering New Cuisines

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

Executive Chef Praveen Anand (with spectacles)
at the kitchen of Dakshin at the Sheraton New
Delhi. At the extreme right is Velumurugan
Paul Raj, lead chef of the Dakshin in Delhi.

DAKSHIN, I believe, is one restaurant that can claim with justification to have contributed the most to our understanding of our vast national wealth of cuisines in the 25 years it has just completed. Having grown up in Delhi, where the majority used to believe 'South Indians' lived on a diet of idli-dosa-vada-sambhar, I was delighted to see Dakshin open its tastefully embellished doors and introduce us to the inventive regional kitchens of the south. Till Dakshin arrived at the Sheraton New Delhi in Saket, I had no idea about the distinctive kitchens of communities such as the Mudaliars or the Ravuthars, or how the temple food of Udupi tasted, nor was I aware of the depth of Mappila (or Moplah) cuisine.

I took the opportunity of the silver jubilee to call up Praveen Anand, Dakshin's brand custodian,  walking encyclopaedia on southern cuisines and one of the most erudite chefs I have met in my career. A conversation with Chef Anand (actually, he's Executive Chef) is like going on a long drive through the by-lanes of history and contemporary culture. The Hyderabad-born master chef joined Sheraton Park Hotel & Towers, where the first (and foremost) Dakshin opened in 1989, immediately after he graduated out of the Institute of Hotel Management, Catering Technology and Applied Nutrition, Chennai. That was in 1984, when the establishment on TTK Road was known as the Adyar Gate Hotel Holiday Inn. Its ownership  changed a year later, with the Goyals, who were in the textiles business, acquiring the hotel and inviting ITC to run it for them.

The hotel's board of directors, according to the industry grapevine, was very keen initially to open a vegetarian thali restaurant named Mylapore (a dream that has finally found fruition at the ITC Grand Chola's Royal Vega restaurant, which needs a lot of tweaking, but that's another story!). ITC did not have a good experience with running vegetarian outlets, so Syed Habibur Rehman, who was then briefly the Area Director (South) before eventually becoming the boss of ITC Hotels, floated the idea of a restaurant that would showcase as much the lesser-known non-vegetarian fare of the southern states as the more common vegetarian dishes.

It was a brave (rash?) suggestion. A 'North Indian' hotel chain serving authentic 'South Indian' non-vegetarian dishes in Chennai, a city that is justifiably proud of its gastronomic lineage, was an idea that no one had dared to put to test. It was the era of established players such as Woodlands and Dasaprakash, and the only non-vegetarian restaurants were the Buhari Hotel on Mount Road, where Chicken 65 is said to have been invented, and Velu Military Hotel.

The idea of Dakshin was given final shape by the hotel's then general manager, Pawan Verma, who later rose to the position of Senior Executive Vice President, its executive chef, Uday Girme, who's now settled in New Zealand, and the food and beverage manager, Amit Mitra, who has moved on to Australia. Chef Anand, who was then all of 24 and a Continental chef, was roped in to create a menu from scratch.

It was nightmarish in the days when Chef Anand was doing the initial trials for the restaurant. No two persons would agree on any dish that he and his fledgling team would prepare. It was only when he prepared rasam with garlic one day, and got lambasted by a prominent industrialist's wife, that he figured out what he, being from Andhra, had failed to notice. The classical Aiyar-Iyengar divide was working against Dakshin's menu-in-the-making in those pre-opening days.

The lady who had got so upset over the rasam was an Iyengar and garlic did not agree with her taste buds because her caste rules forbade the use of onion and garlic. Chef Anand started visiting homes, cajoling housewives to part with their recipes, standardised them and put systems in place to ensure consistency in cooking. And, more importantly, instead of getting people to taste them and sit on judgement, he followed his instincts, tweaked the recipes that he had collected and prepared a menu.

By the time Dakshin was launched after four to five months of food trials, Chef Anand had lined up a repertoire of 45-60 recipes. "My background in Continental cooking helped me standardise recipes and processes and establish exacting standards," he said to me. "My challenge was to share this knowledge with my chefs, who were extremely talented, but uneducated and resistant to change." It took a Moplah food festival steered by Ummi Abdulla, the foremost exponent of the cuisine and author of Malabar Muslim Cookery (Orient Longman; 1993), to give Dakshin the direction that it eventually took. It set Chef Anand off on his constant peregrinations in search of regional variations and he  says he couldn't have done it without the support of his hotel's owners.

From Jiggs Kalra, who was then advising ITC, Chef Anand learnt about how different dishes required different cuts of meat. At a wedding uniting two mill-owning families of Chettinad in Sivaganga district, he met the famous 'America' Natesan, who had earned his sobriquet because he was much in demand among the NRIs. Natesan let him into the many secrets of the prosperous Nattukotai Chettiyar community's cuisine, which goes far beyond the Chettinad chicken that we all know about. Likewise, on a visit to a wedding at Pudukkottai district, Chef Anand was introduced to the use of Everest masalas in Chettinad cookery.

Chef Anand owes his passion for research to Chennai's most prolific chronicler, S. Muthiah, whose column Madras Miscellany in The Hindu has a humongous following. The chef once tested his aadi kummayam, a "sweet delicacy" made with rice, moong and urad dals and jaggery, on Muthiah, but the chronicler wasn't impressed. He invited the chef over to his home, served him a perfect aadi kummayam and introduced him to the treasure trove of manuscripts housed in the Roja Muthiah Research Library, one of the world's finest private libraries of Tamil publications with more than 300,000 items listed in its catalogues.

It was at this library, Chef Anand discovered the Sanskrit culinary treatise, Pakadarpanam, attributed to King Nala of the legend of Nala-Damayanti and stumbled upon what he considers to be the oldest recipe for a biryani, where the rice is cooked in stock made with game birds and infused with flowers and herbs, and then prepared meat is added to it. The problem with this recipe book is that it doesn't have weights and measures. Chef Anand, as a result, has had to create recipes out of ingredients mentioned and descriptions given in the book.

Another noted resident of Chennai, K.S. Padmanabhan, founder of East West Books (now known as Westland, after its acquisition by the Tatas), whose wife Chandra is a noted cookbook writer, introduced Chef Anand to the first Tamil cookbook, Hindu Pakasastra, a compilation of vegetarian recipes by T.K. Ramachandra Rau, first published in 1891 and then two more times, once in honour of King George V and Queen Mary, who were visiting India in 1911. Just five of the recipes had onions and one of them -- vengaya payasam, or kheer made with onions, somewhat like Lucknow's garlic kheer -- is a star of the Dakshin repertoire.

Not all of Chef Anand's recipes owe their origin to books. He mastered the art making a fluffy idli, for instance, at a Chettiyar wedding in the hotel, where he learnt that the trick is to use IR20 short grain rice and add mashed boiled rice to the batter. Trainees at his kitchen also have been rich sources of information. Chef Anand makes it a point to quiz them about what they eat at home and how it is cooked, ferreting out recipes and secrets from them.

One such trainee was a young man named Satya, who joined the Dakshin kitchen after a stint with the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). By gaining access to information in the possession of the ASI, Satya, who's now in London, helped his boss recreate the recipes of the Vijayanagara Empire. Chef Anand also dug into the descriptions of markets and everyday food left behind by the contemporary travellers Domingo Paes and Fernao Nunes, read up Edgar Thurston's Castes and Tribes of Southern India, and spent long hours in the kitchens of Anand Gajapathi Raju of the Vizianagaram royal family, whose ancestors were the feudatories of the Vijayanagara kings.

Dakshin under Anand's leadership not only serves good, approachable food, but also keeps introducing its regulars to the culinary jewels of the south far beyond the stereotypes. It is as much a culinary museum as a restaurant that no one has been able to recreate.

GURGAON'S FINEST: Zorawar Kalra, Sodabottleopenerwala, Bernardo, Amaranta, Zambar & Many More

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

I HAD never considered Gurgaon to be anything more than a culinary desert till the Cyber Hub came up and became Delhi's go-to destination.

My only Gurgaon favourite was Cilantro, especially because of the wines on offer with its Sunday brunch, and then, in chronological order, Spectra (Leela Ambience), MoMo Cafe at the Courtyard by Marriott, Eest at The Westin (not my favourite!), La Riviera (which has lost much of its old glory after the fire that broke out some months back) and Sen5es at the Pullman, and Amaranta at The Oberoi gave me occasional reasons to cross the border to satiate my curiosity about our neighbour's foodie islands. With the opening of Cyber Hub, my jaunts to Millennium City have become frequent and taken me to restaurants beyond India's answer to Clarke Quay, and I have discovered that Gurgaon has well and truly evolved gastronomically.

When my friend Pawan Soni announced the Indian Food Freak Awards to recognise Gurgaon's best restaurants (indeed, a creditable initiative!), I decided to do my own quiet recce, exchanging notes over FB Mail with certified foodies of the Delhi Gourmet Club, F&B professionals and chefs. I compared their recommendations with my notes and realised that my favourites more or less reflected the popular opinion.

Here, then, are my personal awards, and if you find five-star hotels being poorly represented on the list, it is because most of them haven't impressed me. The future clearly belongs to standalone restaurants powered by passionate entrepreneurs and powerhouses of young talent. I would have loved it if the Indian Food Freak Awards were given out at Cyber Hub amphitheatre as a tribute to the future of Delhi-NCR's culture of dining out.

Restaurateur of the Year: Zorawar Kalra, Massive Restaurants

He's a tribute to his father, India's first and foremost food impresario Jiggs Kalra, and the tradition of Indian fine-dining he upheld. After creating Masala Library in Mumbai, a Michelin star-quality restaurant, Zorawar rolled out Made in Punjab, demonstrating the ease with which he can operate across formats.

In his next project, Farzi Cafe, next door to Made in Punjab, I believe he's marrying Masala Library's finesse with Made in Punjab's mass appeal. It takes an imaginative and versatile entrepreneur to think across so many formats. He may be younger, but if he maintains his standards and his success rate, he'll  be in the league of AD Singh and Riyaz Amlani.

Restaurant Concept of the Year: Sodabottleopenerwala

Marrying quirky ambience with food you can never tire of, Sodabottleopenerwala, under Mohit Balachandran's able leadership, has made us fall in love with Irani Cafe cuisine.

Discovery of the Year: Anahita Dhondy, Sodabottleopenerwala

She can land any international modelling contract with her porcelain looks, but this Taj product believes in sweating it out in the kitchen and producing Delhi-NCR's most addictive Parsi food. Bring on the Marghi Na Farcha.

INVENTIVE SPIRIT: Amaranta rewrote the
rules of serving rasam  at a Stag's Leap
Winery dinner for the Delhi Gourmet Club.

Gurgaon's Pride: Bernardo, Super Mart I, DLF Phase IV

Crescentia Scolt and Chris Fernandes have had to wage a long struggle to keep Bernardo afloat, moving from one location to another because of the real estate market's vagaries, but their to-die-for authentic Goan spread, which is better than what you get in Goa, has ensured their diehard loyalists keep following them wherever they go.

Corporate Chef of the Year: Ravi Saxena, Dhaba by Claridges, Cyber Hub, DLF Cyber City

I've seen him from the time he turned around The Imperial's Tuscan restaurant, San Gimignano, and it's heartening to see his transformation from an European fine-dining specialist to the creator of a growing chain of restaurants that exudes youthful energy even as it serves the classics that have been responsible for Dhaba's runaway success at The Claridges.

F&B Executive of the Year: Varun Duggal, Massive Restaurants

Zorawar Kalra's right-hand man, he combines sharp business instincts, a deep understanding of the restaurant trade and a warm personality that gets him friends and new clients with ease.

Best Modern Indian Restaurant of the Year: Amaranta, The Oberoi, Udyog Vihar, Phase V

Here's a restaurant that has achieved the impossible by consistently delivering the best fresh fish and seafood preparations from the coastal states with a contemporary twist, despite being in the heart of India's dusty plains. A tribute to the epicurean perfection that Executive Chef Ravitej Nath seeks to achieve in this laboratory of creativity, Amaranta can never let you down.

Sodabottleopenerwala combines a quirky design
with impeccable authenticity in its efforts to
popularise Irani Cafe cuisine and give it a
permanent new home in Delhi-NCR

Best North Indian Restaurant of the Year: Made In Punjab, Cyber Hub, DLF Cyber City

It's often unfairly judged because of its buffet, but you must order from its a la carte menu to understand why Palak Patta Chaat, Salmon Tikka, Beetroot Tikki and Railway Mutton Curry haven't tasted better anywhere else.

Best South Indian Restaurant of the Year: Zambar, Cyber Hub, DLF Cyber City

Arun Kumar TR's return with an all-new Zambar has been the best thing to have happened to Cyber Hub in recent months. The decor turns all notions of a South Indian restaurant on thjeir head and the menu is refreshingly different -- dig their Cauliflower Bezule, Andhra Chicken Vepedu, Squid Rings with Seafood Filling and Pork Sukka to understand why.

Best Small Restaurant of the Year: Pintxo, DLF Galleria Market, DLF Phase 4

Besides introducing a new word into our vocabulary, which means 'small snacks' in Basque country, Pintxo has proved that a restaurant can be a hole-in-the-wall and yet have an army of admirers, because what really matters is the food you're served. Can I have the bacon-wrapped prawns?

Best Multi-Cuisine Restaurant of the Year: Spectra, Leela Ambience Gurgaon

International variety and goodness, when combined, can be the recipe for a real winner, which is what this all-day restaurant with the best view in Gurgaon has to offer.

Best Sunday Brunch of the Year: Sen5es, Pullman Gurgaon Central Park

Its crab omelette isn't the only reason I am in love with Sen5es. The restaurant's Sunday Brunch, judging by the turnout for it, is clearly Gurgaon's favourite because it goes beyond the obvious offerings and makes an effort to do things, to borrow an expression from Pizza Hut, 'zaraa Hut ke'.

Best Italian Restaurant of the Year: 56 Ristorante Italiano, Vatika Atrium, DLF Golf Course Road

Located uniquely between two business towers, this restaurant combines a good menu and wine list overseen by an Italian chef with friendly and efficient service and a business-like atmosphere just right for corporate lunches. It's the best dining option on Golf Course Road.

Best Chinese Restaurant of the Year: Nooba, DLF Cyber City, Tower C

Restaurateurs in Vasant Kunj may be complaining about how their businesses have been hit because of the Cyber Hub, but this place bang next to India's first food mall continues to be the favoured 'canteen' of Chinese executives working at DLF Cyber City. What does it tell you about the food of this silent star among Rahul 'Indigo' Bhatia's trio of restaurants?

Best Japanese Restaurant of the Year: Raifu Tei, Dia Park Premier, Sector 29

Ask any Japanese expat where he hangs out with friends and he would say 'Raifu Tei' without blinking his eyes (yes, if you go to a Japanese hangout, as opposed to a horribly expensive restaurant favoured by desi moneybags, you'd think all Japanese men are single!). If you wish to have Japanese food the way the Japanese do, this is the where you can savour the experience without burning your wallet.

Best Dim Sum of the Year: dimsumbros, Ambience Mall

A leap of faith by the Yo! China trio, dimsumbros dazzles you with its array and quality of 'little hearts'. Ask for their Almond Prawn with Wasabi Mayo, Laksa Crab Dumpling and BBQ Pork Pastry to find out what has got me eating out of their hand!

Best Korean Restaurant of the Year: Gung The Palace, City Centre, Near Crowne Plaza, Sec. 29

Here's a restaurant whose only competition is itself, but it is on this list because of the consistency of its offering and the authenticity of its preparations, which is why it is the social magnet of Delhi-NCR's Korean community. Its Beef Bulgogi will have you, like Oliver Twist, asking for more.

Best Pizzas of the Year: Fat Lulu's, Arjun Marg, DLF Shopping Centre, DLF Phase I

This is where your search for Delhi-NCR's best pizzas should end. The base, sauce, cheese and toppings of each of the 22 pizza varieties are textbook perfect. You can choose from an array of choices in each of the four categories, making every order a new experience.

Best Comfort Food of the Year: Eat@Joe's, Cross Point Mall, DLF Phase IV

Joe Baath romanced the spotlight on MasterChef India, but he's not the kind of guy who basks in past glory. He's an engaging fellow and his Chicken Wings, Jalapeno Cheese Shots and BBQ Chicken Hotdog keep bringing back his growing horde of loyalists. And his tie-up with Pradeep Gidwani's The Pint Room keeps us well supplied with brews of the best kind.

Best Cocktails of the Year: Cocktails & Dreams Speakeasy, Behind Galaxy Hotel, Sector 15

This is the creative laboratory of Yangdup Lama and if it doesn't serve Gurgaon's best cocktails, then Millennium City has no hope. Fortunately, the maestro of mixology has been able to live up to his reputation and keeps giving the world an unforgettable high.

Best Patisserie of the Year: The Oberoi Patisseri and Delicatessen, Udyog Vihar

From croissants, cakes and chocolates to sausages and sandwiches, to freshly baked breads and olive oil, you get them all here, the standards notches higher than the competition and the prices, surprisingly, about the same as, and in some cases lower than, L'Opera.

Masala Library by Jiggs Kalra to Open in Mumbai on Oct. 5 with Progressive Indian Twist

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

THE much-anticipated opening of the Masala Library by Jiggs Kalra, the ‘Progressive Indian’ restaurant being launched by Zorawar Kalra, son of the Indian fine-dining maestro, is set for October 5 at its chic address — First International Financial Centre, the green building where Citibank has relocated its India headquarters, at the Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai.

Zorawar Kalra has been in the news since he sold his stake in Wrapster Foods, the joint venture company that ran the highly successful Punjab Grill restaurants, to his old business partners, Dabur scion Amit Burman and Rohit Aggarwal of Lite Bite Foods. After exiting Wrapster, Kalra formed a new joint venture, Massive Restaurants, with Gaurav Goenka of Mirah Hospitality to roll out the upper-end Masala Library, the middle-market Made in Punjab, which it making its debut at The Hub at the DLF Cyber Park in Gurgaon, and a chain of chic mithai shops.

Speaking from his about-to-open restaurant in Mumbai, Kalra said Masala Library will showcase ‘Progressive Indian’ cuisine, which combines authentic flavours with nouvelle presentation styles. It will also have a lot of molecular gastronomy happening — “not as a gimmick,” Kalra assured us, “but as a genuine flavour enhancer”. He added: “Each dish on the menu has a story. A lot of thought has gone into each one of the items. We started with 100, but have retained just 70 of them.”

He then gave a foretaste of the explosion of creative gastronomy that awaits us at the Masala Library by describing the dish named ‘Steamed John Dory, Flavours of India’. The fish in this preparation will be served on a platter designed like an artist’s palette with eight differently flavoured relishes representing the kitchens of the different parts of the country. So you can have one central ingredient in eight different ways in one serving! Or, as Kalra puts it, “You can taste the whole of India in one dish.”

The menu has Lal Maas, Mutton Vindaloo and Meen Moily to cater to those who like to walk on the much-treaded road, but the sauciest San Marzano tomatoes from Italy go into its butter chicken (“these are not tart and can be smoked very well,” Kalra explained), or the essence of peas are turned into pea pods using the reverse spherification process, or the hearty rarha meat is given a vegetarian twist by substituting mutton with soy, or for those weary of the boring hara-bhara kebab, Kalra’s chefs have created the pesto kebab served with parmesan papad.

Care to sample innovations? Then, your must-have list must include the foie gras crème brulee, prawn balchao kulcha, trio of Bhindi Jaipuri, Papad ki Subzi and Hand-Pounded Choorma (“savour a multitude of flavours from just one dish,” Kalra explained), and ghewar cheesecake with almond chikki. Kalra and his team also have their share of fun with the menu. One of the dessert items, for instance, is Childhood Memories, which takes us to the time when as children we used love eating mud, chalk and other unmentionables. To recreate the experience, this dessert platter has flower pots with brownies mimicking the mud, water cans brimming over with chocolate sauce, edible chalk, and ice-cream biscuits shaped like another childhood favourite, Parle-G.

Will the pricing be over the top? Kalra assures us it won’t be. The nine-course tasting menu is being priced at Rs 1,900++ (vegetarian) and Rs 2,100++ (non-vegetarian) per person. And if you order a la carte, you can have a soul-satisfying meal for Rs 1,500++ per person. Not a bad deal for a restaurant in the financial hothouse of the country that promises to take Indian fine dining, so far dominated by establishments such as Indian Accent, Varq and Masala Art, to another level of excitement, evolution and excellence.

QUICK BITES: Zorawar Kalra Plans 45-Item Buffet for Made in Punjab

Zorawar Kalra’s Cool Quotient. Culinary legend Jiggs Kalra’s son Zorawar is determined to win his generation — the 20- and 30-somethings — over to Indian cuisine by lifting its cool quotient. This is the generation that sees Indian cuisine as being heavy and uncool, so Zorawar’s Made in Punjab chain of restaurant will be hip (you can ask for an organic lassi and get one) and VFM (his target average per cover is Rs 575), and it will have the most generous Indian buffet ever laid out by any restaurant. The Made in Punjab buffet will have 45 items, all served in cast-iron pots designed by the French company Le Creuset. By keeping curries and biryanis in these pots, Zorawar will ensure neither gets overcooked, which is a common complaint with chafing dishes.

Zorawar Kalra: Making Indian food hip for the young

False Alarm on Indian Accent: I am sorry I got the Indian Accent story wrong in my hurry to be 'first with the news'! A spokesperson for Old World Hospitality has clarified that Indian Accent is moving nowhere and that Alive, the restaurant of the Philippines-based spa resort, The Farm, is not opening at The Manor. The Farm, as we had reported earlier, will however manage the members-only spa opening soon at The Manor. My views on the popularity of Indian Accent and the celebrity status of the self-effacing Master Chef Manish Mehrotra remain unchanged.

Olive Beach R.I.P.? Are the bells tolling for Olive Beach at Hotel Diplomat in New Delhi’s exclusive neighbourhood, Sardar Patel Marg? The buzz in town is that the AD Singh restaurant, which seems to have lost its edge and is showing signs of premature aging, is on its way to being shut down. AD, anyway, has his hands full with Guppy by Ai and the upcoming first Olive Café and Delhi-NCR’s first Irani restaurant at The Hub in the DLF Cyber Park. Of course, this is unconfirmed news, so this may not be the last of what you hear about it.