DINING OUT: Aerocity's First Hotel Woos Delhi with a Winner Buffet Spread

This review first appeared in Mail Today on November 22, 2013. To view the original, go to http://epaper.mailtoday.in/epaperhome.aspx?issue=22112013 and open Page 23. Copyright: Mail Today Newspapers

DINING OUT

K3 @ JW MARRIOTT

WHERE: Asset Area 4, Hospitality District, Delhi Aerocity (on your way to IGIA's T3)

WHEN: Lunch and Dinner

DIAL: +91 11 4521 2121

MEAL PER PERSON (MINUS ALCOHOL): Rs 1,200+++ (lunch); Rs 1,750+++ (dinner)

RATING: ****

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

DELHI is in the throes of a spate of restaurant openings -- Yuautcha at Ambience Mall, Vasant Kunj; Dhaba by Claridges at DLF Place, Saket; Soda Bottle Openerwala at Cyber Hub, Gurgaon; Paranda at Vivanta by Taj, Faridabad; Shanghai Club at WelcomHotel Dwarka -- but I chose to start my journey of new discoveries with K3, the all-day restaurant at the New Delhi Aerocity's JW Marriott, the first hotel to be off the block at what has been a ghost of a destination for the past one year.

K3's Daniele Trivero, one of the three anchor

chefs stationed at the sprawling open kitchens,

 rolls out pizzas that will give La Piazza a good 

run for its wads of money

What drew me to K3 was the chatter it had caused on Facebook for serving the city's lowest-priced buffet (Rs 1,250+++ per person for lunch; Rs 1,750+++ for dinner). People know it's an introductory offer -- how else does a newbie get us to talk about it in a competitive market? -- but what has blown them away is the sheer quality and range of the food dished up by the sprawling restaurant's three show kitchens.

Each kitchen is led by a chef who brings bundles of talent and newness to the food he serves. The Chinese kitchen is headed by the reassuring Thomas Wee, a Malaysian of Chinese origin from Malacca, whom many of us know from his days at the Empress of China, in the hotel that was once known as the Parkroyal. Daniele Trivero brings the best culinary gifts of his mixed parentage (his father is Piemontese; his mother is from Puglia) to the Italian kitchen. And Pavan Chennam, who in his last job at the ITC Grand Maratha spent five years documenting the recipes of the legendary Imtiaz Qureishi, brings his energy, repertoire and a young team to the Indian kitchen. You can only expect the best from this formidable trio.

I knew I was on to a good deal when I dug into the dim sum (the one with crab meat impressed me with its freshness and flavours). I followed it up with a platter of roast duck, pork with crispy skin and honey-glazed pork -- a meatvaganza that should warm any carnivore's heart with the subtle sensations it leaves behind on the palate. It's a pleasure to have meats served to you with just a hint of cooking and brushstrokes of accompanying sauces that don't smother the main ingredient. An example of this minimalist yet flavour-intense cooking style was the lightly steamed sea bass that came to life with the accompanying garlic-ginger-chilli sauce, which was splayed on the middle of the fillet like a victory belt.

I first had the tomato focaccia bread from the Italian kitchen and I kid you not, I could have had just that for dinner. But you can't have a complete K3 experience without Daniele's unbeatable pizzas. I had one with just a pelati tomato base (without oregano to dress it up, the umami of the tomatoes made me go chomp-chomp-chomp). The toppings were speck, radicchio and scamorza, the famous cheese from Puglia, the home province of the chef's mother. I have not had many pizzas that taste better. I had another slice from the pizza with the mildly hot Neapolitan salami as topping. It's just what our chilli-foraging palate would want more of.

It's a pity that the Indian kitchen doesn't serve kebabs (the hotel could have put the five years that Chennam spent under Imtiaz Qureishi's wings to better use), but its tadkewali bhindi (cooked in cold-pressed kasundi sourced from Kolkata), Purani Dilli ki Murghi, Mutton Nehari and dum biryani made with sella (parboiled) rice, which I thought was a nifty diversion from the standard basmati.

The restaurant actually has four kitchens, because its dessert counter has a distinctive presence, and the masala chai ice-cream convinced me that you can't let a sated tummy make you miss the offerings lined up to tempt you. You'll not regret spending this Sunday with your family at K3.

FORTUNE COOKIE: Din Tai Fung's Amazing Success Story is a Lesson in Mall Dining for India

Fortune Cookie first appeared in the November 21, 2013, edition of Mail Today. I have tweaked the headlines and the order in which the individual items have appeared in the newspaper.
http://epaper.mailtoday.in/epaperhome.aspx?issue=21112013
Copyright: Mail Today Newspapers

Din Tai Fung, Taiwan's gift to dim sum lovers,
has shown that even a mall setting can't stop a
restaurant from getting coveted Michelin stars
Image: Courtesy of Taiwan543.com 

MANY eyebrows were raised when the news first broke of Yuautcha opening at Ambience Mall in Vasant Kunj? How could a pedigreed international restaurant open at a middle-market mall not particularly known for outstanding food offerings? I found the answers during a visit to the Din Tai Fung, the dim sum restaurant famous for its soupy dumplings (xiaolongbao), at its fifth-floor outlet in Taipei 101, the world's third tallest building whose steel-and-glass pagoda structure towers over the Taiwanese capital.

Like Din Tai Fung's growing legion of Indian admirers who lovingly call it DTF, I had discovered the brand in Singapore, before also finding it to my utter joy at Bangkok's Central World mall. But having the xiaolongbao, after piercing each one of them with a chopstick and seeing the soup ooze out seductively (if you eat it any other way, you'll be left with a scalded tongue), in the city of its birth is a different experience altogether.

It's a sprawling restaurant at a food court with not one vacant seat, but you'll ignore its regular appearance (and commonplace seating) the moment you immerse yourself into the delectable xiaolongbao with finely minced pork and crab roe cooking in the stock inside, and the star anise-flavoured beef noodle soup, which the Taiwanese revere as much as their oyster omelette, and the gently flavoured egg fried rice. A great food concept, you'll realise, doesn't need a plush appearance and credit card-burning prices to become an international sensation whose two outlets in Hong Kong (Tsim Sha Tsui and Causeway Bay) have won a Michelin star each.

The global network of restaurants spread across 11 countries had humble origins at the arterial Xinyi Road in Taipei, which acquired international celebrity status only after DFT was rated by The New York Times as one of the world ten best gourmet restaurants in 1993. It is also the road where Taipei 101 is now located. DFT's founder, Yang Bingyi, and his wife Lai Penmai, opened Din Tai Fung as a shop retailing cooking oil in 1958, but the rise of packaged cooking oil put them nearly out of business. They started selling xiaolongbao and steamed noodles from their shop to stay out of the red, but so popular was their food menu that by 1974 Din Tai Fung grew into a restaurant famous for its soup dumplings. Fortunately for its fans, it has only gotten better in the past four decades.

Two global celeb chefs raise a toast to our city

FOR THE first time after Wasabi, which introduced Masaharu Morimoto to the Nobu-obsessed city, Delhi will be home to restaurants of two international celebrity chefs -- Akira Back at the Aerocity's sparkling new JW Marriott and Aldo Zilli, who makes his Asian debut with Zerruco at the airy spot that was formerly occupied by Mashrabiya at The Ashok.

Back, a Korean-American who started as a professional snowboarder and acted in extreme action movies before becoming a student of Morimoto and an executive chef of Nobu Matsuhisa's Aspen restaurant, and Zilli, a celebrity TV chef and best-selling cookbook author who recently sold his successful restaurants in London and Dubai for a tidy pile, are alike in many ways. They are both intensely creative (an admiring JW Marriott insider was telling me the other night that Back can turn even a potato croquette, which he serves with seared foie gras, into a sensory experience) and they are also brilliant showmen with a celebrity fan following.

Back has had Taylor Swift, Eva Longoria and a host of other entertainment industry celebrities eating out of his hands at his Yellowtail Japanese Restaurant and Lounge at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. Zilli, whose last book, Fresh and Green, was on the Daily Telegraph's Top Ten Books of 2012, made headlines not so long ago by creating an a pair of edible stilettos from fresh pasta stuffed with spinach, ricotta and truffles for the multiple award-winning Manchester restaurant, Cicchetti, which is said to be the favourite of Coleen Rooney, wife of the England and Manchester United football superstar Wayne Rooney.

A regular on the pages of Daily Mail, a food columnist for Daily Express and a television food show host who has also appeared on Celebrity X-Factor, Zilli is the corporate executive chef (they call him the consigliere!) of the company that runs Cicchetti. Zerruco, though, is his independent venture, for which he has tied up with restaurateurs Kashif Farooqi and Prashant Ojha of Urban Pind fame, industry consultant Manish Baheyti, and three private investors. It was the Michelin one-starred London chef, Atul Kochhar, who introduced Baheyti to Zilli -- Baheyti and Kochhar know each other since their days as students at the Oberoi Centre for Learning and Development.

The entry of these successful international chefs seals Delhi's reputation as a foodie city that believes in spending good money on good food, but what do these chefs see in the city? I asked Baheyti this question and he said it is precisely this reputation that is drawing chefs of the calibre of Back and Zilli. Gone are the days when Delhi could be dismissed as the Republic of Butter Chicken. Yes, we (and I say this as a flag-waving Dilliwallah) do love our butter chicken (I'll have driven for more than an hour to Invitation, Ashok Vihar, to dig the best BC of Delhi), but we also have an adventurous, world-travelled palate.

More importantly, we put our money where are taste buds are. Another celebrity powerhouse of culinary talent, Mumbai's Rahul Akerkar, who's ready to open Indigo shortly on what was formerly a nallah on Africa Avenue, said as much when he described Delhi to me as a city of well-heeled, high-spending food lovers. For the new international imports, Delhi offers hope in a world where fine dining is yet to recover from the wallet-tightening aftermath of the economic downturn of 2008. Expect more to follow the road taken by Akira Back and Aldo Zilli.

Akira Back Lines Up His Best for Delhi Gourmet Club

AKIRA BACK'S restaurant at the JW Marriott opens with a Delhi Gourmet Club dinner on Saturday and the menu that the Korean-American celebrity chef has prepared for the evening will give you a foretaste of his inventive style. Back spikes his famous tuna pizza with ponzu mayo (ponzu is the citrus-flavoured soy sauce that the Japanese use extensively), kaenip (perilla leaves, which the Japanese call shiso and the Koreans use to make a kimchi) and black truffles. His other hallmark preparation, seared foie gras, comes with a corn croquette, tosaka (a seaweed that is either served cold or eaten with sashimi) and spiced litchi honey. And the supporting cast of his duck breast include a puree of kabocha (a white squash that the Japanese and Koreans believe to be an aphrodisiac), compressed Korean pear and the sweet soy-base Kabayaki sauce that an unagi or eel is dipped into. Ingredients Delhiites haven't experienced before.

Delhi-NCR's First Irani Restaurant is Chef Saby's Last Hurrah for AD Singh

I'VE BEEN constantly monitoring the progress of Gurgaon's Cyber Hub, which is evolving as the new must-go-to destination, but the new restaurant that's got the city chattering is Soda Bottle Openerwala. An AD Singh venture that is being justifiably billed as Delhi/NCR's first Parsi-Irani restaurant, the quirkily designed Soda Bottle Openerwala is also the last hurrah of the hugely creative Sabyasachi 'Saby' Gorai, who has spent more than a year researching a cuisine that most Delhiites equate with akoori scrambled eggs, and is now moving on to launch his own consultancy services.

The more discerning among us have been goading us to try out the amazing fare that Mrs Dhun Bagli serves at the Delhi Parsi Anjuman on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, but for those who can't think beyond Mumbai's iconic Irani restaurant, Britannia & Company, Soda Water Openerwala may be the best place to start for an understanding of the cuisine. I will review the restaurant at length, but I have not heard such a buzz accompanying any opening for a long time. With Zorawar Kalra's Made in Punjab drawing capacity crowds, Soda Water Openerwala doing better in its opening week, and Zambar with a new menu designed by the extremely creative Arun Kumar waiting in the wings, I can see all roads leading to the Cyber Hub.