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| 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.
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| 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.
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