The Oberoi's Old Sushi Master Augusto Cabrera Back in the City as Town Hall's Managing Partner

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

Augusto Cabrera, seen above in his days at The
Oberoi New Delhi, is back in the city as Executive
Chef and Managing Partner of the 160-seater
Town Hall  restaurant in Khan Market.

WHEN The Oberoi New Delhi's Master Sushi Chef Augusto Cabrera left the hotel where he had the national capital's elite eating out of his hands at threesixty°, he said he was returning to his home city in the Philippines to open a restaurant that would be owned by his family. But lo and behold, he's back in the city as Executive Chef and Managing Partner of the new restaurant that has got everyone talking -- Town Hall at Khan Market. And he has hired his former second-in-command, who had reportedly moved on to Wasabi by Morimoto at the Taj Mahal Hotel, as the replacement for Vikramjit Roy.

For The Oberoi, it means competition that is too close for comfort, but having sampled the sushi rolls at threesixty° a couple of Sundays back, I couldn't discern any drop in quality. It was as if Augusto hadn't left. That is the strength of The Oberoi. It seems impervious to personnel changes. And I believe, a replacement for Augusto, who had joined The Oberoi from Dubai's Towers Rotana in 2004, will soon be seen in action at threesixty°. Then, it promises to be a battle of the sushi masters!

Enough of speculation. Now, let's return to the facts. Town Hall is a 160-seater international fine-dining restaurant with noticeably high ceilings, a sushi station and a terrace dining space with a wood-fired pizza oven. In scale, Town Hall is the most ambitious restaurant project after Set'Z, which is at DLF Emporio, and it is being promoted by Navneet Kalra of Dayal Opticals, who seems to own just about every square inch of Khan, including the ever-popular Khan Chacha, and the space now occupied by Harry's Bar and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Partnering with him is Randeep Bajaj, the 28-year-old owner of Amour restaurants, who has extended his wings from Hauz Khas Village and Malcha Marg Market.

Augusto joins them in his new role as chef-turned-entrepreneur (he describes the restaurant as the place where "East meets West"), bringing with him his wealth of professional experience and deep understanding of the Delhi market. It was he, after all, who rid Delhi's chattering classes of their fear of raw fish by introducing the culture of sushi rolls. The minuscule Japanese market, back then in 2004, was dominated by the classical approaches of Sakura and Tamura, the two haunts of the city's Japanese expat population.
I remember how Master Chef Nariyoshi Nakamura, who was then at Sakura (and is now being wasted at the Sheraton New Delhi, Saket), would sniff at the idea of sushi rolls. Sushi, in his dictionary, meant nigiri, nori seaweed-wrapped maki, temaki and the gunboat, gunkan maki. Augusto and threesixty° changed all that. Will he and his mates be able to breathe life into Khan Market, which looks like a ghost town after 8 p.m.? The city will soon be looking towards Town Hall for the answer.

FORTUNE COOKIE: How Delhi Got Over Its Fear of Raw Fish

This column first appeared in the February 27, 2014, edition of Mail Today. Here's the link to the original: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2568654/FORTUNE-COOKIE-How-Delhi-fell-love-raw-fish
Copyright: Mail Today Newspapers

By Sourish Bhattacharyya
I STILL remember when Delhi/NCR's first real Japanese restaurant, Sakura, opened in the year 2000 at what was then called The Metropolitan Hotel Nikko, even seasoned diners would shudder at the thought of having raw fish. They regarded sushi and sashimi with trepidation because the closest contact the city, outside the Bengali community, had with fish till then was the batter-quilted, deep-fried Amritsari variety. Raw fish wasn't our idea of good food. And Japanese meant Fujiya's chicken gyoza (fried dumplings) or what passed off as Japanese at The Ashok's Tokyo restaurant.

The popularity of the sushi platter
of Wasabi by Morimoto, which
has just turned five, mirrors the
evolution of the city's taste buds.

Sakura, predictably, became a hangout of Japanese expats, who found heaven in the o-toro (tuna belly supreme), hotate (scallop) and hamachi (yellowtail), blast frozen and flown in three times a day by Japan Airlines, that Master Chef Nariyoshi Nakamura would slice for them with his platinum knives, which he kept with reverential care at one corner of his kitchen. For family outings, they would head to Tamura, which was run by one of them in that quiet corner where Vasant Vihar's Paschimi Marg meets Poorvi Marg, the only place in the world where East  meets West.

The local clientele preferred the comfort of tempura and yakitori, the Japanese pakodas and kebabs, or go to TK's at the Hyatt Regency and assume that its Benihana-type teppanyaki offerings were Japanese. That may explain why the Taj did not open a Wasabi in Delhi for five years after launching the restaurant with the much-acclaimed Japanese American 'Iron Chef', Masaharu Morimoto, in Mumbai a decade ago. And even when threesixtydegrees at The Oberoi decided to make its sushi boat the talk of the town, it consigned its Japanese counter to one corner of the popular restaurant presided over by a Filipino expat named Augusta imported from Dubai. Augusta, with his charming ways, made sushi accessible to the ladies who lunch by getting them addicted to his sushi-rolling classes. It coincided with the discovery of Nobu by the chatterati, who made a pilgrimage to Nobuyuki Matsuhisa's London restaurant their annual holiday pilgrimage, and they got addicted to its miso-marinated black cod.

When Wasabi by Morimoto opened at the Taj Mahal Hotel in New Delhi, the market had already grown used to Japanese food, but Sakura had ceased to matter and the city still feared raw fish. Unsurprisingly, like elsewhere in the world, California rolls started getting popular (and home delivered), because you ate the rice first and the minuscule presence of raw fish got masked by mayonnaise, avocado and what not. Some people even tried to introduce tandoori sushi, but, thankfully, the trend did not catch on even in this Republic of Butter Chicken. Nonetheless, California rolls, in a number of avatars, are on offer at restaurants as different from each other as Set'Z at DLF Emporio, Kylin Premier at the Ambience Mall, Vasant Kunj, and the new and funkier TC behind DLF Place, Saket.

Wasabi by Morimoto now has competition from Megu, the Indian outlet of the trendy New York restaurant at The Leela Palace New Delhi, and the most recent addition to this growing family of Japanese restaurants, Akira Back at the New Delhi Aerocity's JW Marriott, whose tuna pizzas have acquired a cult following. Outside five-star hotels, Guppy by Ai at the Lodhi Colony Market and En at the New Ambavatta Complex in Mehrauli are jostling for attention, but the price points and location of the former are clearly working to its advantage. The menus of these restaurants have convinced us that Japanese cuisine doesn't equal raw fish, though, given any opportunity, I'd personally have raw tuna belly or scallops or salmon at any time on any day -- like a tom cat on steroids. Wasabi by Morimoto has turned five by unveiling a new menu with inventive vegetarian options. The Capital's roller-coaster romance with Japanese cuisine is now a decade old, but it has shown with its adaptive agility that ten years is a long time for a city's palate.

METRO LINE INSPIRES A DELICIOUS JOURNEY AT VIVANTA BY TAJ

FIVE-STAR restaurant menus can be predictable to the point of being boring, but there's always the occasional creative spark that makes you want to set out on a mission to find out more. It is such a long journey from South Delhi to the Vivanta by Taj, which opened not too long ago at Sector-44, Gurgaon, that your immediate response is to give up the idea of visiting the hotel. But when the story waiting at the other end of the interminable drive is the Yellow Line Menu, curiosity drags you to it.

The Yellow Line Menu takes you on a culinary voyage across the Metro line that stretches from Jehangirpuri, via Chandni Chowk, to the HUDA City Centre in Gurgaon, which is next door to the hotel -- in fact, from Latitude, the all-day restaurant where the menu is on offer, you can see the trains zipping up and down. Executive Chef Neeraj Chaudhry, who avoids the spotlight as hard as possible, has turned the Yellow Line Menu into an engaging creative statement.

Chaudhry's gravy train takes off with Sita Ram Bazaar's Dahi Bhalle Papri Chaat served in a cute three-tiered utensil -- the presentation is an ode to Chandni Chowk's timeless class. Connaught Place is celebrated with bread rolls stuffed with mozzarella, a delicious twist to a snack that will take you back to your childhood, and Shankar Market's lassi; INA's dhabas have inspired the silky chicken malai tikke and the tangdi and seekh kebabs; Sarojini Nagar's bustling market, famous for its hardy perennial halwai shops, is represented by gobhi and palak patta pakore; Hauz Khas by steamed momos served with hot garlic sauce, an obvious reference to the bustling 'momo economy'; and Chhattarpur, which we associate with opulent temples and manicured farmhouses, makes an appearance with mutton korma and tawa parantha.

For an expat, or a newcomer, can there be a better introduction to the city's food cornucopia? It makes me want to discover the Violet Line Menu at other Vivanta at Surajkund. The Metro line connects Central Secretariat with Badarpur, via Khan Market, Jangpura, Okhla and Sarita Vihar. I wonder how this food story will shape up.

THE SAMOSA SANDWICH GETS REINVENTED AT EGGSPECTATION

WHEN Enzo Renda, a Sicilian entrepreneur from Montreal, tied up with Jaypee Hotels a decade ago to launch his Eggspectation chain of restaurants, which is famous for its many versions of  Eggs Benedict, he couldn't have imagined that his menu would have Chholey Samosa Burger.

When I first chanced upon the burger at the outlet at Jaypee Vasant, where I have been going for years to quell my post-drinks hunger pangs with the fully stacked Eggspectation Omelette, I was stuck by the originality of the idea. There's not one of us who hasn't had a samosa sandwich; all it needed was a bright spark to turn the snack into a burger on a brioche bun. It was a similar stroke of genius that turned the McAloo Tikki Burger, a McDonald's India creation, into an international phenomenon, selling from Dubai to Indonesia.

Eggspectation's new menu should turn the restaurant into a destination for diners perennially on the lookout for wholesome ideas. Between the Bad Boy Tenderloin Burger with crispy bacon and Cheddar cheese and the Mushroom Melt Burger with tofu and melted Provolone cheese, there's a world of new tastes waiting to be discovered out there.

LOUIS XIII LUCRATIVE CHINA MARKET TANKS

PRESIDENT Xi Jinping's crackdown against China's culture of ostentatious gifting, which was the accepted way of bribing in the past, has had an unusual victim -- the luxury cognac brand, Louis XIII, a bottle of which sells for Rs 1.9 lakh (duty-free!) in Delhi. China accounted for 40 per cent of Louis XIII's worldwide sales. It was also the biggest market for the cognac's rare cask version, each of whose 738 decanters, is priced at 50,000 pounds sterling duty-free. The sales today are down to zero. India therefore is back to being the darling of the luxury business. And yes, there are unusual takers, such as rural Delhi's landed gentry, for such extravagant indulgences.

Gaggan's is Asia's No. 3 & Continent's Best Indian Restaurant; Indian Accent Rises 12 Notches, But At No. 29, Behind Bukhara's No. 27

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

WHEN I last met Gaggan Anand, the high priest of Progressing Indian Dining, at his namesake restaurant in Bangkok last year, he said it was his dream to reach the top of the World's 50 Best Restaurants -- in the footsteps of his icon Ferran Adria, at whose laboratory he had mastered the techniques that make his kitchen special. He was then at No. 66 on the hallowed world list -- the only Indian restaurant to make it to that pantheon of greats -- and I thought he had a long way to go.

The winners pose for the photo-op on the Asia's 50 Best
Restaurants awards night at Capella Hotel in Sentosa,
Singapore, on Monday, February 23.

Not anymore. Gaggan, a Kolkata-born Taj alumnus who made Bangkok his home in 2007, is today at No. 3 of the Asian's Best 50 List, which was unveiled at a glittering awards ceremony at the Capella Hotel in Sentosa, Singapore, on the night of Monday, February 23. He's up by seven notches from his 2013 ranking, next only to the list leader, Australian expat David Thompson's Nahm (also in Bangkok), and the No. 2, Yoshihiro Narisawa's eponymous Tokyo restaurant. That makes Gaggan's, without doubt, Asia's Best Indian restaurant.

That's also where the good news ends. For, India's Best, Bukhara at the ITC Maurya, figures 24 notches below Gaggan's, at No. 27. And Indian Accent, which is the closest to Gaggan's in style and deserving of a far better ranking, is at No. 29, thankfully up by 12 notches from its No. 41 in 2013. I still cannot fathom how you can have Bukhara, the last outpost of predictable dining that hasn't changed as long as Mount Everest has been around, Gaggan's, Indian Accent, Nahm and Narisawa on the same list.

I also wonder why Zorawar Kalra's Masala Library (Mumbai), which is Indian Accent's most serious challenger, Abhijit Saha's Caperberry (Bangalore), Rahul Akerkar's Indigo (Mumbai), the magician Vikramjit Roy's gastronomical laboratory, Pan Asian at the ITC Grand Chola, Chennai, or the brilliant Mickey Bhoite's creative playground, Le Cirque at The Leela Palace, New Delhi, not on the list. The Indian jury seems to be terribly out of sync with the country's changing reality, or it's too five-star-centric, that too stuck between ITC and Taj.

India is represented by six mostly uninspiring restaurants -- Dum Pukht at ITC Maurya, New Delhi (No. 30), which has lost its creative sparkle; Varq at The Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi (No. 32), which has quietly given up any claims to leadership on the Progressive Indian front; Wasabi by Morimoto at Taj Mumbai (No. 36), which is without doubt one of India's finest restaurants; and the has-been Karavalli at the Gateway Hotel on Residency Road, Bangalore  (No. 40).

India, like a patchy middle-order batsman, has been fumbling in the lower end of the list. Bangkok also has six names on the list, but the rankings of its restaurants, starting with Nahm and Gaggan, are far more impressive. Singapore leads the list with eight restaurants, followed by Japan with seven and Hong Kong with six.

Hong Kong's Fook Lam Moon, the unpretentious traditional Chinese restaurant that opened in Wamchai in 1948, has been the most spectacular climber, going up by 29 notches on a list where most restaurants have slipped. Barring Indian Accent, which has seen its ranking climb, the other Indian restaurants on the list have fallen behind -- Bukhara by one, Dumpukht by 13, Varq by two, Wasabi by Morimoto by 16 and Karavalli by five. The Best Indian Restaurant is now at No. 26, compared with No. 17 (Dumpukht) last year. But Indians at least have the consolation of savouring Gaggan's spectacular rise.

As Wasabi By Morimoto Turns 5 in New Delhi, Grand Master Hemant Oberoi Shares His Inspirations

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

A MEETING with Grand Master Chef Hemant Oberoi can only mean an explosion of new ideas. As we waited for journalists and bloggers to trickle in for the media lunch organised to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Wasabi by Morimoto at The Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi, he had me riveted by recalling how he, on his flight back from Davos, where he had catered for the World Economic Forum, had conjured up an idea to transform a party that was being hosted at the Taj Mumbai.

"I think best when I am on a flight," Oberoi said. It was a last-minute change of plans and, naturally, it sent his team into a state of tizzy, but imagine going to a party with 50 live counters, each with an LCD screen running a film on the ingredient being cooked at the counter! Or going to a counter and seeing the meats or vegetables of your choice being grilled under the coal-fired contraption that's been used for ages to iron clothes!

(From left) Wasabi by Morimoto Manager
Malvika Sahay, Executive Chef Amit Chowdhury,
Grand Master Chef Hemant Oberoi, and
General Manager, The Taj Mahal Hotel,
New Delhi, Satyajeet Krishnan, pose with the
new menu of the restaurant that has turned five

Oberoi got these coal-fired irons from Dhobighat and they served his purpose well by perfectly grilling the meats or vegetables, which were packed in parchment paper, at 80 degrees  Celsius. Needless to say, Taj Mumbai made a lot of money out of this party, only going to show that there are people who are ready to pay for a special experience.

On Wasabi by Morimoto turning five in New Delhi, Oberoi said how he has celebrated fifth to 40th anniversaries of iconic Taj restaurants. One of the Shamiana, at Taj Mumbai, turned 40 last year and the chef, who started his career at the restaurant when another famous Taj executive, Subir Bhowmick, was its manager, decided to put some of the old favourites back on the menu, all priced at an unbelievable Rs 40 each for a day. The response to this offer was phenomenal. The queue of people craving for a meal at Shamiana stretched up to Prince of Wales Museum -- that day, 800 people at the restaurant and more than 100 kilos of spaghetti got cooked, and the kitchen worked non-stop for 14 hours, but the goodwill and publicity that the move generated was worth several crores of business.

The Crispy Onion Cup in Morel Soup is a
testament to Wasabi by Morimoto's
commitment to adding quality
vegetarian items on the menu

The same magic was evident in the lunch menu laid out for the media at Wasabi by Morimoto, New Delhi. Oberoi, who said he hoped the restaurant too would complete 40 years, emphasised that the Wasabi by Morimoto team is working very hard to develop a vegetarian menu that could stand up to the competition from the non-vegetarian best-sellers. "Seven out of India's ten richest families are vegetarian," Oberoi pointed out to reveal the business brain beneath his chef's hat!

The Avocado Tartare, the Bell Pepper and Crispy Asparagus Sushi Rolls, the Crispy Onion Cup in Morel Soup, and the Eggplant Aka Miso (aka miso, incidentally, is the longer fermented red miso) proved Oberoi's point. Wasabi by Morimoto now has vegetarian dishes in its new menu that have progressed much beyond the restaurant's signature edamame.

Among the non-vegetarian items, my personal discoveries were the as-soft-as-butter lamb chop in black shichimi (seven-flavour chilli powder) and morel sauce and the Ghost Tenderloin Sukiyaki, which arrived on a bed of potato mash and garlic soy. The tenderloin slices had white candy floss on top, which melted away when the jus was poured on it. That is the 'ghost' that figures in the name of the dish. And of course, there was the top-selling Black Cod Miso, but with a difference. It is less sweet, and therefore tastes even better, because the fish is now cured in the traditional Japanese way -- first in a bed of salt and then for three days under a muslin cloth dripping with miso. With such innovative tweaks, Wasabi by Morimoto can never go out of fashion -- and it will certainly go on to celebrate its 40th anniversary.

Ex-Wasabi Chef to Roll Out Sushi-Sashimi at ITC WelcomHotel Dwarka’s Shanghai Club

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

Shanghai Club has opened at the ITC WelcomHotel, Dwarka

AFTER the successful opening of the notches-above-the-rest kebabs and curries restaurant, K&K, at the ITC WelcomHotel Dwarka, it’s the turn of Shanghai Club — and it will be different from the original at the ITC Grand Central at Lower Parel, Mumbai, in one important respect. It will also serve sushi and sashimi prepared by a gifted young chef who, the Indian Restaurant Spy has learnt, has migrated from Wasabi by Morimoto at The Taj Mahal Hotel, Mansingh Road, New Delhi.

That’s the second big ‘transfer’, to use Premiership League football lingo, from Wasabi — the first being the extremely talented Vikramjit Roy, who has catapulted the Pan Asian at the ITC Grand Chola, Chennai, to TripAdvisor’s No. 1 (out of 675 restaurants in Chennai). It has an overall rating of 4.5/5. Now, that’s a headline-making coup for a newbie in a city dominated by established heavy hitters, from the ITC’s very own Dakshin and Raintree to Annalakshmi and Hip Asia.

Coming back to Shanghai Club, I am told that the restaurant will serve good, old-fashioned Chinese food. Are we, then, going to see the return of the glory days of Bali Hi, which under Master Chef Liang used to rock the rooftop of the ITC Maurya? Your hard-working spy will have the inside story soon.

The big anticipated opening at the Dwarka hotel, though, is Ghungroo, which is set to return with a music menu being put together by the man synonymous with the nightclub — Sunny Sarid. With the Dwarka Vivanta by Taj, which has been placed under the charge of Anil Malhotra, who was till recently the general manager of Taj Chandigarh, on the road to completion in the next eight months, the ITC WelcomHotel is seriously turning on the heat. But before you bring out your dancing shoes, check out the Shanghai Club.