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.

CHENNAI CHRONICLES: What It Takes For A Restaurant to Top TripAdvisor Rankings

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

HOW DOES a restaurant, which is barely five months old, reach the top of TripAdvisor.com’s Chennai rankings and stay there? When I asked this question to Vikramjit Roy, who was discovered by Vice President (Operations), ITC Hotels, Gautam Anand, at Wasabi in New Delhi and transplanted to ITC Grand Chola in Chennai as leader of the newbie hotel's Pan Asian team, the young chef launched into a long discussion. Then he said something that has stuck in my mind: “We cook with a mother’s love. We have systems and recipes, but our secret ingredient is love.”

Chef Vikramjit Roy explaining to yours truly and Philippe
Charraudeau, Vice President and General Manager, ITC
Grand Chola, how to unveil the seared foie gras from
its orange peel quilt. That was sheer inventiveness. 

It was this past Friday, around 9 p.m., and Pan Asian was abuzz with people. The early-bird Japanese diners had already come and left, yet the restaurant was packed. A prominent family of Gujarati diamond merchants had occupied one long table to celebrate a birthday in the family. And it was hard to find a vacant table at the 176-seater restaurant.

I wondered why and I got my answer in the course of my meal. It was better than what Vikramjit had ever done at Wasabi — and I have maintained that his ‘swansong dinner’ for the Taj, the one he created for the Delhi Gourmet Club and it was attended by Anand, to be in a league of its own. What he laid out for us at on Friday was deserving of a Michelin-star. His team had transformed even the humble fish cake, a common feature of any Thai menu, by hoisting a stopper full of spicy mango puree on top of each. Before eating, you are meant to squeeze the stopper so that the mango puree oozes out into the fish cake, giving it a dramatically different taste profile. Anyone who can do that gets my instant respect. “It’s a complex affair to make a simple dish,” Vikramjit says, and I believe him entirely.

‘Progressive Asian’ is how Vikramjit describes the menu of his restaurant. Each dish is authentic, but it comes with a twist, or, as Vikramjit puts it, with “layers of elements”. The traditional banana blossom salad gets a young and contemporary twist (apart from another texture) when it is made to sit atop wasabi mash. The Sichuan-style crispy prawns arrive on a bed of avocado puree, with a crispy caramelised pineapple on top and ikura (salmon roe) on the side. Eaten together, they tantalise the palate with a bouquet of flavours and taste sensations.

Vikramjit explaining the intricacies of the
tuna (chu-toro, not less!) tataki spiked with soy
salt and served with wasabi mash. Yours truly
is seen with Atul Bhalla of the ITC Grand Chola.

Likewise, the duck carpaccio with a scoop of yuzu (citrus) sorbet on top was a brilliant reinterpretation of duck with orange sauce, an old-world French recipe. The topping not only added another flavour dimension to the carpaccio, but also made the act of eating raw meat more palatable. We see the same inventiveness in the ‘scallop in onion shell’ (the scallop actually comes in a quilt of onion!) and the baked chicken puff pastry, which looks like a miniature wine barrel and has a film of wasabi wrapping the chicken inside: the competing textures and tastes of the puff pastry, wasabi and chicken make it a treat for the palate and a trigger for the mind’s amphetamines.

In my view, it is dim sum chef Raju’s finest piece of work — he has brought back the best from the three months he spent at The Peninsular Beijing to master the art. He has indeed come a long way since he left his home in Pokhara, Nepal. “My entire team of 14 is from Delhi. We have all left our individual comfort zones with the intention to cook from our heart and connect with our guests,” says Vikramjit. Of course, without the support of ITC, which has a tradition of setting food benchmarks in the country, he may not have gone this far.
The IHM-Kolkata graduate (he talks about Sabyasachi ‘Saby’ Gorai as his super senior, so you can imagine how young he is!) was a part of the pre-opening team at threesixtydegrees at The Oberoi New Delhi, has worked under the brilliant Thomas Wee at Empress of China during its heyday at the hotel formerly known as the Parkroyal at Nehru Place, New Delhi, and been exposed to the best of Japan when he went to the Okura in Tokyo for an exposure to the classical hotel’s two Michelin three-star restaurants — Yamazato, which specialises in sushi, and the teppanyaki place named Sazanka.

Pan Asian is an old ITC restaurant brand. Vikramjit has just reinvented it, but he couldn't have done it so effortlessly had he not been at an ITC hotel inspired by the irrepressibly brilliant Gautam Anand. I hope Anand will now make it a national trend-setter like Dakshin. Fortunately, he has a chef we’ll hear a lot about. We have only seen the tip of his creative iceberg.

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.