Delhi Gourmet Club Rates Masala Art's Dal Makhni Above Dal Bukhara; Moti Mahal Delux at No. 15

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

THE world of Dal Makhni won't be the same again. An 11-member Delhi Gourmet Club (DGC) tasting panel led by 'Mr Old Monk' and author of critically acclaimed cookbooks, Rocky Mohan, voted the Dal Makhni served at Masala Art, Taj Palace, as Delhi's Best.

The judgment should send ripples of shock along the corridors of neighbouring ITC Maurya because its famed Dal Bukhara has been unseated from its perch at the top by the judges who conducted a blind tasting of 24 Dal Makhni samples in three batches of eight across three days.

The last lot of Dal Makhni samples that were tasted
by the Delhi Gourmet Club panel led by its
founder-member, Rocky Mohan.
Photo by Rajeev Gulati

Just one point separates the weighted average of Masala Art's Dal Makhni and that of the venerable Dal Bukhara (70.44 vs 69.44), though, if I had my way, my vote would have gone to the Langarwali Dal at Taj Palace! Bukhara is separated by a whisker from (surprises don't cease!) Jamawar at The Leela Palace New Delhi (69.11) and Baluchi at The Lalit (68.44). So, just two points separate No. 1 and No. 4. It must be the closest contest ever. Spice Art at Crowne Plaza, Rohini (No. 19; 36.89) and Dhaba at The Claridges (No. 20; 30.67) are at the bottom of the heap.

The results must have taken the jury by surprise, which may explain why its members decided unanimously to honour Dal Bukhara with the Hall of Fame Award. It is indeed the benchmark, although Monish Gujral of Moti Mahal Delux (MMD) insists that it was his grandfather, the legendary Kundan Lal Gujral, who invented Dal Makhni, along with Butter Chicken. The jury had a shock in store for MMD.

It has been a real comedown for the self-declared inventor of this post-Partition Punjabi restaurant dish, which the rest of the country regards as an insult to our favourite urad dal (acclaimed columnist Vir Sanghvi calls Dal Makhni a "dairy product"). MMD's Dal Makhni is at No. 15 with 49.56 points! If the recipe given by Monish Gujral in his book, Moti Mahal's Tandoori Trail (Roli Books), is anything to go by, you might as well have lots of milk, butter and cream and start imagining that you've had dal!

Here's the list of ingredients used by Moti Mahal Delux (and it's pretty much true for all Dal Makhni variants, including Dal Bukhara, except that it uses only urad dal, or black gram): Urad Dal, whole, 3-1/3 cups or 500gm; Kidney Beans (Rajma), 1-3/4 cups or 250gm; Bengal Grams (Chana Dal), 1-3/4 cups or 250gm; Milk, 5 cups or 1 litre; Tomato Puree, 5 cups or 1 litre; Red Chilli Powder, 25gm; Cumin (Jeera) powder, 25gm; Garam Masala, 25gm; Butter, 1 kg; Cream, 2-1/2 cups or 500ml; Salt to taste. Did someone say this is dal?!

A Punjabi grandma would have an nervous breakdown if she were told this is a Punjabi dish. Sanghvi blames this on post-Partition Punjabi migrant restaurateurs from Peshawar, whose idea of making a dish shahi (blue-blooded) was to pump it up with butter, cream and tomatoes, and he extensively quotes ITC's hotelier-at-large Gautam Anand, who's also a brilliant blogger, to back his view.

Having said all this, I have to point out that Dal Makhni, like Butter Chicken, has a dedicated following, including the 11 brave men and women on the jury who went through the tasting exercise with dedication and passion. The jury represent the average anonymous consumer who keeps restaurants in business--just one of them is a hospitality industry consultant. And as with the previous Delhi Gourmet Club panels, which judged Delhi/NCR's best butter chicken, hamburgers, seekh kebabs (which, incidentally, was won by Bukhara), pizzas, dosas and now Dal Makhni, it is the voice of the average anonymous consumer that gets expressed in these results.

The rest of the list makes for interesting reading because of the fractional differences between the various contenders. Is this because of the fundamental uniformity in the Dal Makhni recipes across restaurants? Dal Bukhara is made with bottled water, others are not, but that doesn't seem to have helped its cause! Some may be using full-fat cream, others may not. Some may be using salted butter, others may not. The results show that there's no real product differentiation in Dal Makhni offerings across restaurants.

Before I wrap up, here are the rankings of the rest of the restaurants, other than the ones already mentioned, that made it to the First 20:

4. HAVEMORE @ PANDARA ROAD (63.89)

5. SET'Z @ DLF EMPORIO, VASANT KUNJ (62.89)

6. MINAR @ CONNAUGHT PLACE, OUTER CIRCLE (60.89)

7. INVITATION @ ASHOK VIHAR (56.44)

8. KWALITY @ PARLIAMENT STREET, CONNAUGHT PLACE (56.11)

9. MOET @ DEFENCE COLONY (56.00)

10. MADE IN PUNJAB @ DLF CYBER HUB, GURGAON (55.78)

11. THE GREAT KEBAB FACTORY @ RADISSON BLU PLAZA, MAHIPALPUR (53.89)

12. GULATI @ PANDARA ROAD (53.44)

13. EMBASSY @ CONNAUGHT PLACE (50.89)

14. KASBAH @ N-BLOCK MARKET, GK-I (50.67)

15. MOTI MAHAL @ M-BLOCK MARKET, GK-I (49.56)

16. MUGHAL BBQ (49.22)

17. UNITED COFFEE HOUSE @ CONNAUGHT PLACE (45.33)

18. MUGHAL MAHAL @ M-BLOCK MARKET, GK-II (40.78)

(This blogger is a founder-member of the Delhi Gourmet Club, but the views expressed in this post are entirely personal.)

Taj's Grand Master, Hemant Oberoi, Unveils his First Book and a Tempting New Menu at Masala Art

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

ONE OF the biggest mistakes The Oberoi group made was not to hire Hemant Oberoi. He was asked to tweak his surname because there could be only one Oberoi in the group. The young man destined to become the country's most accomplished chef of his generation refused to relent. Instead, he joined the Taj, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Hemant Oberoi, Corporate Chef, Taj
Hotels, unwinds at Masala Art, the
restaurant he created 12 years ago at
the Taj Palace in New Delhi. This
picture has been taken by Hoihnu
Hauzel, journalist and food writer.

I met the Corporate Chef of the Taj Hotels at Masala Art, where he was celebrating the launch of his debut book, The Masala Art: Indian Haute Cuisine (Roli Books), 12 years after the restaurant, one of his three famous babies, opened at the Taj Palace in New Delhi and revolutionised the way people looked at our country's gastronomic heritage. It made good old-fashioned ganne ka ras (sugarcane juice) sexy. It gave a new spin to the everyday phulka by getting it made a la minute on a trolley by the table. It introduced the fashion of cooking in olive oil and pairing kebabs and curries with wine. Its menu carried art by Paresh Maity and Prabhakar Kolte, and on its walls hung the works of Jitish Kallat -- that was when nobody knew him. It did away with live ghazals in favour of contemporary piped music.

In other words, it did what no Indian restaurant had dared to do before. Since Masala Art, as Oberoi said with his characteristic blunt wit, there have been many CCPs (cut, copy and paste restaurants), but the original has stood its ground and spread to Mumbai -- Masala Kraft at the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower and the more seafood-driven Masala Bay at Taj Land's End -- as well as Bangalore in the avatar of Masala Klub.

Oberoi subsequently developed two stellar new concepts -- Blue Ginger, the country's first Vietnamese restaurant (first in Bangalore and then in Delhi), and thereafter Varq at the Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi, which introduced the city to Oberoi's Indian take on haute cuisine -- but Masala Art remains his most definitive contribution. It is only appropriate therefore that he has chosen to name his first book after the restaurant.

"What next?" I asked the grand master. "Wait till next year," he replied. "I am presenting a concept that I have been working on for seven years. The restaurant will be the first of its kind in India." Oberoi did not elaborate, but he did rev up my imagination.

The first thing that struck me as I leafed through the lavishly illustrated book is the work schedule he still follows. He may have served presidents and prime ministers (in fact, if he writes a book on the dignitaries he has fed, it will be a runaway best-seller), but his working day still stretches from 9 in the morning to 11:30 at night, when he returns home to a cup of tea. It reminded me of the early days of Masala Art.

In the course of an interview, I asked him whether he ever gets family time. He narrated a very funny story. He said that people he knew described their growing children in terms of their height, but he could only talk about his two sons in terms of their length, because he always saw them sleeping. It's surprising that the two boys have followed in their father's footsteps, but they must have been fired by the awards and accolades he has earned in his crowded life.

That was also the time when the then prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, insisted on taking Oberoi around the world so that he could showcase the best of Indian cuisine in official banquets. I asked Oberoi how it was to live out of travel bags, hotel rooms and airport lounges. He said he works on restaurant concepts on flights because he gets uncluttered time only when he's flying! Unsurprisingly, he doesn't let his mind rest even after he launches a new restaurant.

At Masala Art, for instance, he has launched a new menu, which is more national in character. It has beauties such as the broccoli and kaffir lime shorba, crab masaledar (or peppered edamame for the vegetarians) in filo, balchao seabass, bhatti ke asparagus, haleemi gilawati (a refreshing departure from the standard gilawati kebab), ghee roast chicken (Oberoi has retrieved an original recipe of this favourite dish of Aishwarya Rai's community, the Bunts of Kundapura in Karnataka's famed Udupi district, dating back to the 19th century), bharwan guchchi with malai ki sabzi (stuffed king-size morels with a curry made with cream), and an amazing gajar ka halwa filo cigar with rabdi, fresh strawberry elaneer payasam and malt kulfi, which must rank as one of the chef's most striking innovations.

His proverbial rabbits from the magician's hat, though, were the see-through glass mini-handis for the dum ki biryani, which the renowned German glassware makers, Schott Zwiesel, took two years to develop. Oberoi's brief to them was that they should produce a glass handi so that each portion of biryani is cooked individually in the oven and the chefs are able to see it rise. It takes a grand master to visualise a product that turns a meal into a gastronomic journey.

DINING OUT: Punjabi Beauties in Gurgaon's Cyberia

This restaurant review first appeared in Mail Today on Friday, October 25, 2013.
Copyright: Mail Today Newspapers
http://epaper.mailtoday.in/showtext.aspx?boxid=525859&parentid=86723&issuedate=25102013

SNAPSHOT

WHERE: Made in Punjab, 6 & 7, Ground Floor, Cyber Hub, DLF Cyber City, Gurgaon

WHEN: 12 NOON to 4 P.M.; 7:30 TO 11:30 P.M.

DIAL: +91 8130911899 / 8800692397

AVG. MEAL FOR TWO (A LA CARTE): Rs 1,500+++

The restaurant doesn’t have a liquor licence yet.

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

The mutton tandoori chaanp is a favourite at the

must-go-to Made in Punjab in Gurgaon’s new

‘food mall’, DLF Cyber Hub, which will have 44

restaurants when it is fully operational. (Photo by

Ramesh Sharma / Copyright: Mail Today)

AS YOU enter Made in Punjab on the ground floor of the country’s “first food mall”, DLF Cyber Hub, Gurgaon, after negotiating dug-up roads and traffic diversions, you’re greeted by three humongous tandoors encased in titanium shells at the front end of a see-through turbocharged kitchen. It was only a couple of days after its opening that I was at the restaurant in the yet-to-formally-open mall sandwiched between Infinity Towers and HeroBPO and the DLF building that looks like a miniature of Dubai’s Burj al-Arab, just off NH-8.

It smelt, as the deathless Kurt Cobain sang so memorably, like teen spirit. I could only see Youngistan all around me, not exactly teenagers but young executives from the steel-and-glass temples of India Inc surrounding the Cyber Hub, digging the all-you-can-eat buffet priced at Rs 550 A.I. (“it is only an introductory offer, sir,” the manager was quick to add, lest I started entertaining delusions of paying little to live it up).

Halomax lights, a current favourite of stylish stores in malls, give the restaurant a warm, welcoming glow; the tables have Italian marble tops and the chairs are made with Burma teak; the crockery, cutlery and serviettes are all branded. The music of Advaita, my favourite Delhi band, plays in the background — a seamless fusion of rock, Sufi and Hindustani classical that can soothe even the most jangled nerves.

The place oozes quite elegance, despite its opening price of Rs 550 A.I., which, I am told, is not likely to go up beyond Rs 650 A.I. That I don’t expect to happen soon, thoughy, because competition will get serious once the DLF Cyber Hub has its 44 restaurants up and running when it becomes fully operational. The line-up includes India’s biggest Hard Rock Café; AD Singh’s Irani restaurant venture, Soda Water Openerwala; Dimsumbros/Yo China duo Ashish Kapur and Ajay Saini’s The Wine Company (where you’ll be able to buy wine at retail prices and have your meal with your favourite grape); the Rajasthani restaurant hugely popular in Maharashtra, Panchvati Gaurav; and Made in Punjab’s competition (and mirror image), Dhaba by The Claridges.

Coming back to Made in Punjab, the excitement begin with each table getting a sampler of six types of papad with four different chutneys to stoke the appetite of the lunch-time turnout for the feast lined up on tables crowded with busy induction stoves and stylish cast-iron pots designed by the French company Le Creuset. Curries and biryani kept in these pots don’t get overcooked — a common complaint with buffet food warmed in old-fashioned chafing dishes.

The spread includes ten starters, ten kinds of biryani and curries, ten salads and ten desserts, including a divine Moong Dal Halwa that miraculously doesn’t swim in ghee. It also includes the Made in Punjab version of French tableside cooking — live phulka and dal trolleys, a nifty innovation introduced to Delhi’s dining scene by Masala Art at Taj Palace. The Dal Saat Salaam — no, it’s not a Maoist slogan! — is made with seven kinds of tempering by your tableside (which explains the name). Made in Punjab has changed the meaning of value for money. The variety it offers also would make you want to come back again for the buffet.

The 112-seater restaurant’s a la carte menu has a number of standouts, but my favourites are the saffron-infused, generously creamy murgh kastoori kebabs, the more rugged tandoori chaanp, the generously proportioned Kashmiri morels (bharwan gucchi), the unforgettable prawn kulcha and gucchi naan, which I have never had anywhere before, the World’s Heaviest Lassi laden with rabdi and peda from Mathura, and the Kulfi Sundae.

Made in Punjab is just what Delhi/NCR’s new generation of diners needed but never had. And if you go for the buffet spread, make sure you check out each item in the churan platter that comes to you at the end in an ornate box with brightly hued ceramic pigeonholes.