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.

FORTUNE COOKIE: Proud To Be Indian Yet Refusing To Be Stodgy

This is my bi-monthly column, Fortune Cookie, which appeared in the edition of Mail Today dated Thursday, March 13, 2004. Copyright: Mail Today Newspapers

There's nothing in-your-face 'South
Indian' in the look of the new Zambar
at the DLF Cyber Hub, and the menu
too is deliciously unpredictable.

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

DELHI/NCR'S Indian restaurants, even after successive waves of liberalisation, have had a limpet-like tradition of looking like a half-witted Bollywood set designer's bad dream.

Oily furniture, formica-topped tables, slouchy waiters in fancy-dress costumes, Brian Silas's repetitive renditions of Hindi movie classics on piano (or worse, live ghazals!) and boudoir art -- these were (and still are) the staples of the ambience of Indian restaurants. Such was the seeming permanence of this dolorous decor, that when the late lamented Corbett opened at The Claridges, recreating the game park theme accompanied by a menu that ventured beyond the obvious, and Park Balluchi at the Hauz Khas Village deer park capitalised on its wow setting by serving kebabs on mock swords with burning charcoal, we let out a collective sigh of relief.

It turned to be a short-lived escape from the dead weight of predictability, though, for Corbett got replaced by the Mediterranean restaurant, Sevilla, and Park Balluchi became a haven for discount-devouring tour groups. Indian restaurants went back to their cocoon of complacency as the city flirted with newer tastes and more titillating flavours. At last, there's a glimmer of hope. Three recent openings, all at the DLF Cyber Hub in Gurgaon (bordering the country's IT/BPO hub), have shown the way forward for Indian restaurant decor.

The wacky decor of Dhaba by Claridges, also at
the DLF Cyber Hub (and DLF Place, Saket),
prepares you for masterpieces such as the
vodka tharras and the best butter chicken
in Delhi/NCR

A venture of Olive Bar & Kitchen's promoter, AD Singh, steered by Mohit Balachandran (Mr Chowder Singh of the blogging world), Soda Bottle Openerwala was the first off the block with a quirky decor borrowing heavily from the unintentionally funny notices on the walls of Mumbai's Irani restaurants. Even the glass tops of its old-fashioned tables are balanced, imaginatively, by the railway station chai glasses and the LED screen at the bar, which awaits a licence, enhances the visual narrative by playing rushes of Hindi film classics and of acts by Parsi stand-up comics.

At Zambar, filmmaker-turned-chef Arun Kumar's ode to the gifted home cooks and famous tea shops of the south, backed by the corporate muscle of Amit Burman and Rohit Aggarwal's Lite Bite Foods, the minimalist decor doesn't have anything in-your-face, or stereotypically South Indian. Yet the art on the wall are digitally embellished prints of old South Indian film posters (you can't miss a Rajnikanth or a Sivaji Ganesan); the music, A.R. Rahman's chart-topping Tamil numbers; and the menu has happy surprises such as Prawn Rasam, the addictive Cauliflower Bezule (fried cauliflower florets coated in spices and rice flour batter), mutton mince balls (kola urundu), Kerala tea shop chilli chicken, and the unbeatable squid rings with seafood filling.

Unsurprisingly, Zambar has been drawing full houses ever since it opened a couple of weeks back. It's still impossible to find a table at Soda Bottle without waiting -- people just want to have their Mutton Berry Pulao, the juicy fried chicken (Marghi Na Farcha) and Bheeda Par Eeda (fried eggs on spicy okra) again, and again, and yet again. And it's not any different for Dhaba by Claridges, the new capital of the Republic of Youngistan, promoted by Sanjeev Nanda, its wacky menu laid out by Ravi Saxena, Corporate Chef of The Claridges Hotels and Resorts.

Dhaba by Claridges takes the hotel's hugely popular restaurant, famous for its Balti Meat, out of the stuffy five-star environment, and funkifies (I don't know if there's such a word!) the highway dining experience. The ambience is playful, the signs on the wall have that irreverential quality that has made Comedy Nights by Kapil the current rage, and innovations such as vodka cocktails (nicknamed tharras) served in quarters (pau-a bottles) and the humble baigan bharta arriving in a beaten-metal canister, are all drawing trendy young people to this restaurant in droves.

These restaurants are rewriting the rules of how purveyors of Indian cuisine must look without playing around with the basics. The butter chicken at Dhaba by Claridges is the best, in my view, in Delhi/NCR, and people in the know insist that Soda Bottle's Berry Pulao is better than what you get at Britannia in Mumbai. We are in for good times.

NO PLACE FOR TASTE ENHANCERS IN POLISH VODKA

VODKA, in our imagination, may be irrevocably associated with the escape it offered to people weighed down by communist drudgery in the erstwhile Soviet Union, but it is Poland that possesses the oldest written record of the drink dating back to 1405. And it is home to some of the world's most acclaimed vodkas, notably the Wyborowa, whose bottle was designed by the celebrated Canadian-American architect, Frank Gehri.

So, I spent an afternoon with Charles Gibb, President of Belvedere, the vodka brand instantly recognisable for the image of Poland's presidential palace (Palac Belwederski or Belweder Palace, Warsaw) that it carries on its slender bottle, quizzing him about what sets Polish vodka apart from its competition. A Polish vodka, like Scotch, has to be produced from Polish rye or potatoes (Belvedere is made from a rye named Dankowski, which has quite a distinguished heritage and is famously associated with another notable Polish vodka, Sobieski). The water has to be drawn from a natural source at the distillery -- Belvedere's formula requires its water, sourced from an artesian well, to be purified 11 times, so that, in Gibb's words, "it provides a completely blank canvas for the expression of rye".

Polish vodka makers cannot also use additives such as glycerine and citric acid -- and this came as a revelation to me -- that the industry routinely uses to add a hint of flavour to what is erroneously supposed to be a tasteless product. "The idea of a neutral-tasting vodka is the American definition of the drink," exclaimed Gibb, a Scotsman who's married to an Australian and lives in New York. "You must be able to taste the Belvedere in your drink." (Look out for a more detailed interview with Gibb will appear on this blog very soon.)

WE SAY MACAROON, THEY SAYS MACRON

CELEBRATED patissier Pierre Herme's visit to the city, courtesy of the India Today Conclave, has triggered off a spirited debate, started by the man himself, on the difference between a macaroon and a macron. Well, it's simple -- macron is French and macaroon is English. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the first recorded usage of the English word,  macaroon, dates back to 1611. And Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, which was first published in 1861, has a recipe for making a macaroon. Both the words are derived from the Italian maccarone or maccherone, and they mean the same thing: meringue-like cookies made with egg white, almond paste, ground almonds or coconut, and sugar with a crisp crust and soft interior with a filling at the centre.

The confusion, I believe, has been caused by the picture accompanying the Wikipedia entry for macaroons -- it's of a coconut macaroon, which was a best-seller on the Wenger's menu and looks very different from the standard image of the confection. It was L'Opera that changed our mental image of a macaroon and more recently, Breads & More has outdone the French patisserie. Now, did you know that the bakers of the Tamil Nadu town of Thoothukudi (or Tuticorin) have an old tradition of making macaroons with egg white, cashew and sugar? You'll love the ones from Shanti Bakery, which has been making macaroons since 1964.

AND WHAT'S THIS 'POLMOS' BUSINESS ALL ABOUT?

EACH bottle of Belvedere, or for that matter any vodka produced in Poland, carries the acronym POLMOS. Its expanded form is 'Polish Monopoly of Spirits'. The expression harks back to the time when all vodka in this East European country, then behind the Iron Curtain, used to be produced in state-owned distilleries. After the Polish people got rid of communism in 1989, the government started selling its distilleries to the highest bidders and Belvedere, produced at a place called Zyrardow, 45km from Warsaw, was picked up by Eddie Phillips, a serial entrepreneur and son of 'Dear Abby', America's most famous agony aunt. The brand has been owned since 2001 by the luxury conglomerate, LVMH.