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!"

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.

Olive Bistro Opens at DLF Cyber Hub; Olive Mehrauli Gets Winter Menu With Sujan Sarkar's Picasso Touch

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

This quirky chandelier promises
to be a conversation point at
Olive Bistro, DLF Cyber
Hub, Gurgaon

OUR Republic has just celebrated its 65th birthday and tomorrow is a working day. For most of us, it will be just another day; for AD Singh, it will be a day of managing one more restaurant.

Olive Bistro has opened at DLF Cyber City, Gurgaon, right on top of Soda Water Openerwala. Looking very much like a stately restaurant from the 1920s, it has a sprawling balcony protected from the elements by a foldable umbrella of awnings. Just right for this season, now that the sun seems to have made a comeback. I am also told that its USPs are going to be a first-of-its-kind pizza menu and never-before-seen granary breads, which are made with brown flour and malted wheat grains, added for their distinctive nutty flavour. And the picture of Olive Bistro's unusual chandelier accompanying this blog post, which I owe to a Facebook post by Singh's Guppy by Ai business partner, Rohit Grover, proves that like all AD Singh restaurants, its design will have a quirky theme that promises to become a conversation point.

When Singh had said in an interview with me last August that he was going to launch 20 new restaurants by 2014-end, I half-believed him. With Olive Bistro opening after Guppy By Ai, Soda Bottle Openerwala and Monkey Bar, I don't need more convincing. Adding to my faith in Singh's ability to pull off this dasavatara act is the new winter menu unveiled at Olive Kitchen & Bar, Mehrauli, by Sujan Sarkar, who just got married after his return to his mother country following a successful stint in London. If the dishes that Sarkar has lined up for the winter menu taste as good as the pictures, I can assure you we have a new star in our city and he's going to have us eating out of his hand.

Sujan Sarkar's wood oven-roasted baby pumpkins
with green beans (above) and pear tarte tatin
(top) are some of the picture-perfect dishes that
the newly-wed chef has put on Olive Bar &
Kitchen, Mehrauli's new winter menu

At the rate at which independent restaurateurs such as AD Singh and creative chefs like Sujan Sarkar are raising the bar for excellence, I don't see five-star hotels, the old bastions of fine dining, continuing to be relevant to the universe of Delhi-NCR's foodies. That's bad news for an industry already struggling under the twin loads of debt and mounting operating costs. They have three options: reinvent (a distant possibility because of their bureaucratic management structures), re-engage (maybe they can retrieve their dwindling F&B market by selling their restaurant spaces to inventive chefs and visionary entrepreneurs), or perish.

Keep reading to check out my reviews of Olive Bistro and Sujan Sarkar's winter menu. I have had my dinner and yet, I can hear the rumblings in my stomach.

When Singh had said in an interview with me last August that he was going to launch 20 new restaurants by 2014-end, I half-believed him. With Olive Bistro opening after Guppy By Ai, Soda Bottle Openerwala and Monkey Bar, I don't need more convincing. Adding to my faith in Singh's ability to pull off this dasavatara act is the new winter menu unveiled at Olive Kitchen & Bar, Mehrauli, by Sujan Sarkar, who just got married after his return to his mother country following a successful stint in London. If the dishes that Sarkar has lined up for the winter menu taste as good as the pictures, I can assure you we have a new star in our city and he's going to have us eating out of his hand.

At the rate at which independent restaurateurs such as AD Singh and creative chefs like Sujan Sarkar are raising the bar for excellence, I don't see five-star hotels, the old bastions of fine dining, continuing to be relevant to the universe of Delhi-NCR's foodies. That's bad news for an industry already struggling under the twin loads of debt and mounting operating costs. They have three options: reinvent (a distant possibility because of their bureaucratic management structures), re-engage (maybe they can retrieve their dwindling F&B market by selling their restaurant spaces to inventive chefs and visionary entrepreneurs), or perish. Keep reading to check out my reviews of Olive Bistro and Sujan Sarkar's winter menu. I have had my dinner and yet, I can hear the rumblings in my stomach.

To read about Sujan Sarkar, copy this link:

http://indianrestaurantspy.blogspot.in/2013/11/three-new-pedigreed-chefs-land-in-delhi.html

To read about AD Singh's business expansion plans, copy this link:

http://indianrestaurantspy.blogspot.in/2013/08/ad-singh-goes-lean-to-roll-out-20-new.html

DINING OUT: No Smokey's Without the Fire of Chilli

This review first appeared in Mail Today dated 24/01/2014. To see the original, please log on to http://epaper.mailtoday.in/epaperhome.aspx?issue=2412014.

Copyright: Mail Today Newspapers

QUICK BITES

WHERE: Smokey's BBQ & Grill, VIPPS Centre, Local Shopping Centre, Masjid Moth, GK-II

WHEN: 12 NOON TO 1 A.M. (Happy Hours: 12:30 to 8:30 P.M.)

DIAL: 011-41435531

MEAL FOR TWO (MINUS ALCOHOL): Rs 3,000 +++

STAR RATING: ***1/2

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

DELHI-NCR, one can now say with justifiable pride, is the country's unchallenged dining capital. There's been an explosion of creativity in the city's kitchens, with established and young chefs, from Indian Accent's Manish Mehrotra to Soda Bottle Openerwala's Anahita Dhondy, tirelessly extending the boundaries of the geography of gastronomic imagination. All those who used to mock at Delhi-NCR as the Republic of Butter Chicken can go eat crow.

An American diner serving burgers and hot
dogs with a chilli twist, Smokey's draws you in
with its log cabin look, smoked cocktails, and
dishes like the meaty Two Peppercorn Steak 

Over the past month, we have seen the opening of Soda Bottle Openerwala and Monkey Bar, both of which have game-changer written all over them, the overwhelming success of Made in Punjab's new menu, the back-to-the-roots winter menu of Punjab Grill, and the entry of JW Marriott's K3, whose dim sum, pizzas and Sunday smoked martinis are my favourites. We have seen so much happening that when Smokey's opened, I felt it was to be expected in a city with evolved taste buds. It has become our fundamental right to expect good food from the new restaurants opening in the city.

Smokey's is a restaurant with heritage. It has opened at the same address where Smoke House Grill (SHG) used to run and it's the baby of Shiv Karan Singh, who's a familiar face in Delhi-NCR's restaurant circles. It was he who used to run SHG with Riyaz Amlani, one of the country's most successful restaurateurs. The two parted ways amicably and Smokey's has a lot of SHG, but with Shiv Karan's larger-than-life stamp and ace mixologist Sherine John's smoked cocktails.

An American diner with a deliciously priced wine list, about which I have commented in Fortune Cookie, Smokey's is just the kind of place card-carrying carnivores would love to visit to sink their teeth into the burgers and hot dogs, each of which comes with a twist. The Andhra Style Tenderloin Chilli Hot Dog made me sit up and admire the inventiveness of the Smokey's team. Guntur chillies add fire to the most boring ingredient and sure enough, they infuse pep into the juicy Bangalore beef, the city's flavour of the season, that goes into the hot dog.

You can taste the same fire in the Two Peppercorn Steak, which is crusted with crushed pink and black pepper. I wonder why pink peppercorns haven't become more popular among chefs. They endow dishes with a different kind of zest. The Slow Cooked Pork Ribs are the other gems -- marinated in the house spice mix, lager and BBQ sauce, and slow-cooked in a wood-fired oven, the meat simply slips off the bones. It's the most expensive item on the menu, but if you love Chilean pork, you've can't continue living without tasting this dish.

I was trying hard to look for dishes that would gladden the heart of a vegetarian, but Smokey's is green-friendly only in one respect -- it only loves animals who feed on greens! It may even challenge those carnivores who've started to go slow on red meat. They have the option of asking for the Chicken Wings, generously drizzled with umami-laden BBQ sauce, or the Atomic Drumsticks spiked with red chillies, the Spicy BBQ Chicken and Grilled Pineapple Salad, pan-seared John Dory served with tomato risotto and Shimla chilli sauce (a memorable new addition to the city's culinary repertoire), and Raja Chilli Marinated Seafood Crepes with Saffron Gratin. Just in case you don't know what Nagaland's Raja chillies are, I'd like to forewarn you that these belong to the same family as the palate-numbing hot Bhut Jolokia. Shiv Karan loves his chillies.

I can't complete this review without a mention of the Sherine John's cocktails. My personal favourite is The New Old Fashioned with Jim Beam, Drambuie, fresh mandarin, cucumber, green apple and basil -- I love the balance and freshness of ingredients, and the low sugar content. It's a cocktail for grown-ups -- and one of the reasons why you must have a meal at Smokey's.

As He Re-Engineers The Wine Company's Menu, Chef Saby Shares Fabrica's Business Plans

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

I WAS trying to shake off the dreariness of Delhi's weather the other day at my favourite Soda Bottle Openerwala (SBOW) at the DLF Cyber Hub in Gurgaon, when I ran into Megha Kohli, a young chef with the happiest face in the business. I had heard Megha had joined Fabrica, the new company floated by Sabyasachi 'Chef Saby' Gorai, so my newsman's antenna shot up when I saw Megha, her chef's whites showing signs of long hours in the kitchen, at the Cyber Hub.

And sure enough, I learnt that Saby had been signed up by Ashish Kapur to work on The Wine Company menu. That was music to my ears because I believe The Wine Company is a great idea -- where else can you get such decently priced wine in Delhi-NCR -- but its menu has obviously been drawn up by a person who has no clue about wines or wine pairing. You cannot have a wine-driven restaurant without a food menu to complement it. Being a good judge of market realities, Ashish seems to have figured it out soon enough and it shows in his decision to get Saby to rewrite the menu.

After leaving AD Singh, Sabyasachi
Gorai launched Fabrica with a plan to
to roll out concepts in five business
verticals. Image: Facebook

Meeting Megha and Saby's nephew, young chef Subhayan Das, outside SBOW seemed like some sort of a karmic connection at work, for the restaurant was the last project that Saby completed before quitting AD Singh's fast-expanding restaurant empire. It was a calculated risk on the part of Saby, who has found a niche for his unmistakable media persona on television (The Urban Cook on Zee Khana Khazana), but he's working according to a plan that straddles five verticals:

* Roll out middle-to-mass-market food concepts, from gourmet food carts to burger chains, in smaller cities such as Chandigarh Jaipur and Pune. Apart from these turnkey projects, Saby proposes to pursue restaurant consultancies, which he says will provide him "bread and butter" and the wherewithal to grow his business organically. His dream is to create a chain of gourmet stores with restaurants and lecture kitchens on the lines of Eataly, the brainchild of the Italian electronics retailer, Oscar Farinetti.

* Launch a culinary college to produce qualified chefs who will be trained to cater to the burgeoning restaurant industry and its increasingly international standards. Saby is in final stages of talks with a private university in Delhi-NCR and the project is likely to be bankrolled by the scion of an old business house with a growing interest in restaurant concepts. A top equipment maker is developing what promises to be the country's most modern catering college kitchen.

* Create a two-way employment exchange for chefs -- both Indians looking for better openings or jobs abroad and international chefs scouting for career breaks outside their countries. This is one vertical the country badly needs. I wish Saby pays attention to the critical area of training stewards as well!

* Sign up as brand ambassador of food and kitchen accessories brands. This is one good idea, for apart from Sanjeev Kapoor, Vikas Khanna, Ritu Dalmia and Saby (for the upscale German kitchen and household utilities brand, Miele), marketers rarely consider chefs as brand ambassadors in verticals where their world should be the law. If Saby succeeds, he'll give chef-shy food and kitchen appliances brands the courage to bank on chefs. Because Saby, unlike the other three, who became media personalities before they got brand ambassadorships, did not have a television show before he signed up with Miele.

* And last (this one is what I find is most exciting), create a range of 'sprinkle-ons', or cooked powders that you can adds to your food to get a curry kick, for a Japanese marketing agency. Imagine you are having a medium-done steak and you get the urge to sex it up with a balchao flavour, and all you need to do is pick up a sprinkler filled with balchao powder. Saby dreams of the day when these sprinkler would become as common as Tabasco and Capsico at homes and in restaurants.

Dreams have the power to drive you closer to reality. Saby should know this better than most of his other peers.

DINING OUT: Punjab Grill Lays Out A Platter Full of Nostalgia

This review first appeared on Page 23 of Mail Today dated January 3, 2014. To see the original page, click on http://epaper.mailtoday.in/epaperhome.aspx?issue=312014 and go to Page 23.

QUICK BITES

WHERE: 2nd Floor, Food Court, Select Citywalk, Saket

WHEN: Lunch and Dinner (12 noon to 12 midnight)

DIAL: (011) 41572977

AVG MEAL FOR TWO (MINUS ALCOHOL): Rs 1,800+++

STAR RATING: ****

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

IF YOU were to ask me about the culinary gift of 2013 to the freezing year that has just unfolded, I would say it is the return of regional cuisines -- without any glossing over.

Starting with the tangy and unforgettable
Kaali Gajar Ki Kanji, the Punjab Grill's
winter menu is a winner all the way.

Delhi/NCR has seen Bijoli Grill, which has been doing steady business from one far corner of Dilli Haat, open to rave reviews at Banga Bhawan, the West Bengal state government guest house on Hailey Road. The city has gifted a new lease of life to the dying tradition of the Irani cafe, an institution associated with such venerable names as Britannia and Kyani Cafe in Mumbai, at the Soda Bottle Opernerwala, DLF Cyber Hub, Gurgaon. Everyone I know, as a result, has been eating berry pulao and keema pao as if these are going out of fashion.

Panchvati Gaurav, an import from Mumbai and a favourite of those who love their Rajasthani and Gujarati thalis, is drawing packed houses at the Cyber Hub. Dhaba by Claridges has barely opened at the same location and people are already comparing it with Made in Punjab, which, without doubt, is a leader in its category. Even Monkey Bar has rewritten the rules of pub grub with its bacon-wrapped tandoori sausage dog. These new openings have collectively made that amorphous creature we call Indian cuisine fashionable once again.

With these thoughts swirling in my head, I stepped into Punjab Grill, which is at the farthest end of Select Citywalk, Saket. I had not been to Punjab Grill after Zorawar Kalra parted ways with Amit Burman and Rohit Aggarwal. My mission was to sample the new winter menu prepared by Gurpreet Singh Gehdu, a former sous chef of Indian Accent's Manish Mehrotra, who came into his own at the helm of the hugely successful Singapore outlet of Punjab Grill.

As Gurpreet had just returned from Singapore, I was expecting him to amaze me with the magic of molecular gastronomy. He had another plan up his sleeve -- to floor me with the brilliance of traditional flavours, which are going out of fashion because they require the kind of time and effort that only our mothers could invest in food.

I knew I was on to a treat when I had the Kaali Gajar Kaanji, which had been fermented for 72 hours and had an inviting tanginess, followed by the apple wood-smoked Shakarkandi Kamrakh ki Chaat -- sweet potato and star fruit tossed in sweet and sour tamarind. It was an unusual combination of textures and flavours, and the smoke was the killer app! A heart-warming Kharode Ka Shorba packing in the punch of gelatinous lamb trotters; Bheja Masala redolent of freshly ground garam masala; succulent Tabak Maaz -- lamb ribs simmered in fennel (saunf)-flavoured milk and fried on a tawa -- the kind I have not had after my first lunch post-marriage prepared by my mother-in-law and her sisters; hand-pounded Sarson Da Saag, whose rough texture, balanced by the dollop of white butter, came with the bite you normally don't get to experience in this day and age of electrical mixer-grinders; and the must-have Punjab Grill Deg Hot Pot, which is just the way you'd want to dig mutton koftas (with the texture of galawat kebabs) in a soul-satisfying gravy with carrots and turnips -- it's the shabdegh reinvented!

This is food that brings back memories of a childhood when it was a winter ritual to lay out jars of pickles and vadi out in the balmy sun, to be shared with families in the neighbourhood, and when summer nights used to be spent sleeping on the rooftop under the stars, waking up to early morning birdsong (when there were birds still around in Delhi that you could identify from Salim Ali's books). When I was having Gudh Wale Chawal and Bajre Ki Choori at the end, the memories came rushing in. It takes a good chef to bring that past back to life -- if only fleetingly.

DINING OUT: Go Dhan-Dhan-Dhansak with the Dikras at Soda Bottle Openerwala

WHERE: Ground Floor (it's closes to the main entrance), DLF Cyber Hub, Next to Building No. 8, Cyber City, Phase-II, Gurgaon

WHEN: 11:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m.

DIAL: (0124) 6518801; (+91) 8527636633

AVE MEAL FOR TWO: Rs 1,200+++. The restaurant doesn't have an alcohol licence yet.

STAR RATING: ****/5

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

IT'S HARD to come up with one big idea in a lifetime, but AD Singh is like an ideas factory. The hugely successful restaurateur with an evolved sense of style has spawned three uniquely different restaurant concepts this year (and there's one more in the pipeline).

Soda Bottle Openerwala combines authentic good

food with the eccentricity of the decor of an Irani

cafe, a priceless yet dying institution of Mumbai

The year started with Le Bistro du Parc at Defence Colony, below the Moolchand Flyover, which introduced the city to the idea of bistronomy (a limited menu changing daily, depending on the best produce available in the market). Guppy by Ai followed at the Lodi Colony Market, where family-style Japanese dining has found an address and a loyal clientele who've ensured that it is impossible to find a seat at lunch or dinner if you go without reservation. And now comes Soda Bottle Openerwala, at the busy-as-a-beehive-on-steroids DLF Cyber Hub in Gurgaon, which I rate as the most daring and therefore doubly successful new restaurant to open in Delhi-NCR in many years.

Soda Bottle Openerwala is an Irani cafe, an institution that is gasping for breath in Mumbai, barring the two notable doughty exceptions -- Kyani Bakery and Britannia. The expression 'Irani cafe' at once brings back memories of bun-maska, dhansak, berry pulao, Duke's raspberry drink, nan-khatai and paani kam chai, and of course, Nissim Ezekiel's hilarious poem inspired by the notice at his favourite haunt, the late Bastani and Company at Dhobi Talao, Mumbai:

No talking to cashier / No smoking / No fighting / No credit / No outside food / No sitting long / No talking loud / No spitting / No bargaining / No water to outsiders / No change / No telephone / No match sticks / No discussing gambling / No newspaper / No combing / No beef / No leg on chair / No hard liquor allowed / No address inquiry — By Order." (I owe this gem to Jayshree Bajoria's story carried by the BBC News website, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4485523.stm.)

To bring this institution back to life in a city that has been hardly exposed to it, AD Singh worked hard with his trusted lieutenants Mohit Balachandran (whom many of you may know as Chowder Singh of blogosphere) and Chef Sabyasachi 'Saby' Gorai (who has since left to launch his own consultancy), and a brilliant new hand, Anahita Dhondy, who worked at the Taj and JW Marriott after graduating from the prestigious Institute of Hotel Management in Aurangabad, and then went to Le Cordon Bleu in London to complete her culinary studies.

Dhondy, who's as pretty as she's accomplished at a very young age (she reminded me of the equally talented Naina De Bois-Juzan of Le Bistro du Parc), says she owes her knowledge of Parsi/Irani food entirely to her mother, Niloufer, who's a much sought-after caterer, and her grandmother's dhansak and sambhaar masalas -- the latter being a combination of 15 ingredients, including Kashmiri red chillies, garlic and heeng. She finishes, for instance, her hard-to-stop-drooling-over Salina Marghi (a light but tangy chicken curry with fried potato shavings on top) with gur and traditional Parsi vinegar, which is now produced by just one man in Navsari, Gujarat. That's a family secret, she says.

Soda Bottle Openerwala marries authentic good food, funky interiors that bring alive the eccentricities of Irani cafe decor, and lively music from the 1980s. But the killer app, without doubt, is the food -- ask for the mutton berry pulao (sprinkled with cranberries in the absence of zereshk, or barberries, that the Iranians love), salina marghi, bheeda par eeda (fried eggs, sunny side up, baked with okra), and wash the soul-satisfying meal down with old-fashioned cold coffee made with Nescafe or the Irani chai (where the Brooke Bond Red Label decoction is added to reduced milk), and yes, don't forget the Toblerone mousse (it's a most desirable sin to have been created by a woman!).

It's not for nothing that there's a stream of people walking into the restaurant at all times, and some are groaning about the long waiting period during lunch. AD & Co have given the Irani cafe a new lease of life at a place where you'd least expect it to be successful. It is a tribute both to Delhi/NCR's evolved palate and to AD's entrepreneurial instinct.

Just 22 of the 42 restaurants scheduled to open at DLF Cyber Hub are up and running, yet it already gets more than 10,000 footfalls a day. With restaurants such as Soda Bottle Openerwala, and Made In Punjab (Zorawar Kalra's ever-popular venture) or The Wine Company started by the Yo China-Dimsumbros trio (you'll read about it soon), I can see the number heading in just one direction -- north.