FORTUNE COOKIE: No Freedom from Licence Raj for Our Restaurants

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

AS WE prepare to raise a toast to another Independence Day (so what if it's a dry day!), the lords of our bureaucratic jungle need to seriously ask themselves if they are honestly prepared to liberate the economy from the shackles that stifle entrepreneurial spirit. India officially bid farewell to the licence-permit raj, but for creators of wealth and jobs, very little has changed on the ground. Ask restaurant owners and they'll tell you how.

A restaurant honcho in a neighbouring state was explaining to me how it takes Rs 10 lakh to get an excise licence -- without which you can't serve liquor, which is a substantial source of easy revenue for any establishment -- worth Rs 3 lakh. The difference is the sum newbie restaurants pay as 'facilitation charges'. It is no longer OK to call a bribe a bribe! And the rules ensure that there are multiple points of and opportunities for bribe collection.

In Communist China, you need four licences
to start a restaurant, but you must get 12-15 in
India. And state governments keep ignoring the
demand for single-window, online licencing.
Picture for representation purpose only.

In this neighbouring state, for instance, you need to get no-objection certificates from four local officials, who, anyway, gave you the licences to open the restaurant (for some strange reason, you have to obtain an excise licence after you've opened a restaurant, which is why new eateries can't normally serve liquor in their initial months unless they are in five-star hotels). You have to go back to each one of them and re-establish your credentials (and the city magistrate get to sit  over your case twice, once to start the process and then to certify that the process has been completed satisfactorily) before your file can move up to the state excise department, which is another hell hole.

My source shocked me with his stories on the extent of bribery in the state excise department. Peons, who double as 'facilitators', demand 'walking money' to deliver a file from one office to another. Personal assistants of officials ask for gratification before they tap on the print command to get an important printout.

And even after you have greased the relevant palms, your file may come back with ridiculous objections such as the one raised on a particular restaurant's application. If more licences are given out in this particular district, noted the objective official, the workload of the district excise administration will go up so much that it wouldn't be able to handle it. The district excise administration was therefore advised to state whether it would be able to cope with the burden of handling that one additional licence!

Well, if the state exchequer earns Rs 3 lakh every year from each excise licence, it can jolly well second officials to the district excise administration to manage the 'overload'. Restaurateurs therefore take the easy way out and sign up facilitators who profession it is to liaise with the relevant officials--read, pay bribes to get files moving. A major fast food chain has a vice-president with a staff of three dedicated to this honourable task, which includes skilful management of accounts, for the facilitation charges are paid in cash.

Maximum government, as opposed to maximum governance, continues to be the bane of the country's Rs 75,000-crore organised food service sector, which contributes Rs 12,000 crore annually to the national kitty. That is exactly the point made by the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) at a recent meeting with Tourism Minister Shripad Naik.

Restaurateurs across India have to obtain 12-15 licences from 10-12 different authorities before they can operate. These licences have to be renewed every year, the rules vary from state to state, and worse, despite years of representations to various governments, the organised restaurant sector has not got anyone to agree to a single-window, corruption-free, online clearance. Did anyone say the licence-permit raj is over? It is, but in Communist China, where you need four licences to open a restaurant. Time to move from Chandni Chowk to China?

RESTAURANTS GO MAGGILICIOUS -- AND HOW!

LAST WEEK, I dropped in at Geoffrey's, the old pub-style restaurant that opened at Ansal Plaza in the days when such establishments were hard to come by and thereafter moved to Select Citywalk, and got talking with its 20-something owner, Shobhit Saxena. He had a friend with him who has just come back home after getting a bachelor's degree in financial management from Peking University, China.

Farzi Cafe's Posh Maggi, drizzled with truffle
oil, comes with a pan-seared foie gras on top.

The two were remembering their days at Scindia School, Gwalior, where their favourite staple was Maggi instant noodles, which they would cook by boiling water with two keys attached to wires plugged to an electricity connection. The keys were effective conductors of electrical heat. The hunger-driven jugaad would put immersion heaters to shame!

I have watched with wonder our national romance with Maggi, even though it is impossible to make it in two minutes, so you can imagine my surprise when I came across Posh Maggi on the menu at the newly opened Farzi Cafe at Cyber Hub, Gurgaon. A creation of the restaurant's brilliantly inventive young chef, Himanshu Saini, it is a portion of Maggi noodles drizzled with a generous dollop of truffle oil and topped up with a pan-seared chunk of foie gras. It was heaven on a plate, where everyday noodles were transformed by the Cinderella treatment they got. They were a treat even without the foie gras, for the aromas of the truffle oil linger around to tease your senses.

Maggi makes an appearance also on the menu of Beer Cafe, but in a humbler form, with three options: chopped vegetables, or eggs, or chicken.  My Big Maggi Moment, though, was at Tapri, Jaipur's trendy 'tea cafe' about which I have written more in a companion piece in this column. It has eight kinds of Maggi on the menu and they come with the most interesting names -- from Bachelor, which is plain Maggi, to Tadka, Green (with peas, spinach, broccoli, zucchini and capsicum), Firangi (for mharo beto angrez!) and Jaipur Rural (spicy), as opposed to Jaipur Urban (creamy). Restaurants seem to have wised up to our love for all things Maggi -- and how!

JAIPUR'S HIP CHAIWALA BECOMES A BIG HIT

Chai Chic: Tapri brews new style statement

JAIPUR has always been associated with classical food. Niro's took the flavours of Delhi's Kwality to Jaipur, even as Laxmi Mishthan Bhandar's ghewar and Rawat's pyaaz kachoris kept acquiring a fan following in the national capital. But never has the city seen a trendy hangout of the young (and the young at heart) at a 'tea house' named Tapri. Strategically located behind one of the showrooms of Surana Jewellers, Tapri, with its kitschy design, edgy menu and decent selection of teas, has made cutting chai, vada pao and the Rs 2 mini-pack of Parle Glucose-D into style statements. It is here that you see the cosmopolitan face of tradition-bound Jaipur.

Tapri is the Marathi word for a roadside tea stall (Rajasthanis would call it chai ki thadi) and that is how rookie HDFC Bank executives Ankit Bohra and Sourabh Bapna launched the brand, which was born out of a business idea presentation for their MBA programme, a couple of years ago at Lal Kothi. They broke even in six months and they have graduated from streetside to high street, but their menu favourites -- poha (served imaginatively with Bikaneri bhujia), dal omelette, Ishpecial V.P. (vada pao!), eight varieties each of grilled sandwiches and Maggi, and ten pages of tea options -- have stayed the same. What's different is that they now get full houses of Jaipur's hip set.

AND NOW, MAGGI GOES MAKHNI

THE MAGGI wave seems to be catching on. I was at T1 (or Terminus One), a smart restaurant with a smarter menu from Vikrant Batra, promoter of the hugely popular Cafe Delhi Heights, at Ambience Mall, Vasant Kunj, and lo and behold, I was served an ISBT Makhni Maggi drenched in a soul-satisfying creamy gravy with a dollop of butter on top. Dishes such as these play on people's nostalgia and take them back to the familiar territory of tastes they have grown up with. This is why Indian food has become fashionable all over again and restaurants are investing time and money to delve deeper into the country's treasure house of cuisines and revive old recipes.

The column first appeared in Mail Today on August 14, 2014.

Copyright: Mail Today Newspapers

FORTUNE COOKIE: A Bold New Avatar of Indian Cuisine 2,0

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

When it opens on July 20, Farzi Cafe at Cyber
Hub, Gurgaon, promises to give Modern
Indian Cuisine a bold creative thrust with its
new-generation menu and presentation styles

WHEN the Taj veteran, Arvind Saraswat, wrote The Gourmet Indian Cookbook in 2004, I could not stop admiring the beauty of each dish whose recipe was presented in the slim, glossy, hardcover volume.

Saraswat would say that he had been inspired to devote many years working on the recipes because of a barb from the father of French nouvelle cuisine, Paul Bocuse. On a visit to India as a guest of the Taj, Bocuse had said to Saraswat that Indian food tasted great, but it didn't excite the eye and make one want to eat it. Saraswat rose up to the challenge, but his cookbook sank without a trace, just like Michelin-starred Vineet Bhatia's Mushk restaurant, which opened in 2002, where he courted Delhi's palate with novelties such as truffle oil-flavoured naan or his favourite squid ink-infused black chicken tikka.

Both efforts were way ahead of their time. It was five years later that Varq at the Taj Mahal Hotel and the now-famous Indian Accent opened to a tepid response, and another five years had to lapse before Gaggan Anand, Saraswat's former acolyte, dazzled the world from his Bangkok restaurant, ranked 17th in the world, with his brand of Progressive Indian Cuisine.

Himanshu Saini, who's all of 26, has worked hard
to translate Zorawar Kalra's vision on the menu

These thoughts raced through my head as I stepped into Farzi Cafe at Gurgaon's Cyber Hub for a sneak preview a couple of days ago. A project of Zorawar Kalra, who has seen complimentary reviews (the latest in The New York Times) pour on his Masala Library in Mumbai, Farzi Cafe promises to give Delhi-NCR's dining culture a new direction. The young man behind the show is 26-year-old Himanshu Saini, who had his first date with fame when he won Chicago/New York restaurateur Rohini Dey's much-publicised 'chef hunt' last summer by dishing up a sarson da saag quesadilla with butter milk foam.

To a traditionalist, Saini's creations, and the artefacts they arrive in, may seem straight out of Mad Hatter's tea party, but their beauty lies in the way they tantalise the imagination using the tools of molecular gastronomy (notably liquid nitrogen) without deviating from the real flavours of Indian cuisine. That is exactly what Modern Indian Cuisine is all about. Its practitioners don't use, for instance, squid ink because it has no Indian connect.

When at Farzi Cafe you are served a mini raj kachori stuffed with kurkure bhindi surrounded by islands of chutney foam, each element tastes just how it is supposed to. As does the idiappam sushi with prawn pepper fry, or the sarson da saag gilawat kebabs, corn tostadas, chhaas spheres and masala popcorn, which may sound like a gimmicky reinvention of the Punjabi winter staple, sarson da saag-makke di roti, but actually tastes right while looking oomphy. This combination of the right marriage of flavours and the elements of surprise is the leitmotif of the Farzi Cafe menu.

The bhoot jholokia spare ribs not only melt in your mouth, but also make you feel braver after having the world's hottest chilli; the chilli duck samosa with hoisin chutney and the galouti burger with mutton boti will leave you admiring the sheer ingenuity of the medleys of flavours and textures; the pumpkin khao suey, yet another flash of inspiration, will awaken you to the limitless possibilities of the humble kaddu; and you'll smile when the chicken tikka masala with Cornish cruncher cheddar cheese naan arrives in a replica of a public telephone booth you'll see all over London.

The same streak of innovation runs through the desserts (Parle-G cheesecake on a pool of rabri studded with Gems chocolate spheres) and the molecular cocktails (mixologist Aman Dua left me groping for words of praise with his mango spaghetti in gin with a grape infused in a red wine reduction), but the cherry on the icing is the paan gujiya, which is a dehydrated paan inside a candyfloss casing. That, in a sense, defines the Modern Indian experience: quirky but not contradictory.

MISTRAL MENU INTRODUCES DELHI TO THE JOYS DUCK'S EGGS

Renaud Palliere of PVR Cinemas is anything
but your stereotypical finance man

A MEAL with Reynaud Palliere, CEO (International Development), PVR Cinemas, is a lot of fun, for he may be crunching numbers for a living, but he brings a Frenchman's passion for food to the table when he's not running marathons (he has done New York, London, Tokyo and Sydney; Mumbai and Capetown are his next stops).

As Executive Chef, Mayank Tiwari has given
Mistral's menu a new direction -- I recommend
his gazpacho soup and pumpkin risotto 

When we met earlier in the week, at Mistral adjoining PVR Director's Cut at the Ambience Mall, Vasant Kunj, our conversation started with the amazing weekend Palliere had just spent at Tikli Bottom, the Chhattarpur hideaway run by a British couple, Martin and Annie Howard, at the far end of a village named Tikli (it's a pilgrimage for every expat who lives in Delhi). I then got fixated on the fried duck's eggs, which are a part of  the restaurant's all-day breakfast menu, served with a summery salad, hollandaise, toasted bread with parsley butter, and an orange-pineapple relish.

As I looked at the fried eggs, their perfectly semi-circular yolks appearing like twin images of the setting sun, memories of the summer vacations I had spent in Kolkata as a child flashed in my mind's eye. Duck's eggs are a delicacy among Bengalis -- you get them fresh every morning in Kolkata, brought to the city by women from neighbouring villages who pick up what they find by the side of ponds where ducks, a strain of the Muscovy variety known as Chinae Hans (the name indicates the ancestors of these birds came from China), live in good numbers across rural West Bengal.

Mistral gets its duck's eggs from the French Farm in Manesar, which is run by a temperamental yet much sought-after Frenchman named Roger Langbour (and his Muscovy ducks have nobler strains). The restaurant's executive chef, Mayank Tiwari, a graduate of what I call the AD Singh school of hospitality, took nine minutes to get the perfect fried eggs, their uniformly proportioned whites balancing the bright orbs at the centre. There's more to recommend the restaurant for -- the gazpacho, pumpkin risotto and the Persian koobideh (seekh) kebabs are my personal favourites -- but I can keep going back only for the duck's eggs.

HAVING DUCK EGGS THE BENGALI WAY

DUCK EGGS seem to be in vogue, especially because they have thicker shells, which means they stay fresher longer; more albumen, which makes them best for cakes and pastries; and more Omega-3 fatty acids, which are good for the brain and the skin. There's one catch, though. They have double the amount cholesterol in chicken eggs, which is bad news for the heart. They also have very little moisture, which can be a problem if you are trying to whisk a duck's egg, and fried eggs can become rubbery if you aren't a skilled handler of duck's eggs. I just love the way they are cooked in West Bengal -- as a curry (dimer dalna). Duck's eggs, funnily, entered old-fashioned Bengali kitchens much before chicken eggs were allowed!

MANJIT GILL'S QUEST FOR AN INDIAN DATA BANK OF RECIPES

Manjit Gill, Corporate Chef of ITC Hotels and
President, Federation of Indian Culinary
Associations, was inspired by the International
Congress of Culinary Traditions held at
Bucharest, Romania, earlier in the year

WE LIVE in a cornucopia of cuisines, yet the world knows so little about our country's culinary heritage. To bridge this knowledge gap, the Ministry of Tourism has teamed up with the national body of chefs, Federation of Indian Culinary Associations (FICA), to launch a multi-disciplinary effort to create a central databank of recipes (at least ten of them) from each of the country's 640 districts. We owe this idea to FICA President and Corporate Chef, ITC Hotels, Manjit Gill, who was inspired by his visit to Bucharest, Romania, for the International Congress of Culinary Traditions earlier this year. And he found an eager listener, and doer, in Parvez Dewan, Secretary, Tourism.

Gill says his team will have 600 recipes, a tenth of what is intended to be collected, ready for the Modi government's 100 days in power. Imagine the world this exercise will open up. Where else are you going to find the kind of variety we are able to savour even among jalebis! A Gohana jalebi weighing 250 gms apiece (almost like the ones dished up by Chandni Chowk's Old & Famous Jalebiwala) is a story by itself, as is the dark brown Burhanpuri mawa jalebi, which is a Ramzan must-have at J.J. Sweets in Mumbai's Bohri Mohalla. The national databank will make us understand this diversity and treasure it.

This column first appeared in the Mail Today edition dated July 17, 2014.
Copyright: Mail Today Newspapers.

Zorawar Kalra Set to Unveil Farzi Cafe in Gurgaon & Woo Market for $8m Cash Infusion

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

IT IS difficult to be Jiggs Kalra's son because of the gastronomical legacy you carry on your shoulders, but Massive Restaurants Managing Director Zorawar Kalra wears his heritage with elan. As he gets ready to open his newest concept restaurant, Farzi Cafe at the Cyber Hub, Gurgaon, reinventing the coffee shop culture with the tools and techniques of molecular gastronomy, Zorawar is carrying forward his father's tradition of innovating with imagination.

With Farzi Cafe, Zorawar Kalra is all
set to firmly establish himself as the
young and credible new face of
Modern Indian cuisine

Jiggs Kalra turned the salmon tikka and galauti kebab into national favourites; Zorawar Kalra is pushing the envelope with boti kebab tacos, dal-chawal arancini, karela calamari and anda bhurjee with chilli con queso (or molten cheese dip spiked with chillies) -- all invented dishes that may seem to a traditionalist to be straight out Mad Hatter's tea party, but which, without doubt, will bring the young back to the cuisine they had forsaken because it had become too predictable to tickle their taste buds.

And as he goes about giving Modern Indian cuisine a new direction with his talented team of Varun Duggal, the strategist, and Himanshu Saini, the star chef who (with Saurabh Udinia) has made Masala Library the go-to restaurant of Mumbai, Zorawar is working to a five-year business plan loaded with ambitious targets. He had set out with an infusion of funds from Gaurav Goenka's Mirah Hospitality, which has also made big-ticket investments in Riyaz Amlani's Impresario Entertainment and Hospitality and the Rajdhani restaurants, but with this  money exhausted by his first round of projects (including Made in Punjab), Zorawar is going back to the market to raise $8 million (Rs 48 crore at the present exchange rate) to finance his expansion plans.

Zorawar's plan is to take Made in Punjab to Tier-II cities, with 15 of them up and running in the next three or four years, open at least eight Farzi Cafe outlets in the same period, starting with the next one in Dubai, and go international with Masala Library with a network franchisees extending all the way to Dubai. "I am looking at Massive Restaurants notching up a turnover of Rs 225-250 crore at the end of five years," Zorawar said in an interview with the Indian Restaurant Spy.

Money does matter, but it's food that gets Zorawar most excited. He seems to be firm believer of the old restaurateur's adage, "Good food gets good money." Farzi Cafe, he says, has been an idea he has carried with him for eight years ("the first cafe in the world to showcase molecular gastronomy"), but it took shape only over the last six months, after extensive food trials.

Zorawar's vision was given a shape and form by the highly talented Himanshu, Manish Mehrotra's former protege who first came into the limelight when he won Chicago/New York restaurateur Rohini Dey's much-publicised 'chef hunt' last summer with his sarson da saag quesadilla served with butter milk foam. It was in that moment in the spotlight that Himanshu made a couple of telling comments that foretold his future. “There is a thin line between fusion and confusion," he said. "Once that is sorted, half the battle is won." He then went on to pay a tribute to his original guru: "You can’t think straight with food. Every dish must be prepared  like a story. That’s what I learnt from Manish Mehrotra.”

Farzi means 'fake', but it could also be an illusion, which is what Zorawar wants to serve on the plate -- a dish that doesn't taste the way you'd expect it to from it looks. The cafe's bar menu has a dozen molecular gastronomy-inspired cocktails and its tapas selection is crowded with surprises, from spare ribs spiked with the world's hottest bhut jolokia chillies and a double- deck galauti burger to tandoori lamb served with maple-soy sauce and whisky sour cream and a Philly cheese raan hot dog.

For the mains, some of the options are Thai green curry khichdi, roomali roti ravioli with eggplant mozzarella bharta and poha Pad Thai with wok-tossed red snapper. A couple of the desserts seem straight out of science fiction -- phirni oxide, for instance, or Bailey's lollipop prepared on Zorawar's favourite new toy, the anti-griddle, which can reduce the temperature of any liquid to minus-30 degrees Celsius in a flash -- but there's also the Parle-G cheesecake or the Cassata Indiana served with Magic Pops. It's as if Zorawar and Himanshu just let their imagination go on a free ride on the wild side.

Diners in Mumbai have savoured the creative repertoire of Zorawar's team, but at Cyber Hub, sadly, he's invariably measured by the day's lunch buffet at Made in Punjab, which not only is a steadily popular restaurant, but also has an a la carte menu studded with gems. Farzi Cafe, I hope, will allow him to be judged for what he and his young, talented and turbo-charged team are really worth.

DLF, Don't Kill A Great Idea With Growth That You're Finding Hard To Manage

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

LAST NIGHT, the Cyber Hub, DLF's 'food mall' that's got Delhi-NCR talking because of restaurants such as Made in Punjab, Dhaba by Claridges, Sodabottleopenerwala and Zambar, not to forget Soi 7 and Nando's, ran out of gas. Literally, not metaphorically. Thousands of diners (someone estimated the number to be 10,000), as a result, had to go back without a meal, which must have come as a rude jolt for patrons, especially those who had come from distant parts of Delhi. The water supply too dried up, so what was a bustling Cyber Hub turned into a ghost of itself by the late evening. After the recent excise raids on a couple of popular watering holes at the Cyber Hub that led them to stop serving alcohol in the open areas,  this was yet another round of avoidable bad news.

Gas and water supply problems at Gurgaon's
Cyber Hub follow excise raids on certain
restaurants and compound the problems of the
establishments at the DLF showpiece 'food
mall'. Image: Courtesy of www.ixigo.com
  

Imagine the plight of the people being told in the middle of a meal that their restaurant cannot serve them anymore because the piped nature gas (PNG) supply was playing truant. For a newbie foodie hub, it couldn't have been a greater public relations disaster. The 'perception damage' caused by the episode may leave a lasting impact on the sales figures of Cyber Hub restaurants, which were on a high because of the intense public interest in the venue and its offerings. If that happens, it'll be a sad day for a great idea.

Did DLF not anticipate the volume of PNG and water likely to be used after the Cyber Hub came up? Or worse, did it not care? A food mall initially designed to house 42 outlets, already has 45, and counting (the latest additions being Quiznos, the American quick service restaurant brand famous for its toasted subs, and Spanish Chef Nuria Rodriguez's Imperfecto). And many more, including Farzi Cafe, Smokey's, Cafe Delhi Heights, Amici Cafe and Raasta, are slated to open in the coming months (and DLF, I believe, is charging them higher rentals).

Can Cyber Hub accommodate so many new restaurants without pausing to take stock of the infrastructure? Cyber Hub restaurants, I am told, are paying up to Rs 1.5 lakh a month for their PNG supply and they are not allowed under Indraprastha Gas Limited rules to keep regular LPG cylinders as backup. Those with tandoors can tide over, to an extent, such emergencies, but what about restaurants that don't have this safety net?

When I first put up a post about Cyber Hub gas crisis on the Indian Restaurant Spy page on Facebook, Arun Kumar TR, Zambar's Master Chef, was the first to respond and his posts are heart-rending. His first: "This is not the first time ... Kills the concept ... What do we tell customers? No gas!!!" His second: "It has happened before too! The day we opened ... full house and resulted in a huge backlash! Customers are not interested in explanations." His third: "Tonight all over ... Cyber Hub has emptied out."

Zorawar Kalra, Managing Director of Massive Restaurants, voiced the concern that was yet to be expressed. "This has happened multiple times," he posted. "Made in Punjab is still able to serve tandoori items, but I feel real sorry for my fellow restaurateurs as they end up with nothing to serve and lose sales on one of the most important nights -- Sunday. The cost implications are huge."

If this has been happening "multiple times", what has DLF done about it? And more importantly, does it plan to compensate the restaurateurs who have turned the Cyber Hub into the real estate giant's most successful public venture yet? One of my most ardent commentators, Anurag Mehrotra, who has recently relocated to Atlanta from Gurgaon, said it all when he posted: "Farmers don't get water, factories don't get electricity, restaurants don't get gas. Welcome to India!"

Zorawar Kalra Presents Farzi Cafe Sneak Preview at Delhi Gourmet Club's Gourmet Passport 2014-15 Launch

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

Zorawar Kalra, Managing Director, Massive
Restaurants (Made in Punjab/Masala Library),
raises a toast to the Gourmet Passport 2014-15.
Others in the picture: (From left) Varun Duggal
of Massive Restaurants, Atul Sikand of the
Delhi Gourmet Club (DGC), yours truly, Aditya
Soni of Citibank, Sandeep Tandon of Old World
Hospitality and DGC's Rocky Mohan.

WHERE else can the humble karela be turned into a gourmet statement than at a Zorawar Kalra restaurant? And what can be a better forum to showcase the talented young chef Himanshu Saini's 'bitter gourd tempura' with sweet and sour raw mango chutney than the launch of the Gourmet Passport 2014-15? The smartly designed book of 402 'buy one main course, get one free' discount coupons from 134 restaurants in Delhi and Mumbai was presented by the Delhi Gourmet Club in partnership with Citibank at a free-flowing launch party on May 1 attended by all the supporters of the project.

SURPRISE PACKAGE OF THE EVENING:
Karela has never tasted better than in the
Bitter Gourd Tempura with sweet and sour
mango chutney served at the Gourmet
Passport 2014-15 launch party at Made
in Punjab on Thursday, May 1, 2014.
Of course, this was just one of the star
items on the 12-course menu.

The venue was Made in Punjab at Gurgaon's Cyber Hub; the finger-licking good food was from the menu of the upcoming Farzi Cafe next door ("it's not even 10 per cent of what we have in mind," Zorawar assured us, making us wonder, "what next?"); and the guests seen enjoying Himanshu's goodies included industry leaders Sandeep Tandon (Old World Hospitality), AD Singh (Olive Bar & Kitchen) and Pankaj Mathur (The Suryaa); restaurant powerhouses Janti Duggal (Mamagoto), Atul Kapur (QBA and The China House), Rajeev Aneja (Rara Avis) and Prashant Narula (Kwality Group); some of Delhi/NCR's most talented chefs -- Soumya Goswami, Ravitej Nath, Vikas Vibhuti and Sandeep Kalra (The Oberoi), Rajiv Malhotra and Pradeep Khullar (Old World Hospitality), Arun Kumar TR (Zambar/Lite Bite Foods), Vikram Khatri, Sujan Sarkar and Vaibhav Bhargava (Olive Bar & Kitchen and Guppy by Ai); F&B hotshots Ravindra Kumar (The Lalit's most durable pillar of excellence), Rajesh Namby (The Leela Palace New Delhi), Mohit Balachandran (Sodabottleopenerwala), Suveer Sodhi (The Lodhi), Sid Mathur (Impresario/Smoke House Deli), Yogendra Negi (DLF Restaurants/Set'z) and Sohan Bohra (Kylin Premier); and my partners in journalistic crimes -- Neeta Raheja (Very Truly Yours), Mukta Kapoor (Old World Hospitality), Deepica Sarma and Mallika Gowda (The Oberoi), Pallavi Singh (Crowne Plaza Okhla), Nidhi Verma (The Leela Ambience Gurgaon), Madhur Madaan (Kempinski Ambience), Nidhi Budhia (Crowne Plaza Rohini) and Manita Asija Tuteja (Kylin Premier/Sartoria).

But the star of the evening was the spread planned by Zorawar and his multi-talented deputy Varun Duggal with Himanshu. Just back from America, where he had presented a talk on the trends defining contemporary Indian cuisine in the august company of Grand Master Chef Hemant Oberoi of The Taj Hotels, Zorawar said the Farzi Cafe, which is coming up right next door to Made in Punjab at the ground level of the Cyber Hub, would take 'Modernist' Indian cuisine to a level that is a notch higher than his other baby, Masala Library at the Bandra Kurla Complex. Now, that's a very serious challenge to set for oneself -- Masala Library, after all, has won nine prestigious awards in the seven months that it has been around! I am sure he must have picked up ideas from his recent visit to Alinea in Chicago, where the American guru of molecular gastronomy, Grant Achatz, gave him a guided tour of the kitchen (a rare honour).

AD Singh, who's unfailing in his praise for restaurants (even if they have the potential of becoming his competition), couldn't stop praising the papad-crusted dal chawal arancini with achari crème cheese and onion chutney. It was a brilliant reconstruction of the Sicilian classic with an Indian twist. My personal favourites were the tandoori portobello mushrooms with truffle walnut herb crust, bhoot jolokia lamb chops with tempered coriander seeds, and the chilli duck samosa served with roasted plum chutney. Each dish came with a twist and the presentations showed the Zorawar Kalra eye for detailing. As one of the guests said, "The food tasted as good as the discount coupons inside the book." Well, you have a year to check out each one of the 134 restaurants that have participated in the book that has stirred the pot of Delhi's imagination.