Olive Bar & Kitchen Tops Delhi Gourmet Club's Best Pizza of Delhi/NCR Ranking

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

The Olive Bar & Kitchen team posing for a photo-op with
the Best Pizza Trophy being handed over by Rocky Mohan
and other members of the Delhi Gourmet Club jury

AFTER enjoying a long Diwali weekend, I am back with a bucketful of news, starting with the announcement of the Delhi Gourmet Club's Pizza Hunt results. When I look back at the evolution of the pizza in our city, I remember the days when the Nirula's Keema Do Pyaza Pizza used to be my post-examination treat from my father. The pizza crust used to be like toast, with shredded Amul processed cheese filling in for mozzarella, the 'tomato puree' suspiciously seeming to be straight out of a ketchup bottle, and the keema do pyaza was unevenly spread on top, with the serving getting thinner as the pizza got popular. Of course, there was also the pepperoni pizza, which was hugely popular (with good reason!), but I discovered it much later.

I am speaking of the early 1980s, when a pizza was a treat that few middle-class families could afford. That was when Taxila, the city's only respectable Continental restaurant on the Maurya rooftop, was struggling to survive, and so was Valentino at the fledgling Hyatt Regency, which made way for the juggernaut named La Piazza. It was La Piazza, together (a little later) with Italian electrical engineer-turned-restaurateur Tarsillo Natalone's Flavors, which ended Delhi's pizza virginity. In fact, the opening chef of La Piazza, who was an Austrian, was so pernickety about the restaurant's Neapolitan pizzas that he banned the waiters from dousing them with Tabasco sauce or chilli flakes. The waiters, as a result, had to smuggle bottles of both in their jacket pockets to serve their contents on the sly.

Since those early days, we have seen Ritu Dalmia introduce Delhi to the wonders of the wood-fired oven at Diva. We have had Bill Marchetti inaugurate one with great fanfare at Pavilion, the all-day restaurant at the ITC Maurya, but the restaurant never became famous for pizzas. We have watched Olive Bar & Kitchen turn pizza slices, freshly out of the wood-fired oven, into popular party snacks in the days when the trio of Anirban Sarkar, Mohit Balachandran and Sabyasachi 'Saby' Gorai had made the restaurant a force to reckon with. And Mist at The Park, in the days of Bakshish Dean (the golden age of the Connaught Place hotel's culinary journey), rolled out such novelties of the time as the smoked salmon and quattro formaggi pizzas.

Of course, we had our share of PR gimmicks as well, such as the pizza priced at Rs 9,999 (its toppings included a generous helping of beluga and lobster), with which The Qube opened its doors at The Leela Palace Chanakyapuri. It was the creation of the hotel's then executive chef, the affable American, Glenn Eastman, who formerly presided over the kitchen at the personal yacht of the world's richest man, Mexican telecoms tsar Carlos Slim Helu. Talking about Americans and pizzas, India is well on its way to becoming one of the top five market for Domino's, which straddles across 55 per cent of the country's Rs 1,300-1,400-crore organised pizza market. Pizza Hut is hot in pursuit, followed at a respectable distance by players such as Papa John's and Sbarro, and now, JSM Hospitality, the company behind Shiro and Hard Rock Cafe, is ready to roll out California Pizza Kitchen in Delhi/NCR after a successful run in Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore.

With Delhi's pizza offerings getting more diverse than ever, it has become important for food connoisseurs to get a sense of where they can get the best pizzas in the city and its upscale suburbs. True to its record of becoming the final arbiter of taste in the city, the Delhi Gourmet Club, led by 'Mr Old Monk' and author of four well-received cookbooks, Rocky Mohan, went on a whirlwind hunt for the best pizza, covering 15 restaurants a record three weeks.

The jury consisted of a mixed group of well-travelled people united by a passion for food but representing the universe of Delhi restaurants--a couple of home-makers, a social media marketer, a management consultant, a well-known restaurateur, and even a professor of human rights at a reputed law school. Each of them spent Rs 5,000, tasting a basic margherita pizza followed by a gourmet pizza at each of the 15 restaurants, over five nights to arrive at a ranking that is refreshingly honest, though some of the big names in the business may not agree with their relegation to the lower end of the list.

My big complaint against the jury is that it left out Flavors and Cilantro at The Trident, Gurgaon, which, I maintain, has been consistent with the superior quality of its pizzas. I wholeheartedly endorse the No. 1 position going to Olive Bar & Kitchen, but I was left wondering how threesixtydegrees at The Oberoi managed to be No. 2 -- I have never known of anyone going there to ask for a pizza. Fat Lulu, in my opinion, should have been No. 2, not No. 3. But the shocker was Diva ending at the bottom of the heap, at No. 15. The news made me lapse into a state of violent disbelief followed by shock. Has Ritu Dalmia allowed her restaurant to slip to such an extent or was it a bad dough day? Anyway, without more quibbles, let me share the ranking with you:

Olive  Bar & Kitchen, Mehrauli, 79.33; threesixtydegrees, The Oberoi New Delhi, 74.50; Fat Lulu, Gurgaon, 70.50; San Gimignano, The Imperial, 68.50; La Piazza, Hyatt Regency, 68.44; Sen5es, Pullman Gurgaon, 66.25; Sartoria, Vasant Vihar, 62.93; Mistral, Ambience Mall, Vasant Kunj, 62.20; Prego, The Westin, Gurgaon, 60.57; La Tagliatella, Ambience Mall, Vasant Kunj, 58.47; The Qube, The Leela Palace Chanakyapuri, 53.35; Amici, Ambience Mall, Vasant Kunj, 50.36; Tonino, Andheria More, Mehrauli, 48.57; Mist, The Park, Parliament Street, 43.22; Diva, M-Block, Greater Kailash-II, 42.88.

So, how do you rate a pizza? Did the jury follow certain guidelines? Rocky shared them with the Delhi Gourmet Club before posting the results. Though Rocky did not mention this fact, you'll find the pointers in the blog 'A Gravy Train with Biscuit Wheels'. Anyway, here they are:

Is the crust worth eating on its own? Or is it simply a load-bearing device to hold up massive quantities of toppings (not necessarily a bad thing, but not usually seen in the best pizzerias)?

Is the bread dense or airy?

Do the individual toppings taste good on their own? Would you eat them if they were served on an appetiser plate alone? Or do they need cheese, bread and tomato sauce to work.

What types of cheeses are being used? Would the cheese(s) also taste okay on its own?

Is there a lot of sauce, a sauce drought, or is it in-between? Is the sauce delicious on its own?

Does it rely on salt or sugar for a strong taste?

Does the pizza remain tasty and interesting from start to finish? Or does the pizza have a great first bite, but then become an uninteresting trudge to finish eating. Over-salted pizzas can definitely fall into this trap. If you wish to check out the original, go to http://cincinnatimalavita.blogspot.in/2012/12/how-to-judge-great-pizza.html. 

Interesting pointers! Keep these in mind the next time when you to have a gourmet pizza experience.

Swiss Gastronomy Week at Hyatt Regency New Delhi & Then La Piazza’s 20th Birthday

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

Heinz Rufibach, Zermatt's Alpenhof Hotel, will steer the
Swiss Gastronomy Week at the Hyatt Regency New Delhi

ZERMATT is a little village in south-western Switzerland that owes its big reputation to four neighbours — the four tallest peaks of Europe, including the majestic Matterhorn. In this village resides a culinary star with a warm-hearted smile and his name is Heinz Rufibach. He presides over the restaurant Le Gourmet at the popular Alpenhof Hotel at Zermatt and the eatery, which has notched up 15 out of a maximum of 20 GaultMillau points, the equivalent of a Michelin star. And Rufibach is no stranger to those who have flown first or business class on SWISS, the airline that we knew as Swissair, for he has designed the menu served to them at 35,000+ feet above sea level.

Why am I going on and on about Rufibach? It is because the gifted chef is on his way to New Delhi to steer the Swiss Gastronomy Week starting from October 14 at the Café, Hyatt Regency, Bhikaji Cama Place. The chef, who describes his style of cooking as “creative, honest, market-oriented and Alpine-Mediterranean”, will team up with the hotel’s Executive Chef (who’s also Swiss), Marin Leuthard, to present popular items such as raclette, fondue and bratwurst as well as Swiss classics. The Swiss buffet has been priced at Rs 1,550 plus taxes (quite reasonable by five-star standards!) and the Sunday brunch with free-flowing champagne on October 20 will be yours for Rs 2,100 plus taxes per person.

Rufibach comes from a part of Switzerland (Canton Valais) where French, German and northern Italian gastronomical influences coalesce seamlessly to produce wholesome fare. Canton Valais is also Switzerland’s most important wine-producing regions and critics rate some of its wines to be as good as the best of neighbouring France (Rhone Valley, to be precise). Its pear brandy, Williamine, which comes with an entire fruit in the bottle is also the stuff of modern legends.

What I like about the chef’s culinary philosophy is that it is rooted in the market reality. People are increasingly moving away from the complications of traditional French gastronomy. Modern European cuisine is all about taste — extracting the most, and best, of it from fresh, locally sourced produce. To his Le Gourmet guests, Rufibach gives a peek into his cooking philosophy when he says, “Through regional and Mediterranean cuisine, we want to pass on our pleasure to you, and to bring a holiday mood onto your plate. Enjoy the moment, and the wide range of delicious food and excellent wines.”

The critical words are: “Enjoy the moment.” A great proponent of simplicity, the chefs says, “Genius lies in simplicity, and, in cooking, everything starts very simply. An idea, a top motivated team, and food of the very best quality.” His philosophy will now be put to test at the Hyatt Regency.

Talking about the Hyatt Regency, which I saw coming up in the months leading up to the 1982 Asian Games, the hotel is gearing up to celebrate the 20th anniversary of La Piazza, one of the country’s most successful and profitable restaurants (I have named it the “Bukhara of Italian restaurants”) with a reunion of all those who worked there in all these years.

The other day I met Sreenivasan G, Executive Chef of the Radisson Blu Plaza, NH-8, New Delhi, and Vikas Kapoor, General Manager of the Radisson Shimla, who started their careers as commis and steward respectively at La Piazza. Sreenivasan was remembering the restaurant’s first chef, an Austrian (who’s being located for the reunion), who had banned Tabasco and chilli flakes from the restaurant. The stewards therefore had to surreptitiously carry bottles of each items in their pockets and offer them the banned items as if they were peddling drugs!

Those were the days when Sreenivasan would start cleaning the pizza oven, square inch by square inch, from 5 in the morning. “I have known every brick of that restaurant — literally,” he said, “and I am so happy to see very little has changed in all these years.” The restaurant then would produce 400 pizzas a day, Sreenivasan recalled, and ten chefs would work in a relay to ensure that the guests did not have to wait for too long for their order to materialise. Remember, that was a time when pizzas were a genuine novelty. And the closest we came to one was the Pepperoni Pizza that Nirula’s dished out with amazing consistency of quality.

We’ll hear more about La Piazza in the weeks to come. Till then, enjoy the flavours of Canton Valais.