RESTAURANT REVIEW: Sumptuous Treat for the Senses in a Green Getaway

This review first appeared in Mail Today, Delhi/NCR. Copyright: Mail Today
http://epaper.mailtoday.in/epaperhome.aspx?issue=11102013

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

The grandeur of Kiyan’s architecture, the beauty of the manicured greenery around it and the novelty of the menu make eating here a complete treat for the senses

INFOBOX

WHAT: Kiyan @ Dusit Devarana New Delhi

WHERE: Samalkha, NH-8 (Take a U-turn from under the Rajokri flyover)

DIAL: 011-33552211

PRICE PER PERSON (MINUS ALCOHOL): Rs 1,800 (veg) / Rs 2,300 (non-veg) +++

Check whether the resort hotel has got its alcohol licence

WHERE in this teeming city of ours can you have a meal watching a family of ducks waddle past you, the mother leading the way with Nazi steps, on a placid pool of crystal clear water amid acres of trees and shimmering green grass?

Nishant Choubey, formerly of Olive
Beach and Cibo, has crafted a plated
menu that brings into play the best
of contemporary techniques and
international ingredients

The world’s first Dusit Devarana, the spa resort brand created by Thailand’s Dusit Thani group of luxury hotels, has opened on one of Delhi’s busiest roads, the one leading to the Gurgaon toll plaza, flanked by Rajokri and Samalkha. But once you step inside, away from the bustle of traffic and the drone of landing aeroplanes, you are transported into a world of meditative silence and eye-warming greenery. It’s like being in a showpiece farmhouse.

Kiyan thrives in the heart of this oasis. The all-day restaurant, guarded by three monumental pillars inspired by ancient Sumerian architecture, is special because it will be the first to serve only individually plated, four-course meals — three options: European, Pan Asian and Indian — priced between Rs 1,800 and Rs 2,300 per person plus taxes. It’s the kind of restaurant where you don’t have to spend ten minutes pondering over the menu and then order just what you had asked for the last time you went there. It takes the tedium out of ordering and creates room for pleasant surprises.

The chef steering the restaurant, which I see becoming a major magnet after this Durga Puja-Navratra season winds down, is the young and creative Nishant Choubey, who earned his spurs at Olive Beach and then Cibo, when it was still a restaurant worth visiting. Choubey and his younger team (I was particularly impressed by bakery chef Anand Panwar’s 11-grain breads and baguettes) have created a multi-layered dining experience where each dish stands out for its combination of tastes and textures.

They surprise us with the care they take to choose their ingredients — artisan whole wheat flour from Germany for the breads, Ponni rice for the idlis, 65-day-old chickens (poussin) whose meat with skin on melts in the mouth, Spanish black pork sausages (sobrassada), home-made ricotta cheese pasta (gnudi) and even clementine (a variety of mandarin oranges) that grows only in May and June at the resort’s organic farm in Rajokri. There’s a sense of refreshing newness in this roster of ingredients.

I knew I would come back to Kiyan when I had its Andaman lobster wok-tossed with Madras shallots and served on a bed of ‘samundri bhaat’ (a memorable seafood khichdi). The novelty of the preparation combined with its deceptive simplicity just blew my mind. Likewise, the combination of foie gras (100 per cent goose liver — thank God for it!), Himalayan red salt and wine-poached prunes was so delicately balanced that the muscular robustness of the foie gras (I wish, though, it was sautéed a little gently) wasn’t overpowered by the sweetness of the prunes.

My personal wow moment, though, was the tomato soup, imbued with the power of fleshy confit tomatoes, their gentle tartness complemented by the bitter-sweet citrusy notes of the clementine foam. The other must-haves are the black cod with miso glaze and baby bok choy (a no-brainer if the fish is right and is just gently seared), zesty mushrooms (shimeji and enoki) and feta cheese wrapped in wafer-thin phyllo pastry sheets, and the gnudi that comes with a delectable spinach cream. And yes, whether it’s on the menu or not, you must ask for (no, demand, even threaten the management with dire consequences) the toffee pudding. It beats every other toffee pudding I have had in my life. Writing about it makes me hungry and makes me want to set off for Kiyan at once.

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.