Culinary Expert, Writer & Consultant
I write about food history and stories most often around ingredients, cuisines, and the people who cook them. I also own and run A Perfect Bite Consulting and @APBCookStudio through which I curate culinary experience and help F&B brands and businesses connect with their consumers.
If you have had your eye on my doings off late, I have been most excited about my latest venture, Masala Trails, culinary tours of India. I have also been overwhelmed with the response and encouragement of family, friends and my peers in print and online media. Masala Trails was born because I was frustrated at how selectively Indian Cuisine is showcased.
A Keith Floyd chucks every tried and tested Indian Culinary traditions around with gay abandon with handfulls of 'tyumeric' flung into curries, a Jimmy Chinn shows it complete disrespect by topping a Jowar porridge with White Truffle oil and if one was to believe Gordon Ramsay one would think real Indians eat wild boar, ant chutney and elaborately stuffed whole goat Biryanis. Don't get me wrong, I respect each of these individuals in their own right, love their shows. I don’t even blame them, Indian cuisine is so vast it would be impossible to squeeze into a few hours of airtime and one would need to resprt sensationalising a few things for TRPs. But I do feel that they could follow a few rules.
In my research for Masala Trails, I have found many a chef, home cook and restaurant that serves up unique food that comes from a keen understanding of food and ingredients, sound knowledge of the cuisine and pure unadulterated passion to put oput the best they can on a plate! Unfortunately most of the time, these iconic little restaurants never quite make it to the culinary maps of gastronomes, because they do not have investors with deep pockets to fuel marketing initiatives and PR drives. And I have just come home from lunch at one such jewel.
I was hosted by Meher and Satyen Dasondi, who describe themselves as a husband and wife duo with a collective 45 years of experience in the hospitality industry who set up ZEUS Restaurants & Allied Pvt. Ltd. (ZRAPL) to realise a lifelong dream of running a restaurant. Indian Harvest – Luxury Dining is their first (of three) planned restaurants and offers traditional, un-pretentious Indian recipes served in a contemporary fashion.
But they are too modest, because what I saw in the two hours I spent with them was the sort of magic that can only come from strong teamwork, a passion for food that takes it to the status of art, and an eye for details that can only come from putting everything you have into the work you do.
You will rarely catch me going out to eat Indian food and you certainly would not find me going out of my way for it. But when your favourite teacher from school (who you are lucky to count amongst one of your dearest friends in adulthood), asks you to do something, you do it, no questions asked. That is what got me to Indian Harvest. That I will go back again and again, is a result of one of the most charming dining experiences I have had in a while. I eat out alot. But only superlative dining experiences make their way onto this blog. This was one. This one has an A Perfect Bite stamp of approval!
The Purple Wire - a blackcurrant slush. Please not the glass is rimmed with chaat masala which makes adds a delicious zing to every sip. I thought this could have done with a little lemon and salt in the actual drink to cut the sweetness somewhat.
The Summer Snow - My favourite of the three drinks! This was a surprising blend of apricot and peach that was subtly spiced with fresh mint. I tasted hints of passion fruit, that I suspect came from the mixing of the two fruit.
The Indian Parakeet, the drink with the most visual OOMPH! This is strawberry layerd over kiwi and although you can mix it, I don't reccomend you do, because the two bits are best individually savoured.
Kajuwale Hare Kofte - Crisp savoury, subtly spiced green gram kofta gave way to a surprising cashew filling. And the house sauce, a thinnned down pureed Paav bhajji made the perfect pairing!
Kombdi Patra Hirvi Chutney - Take a many layered Gujarati Patra, stuff it with chicken and a green chutney like a Parsi Patra ni Machchi, batter and deep fry the whole thing and this is what you end up with. These I could have eaten all day! I missed a fresh citrussy chutney to moiten it it but not too much! I was also told that it should have come with a hirvi chutney but the red sauce came by mistake.
The Rajasthani Methi Churan Bhindi - guaranteed to make an Okra lover of the worst Bhindi hater, these are a house special of batter fried okra that are the most popular dish on the menu. It was hard to stop with a coupld of bites once I started!
Gosht Ke Dahi Barre - These jewels of mincemeat were true perfection and came carefully draped in a yoghurt sauce flavoured with a house spice mix. The combination of the subtly spiced meat and the yogurt sauce leaves an extremely addictive Umami aftertaste in the mouth. My only complaint was that I needed a little more of the yoghurt sauce to dip them in!
Paneer Makai ke Gujiana - the crisp vermacelli coating gives way to a velvetty corn studded interior, in these savoury bits of tactile splendour. They have to be the sexiest Cheese balls I have ever seen or eaten! A fruity salsa on the side is the only thing I missed! Also I LOVE how well this picture has turned out!
Tale Adraki Jhingey - Perfect perfect gingered and batter fried prawns. The golden crust gave way to succulent subtly spiced DELICIOUSLY moist prawns.
Badan Guchi - a simple mushroom soup, creamed with almond, subtly tempered with a bit of whole spice. The perfect way to progress from starters to main course. And I love the whole sprigs that delicately lean down from each dish, so elegantly unusual. Even the centrepieces at the tables are a porcelein bowl with a single heart shaped leaf peering over the side.
Marghi ni Aleti Paleti - sweet spicy chicken and liver tossed together on top of toast garnished with a scattering of salli or potato sticks. I am not a lover of Liver and Kidney, but this I could eat again and again!
Dum Hyderabadi Murg - spring chicken slow cooked in a Hyderabadi style, a family recipe that Meher inherited from her family cook. Tender chicken, slow cooked in fresh spices and her signature spice blend, made it hard to stop eating, especially when the spices left a burst of flavour in the mouth! And every main course comes with a signature house salad, on a single sesame potato and a saria, the sago wafer that is served before a Parsi wedding feast.
Aloo Makhana Chettinad - you cannot go wrong with potatoes, but this is an example of just how RIGHT you can go with them! Baby potatoes, tender shallots, crunchy makhanas tossed together in a south Indian Chettinad style gravy... addictive! I could have sat and picked out every little shallot, then the makhanas and potatoes and ended satiated only when every bit of the sauce was in my tummy!
Meher's signature Yakhni Biryani - I am one of a rare breed, an Indian that does not know why there is such a fuss made over Biryani. and if forced to eat a biryani I will RUN from oily heavily spiced versions. But Meher is especially proud of her Biryanis. because she has created each one from scratch. I tasted two, this yakhni one, that again married chicken, spices and yoghurt into a delicious Umami flavour that has seeped into the rice. The other was her Bhakalli biryani, another recipe she picked up from her family cook from Bhatkal in the south. That was also distinct. redolent of Curry leaves, fresh spices and green chillies, deliciously zingy and totally different from the Yakhni. FABULOUS.
GYAAN and INFO
Indian Harvest – Luxury Dining offers traditional & un-pretentious Indian recipes served in a contemporary fashion. The restaurant is open to non-members & all general public. Address is Indian Harvest, Gate No. 1, Acres Club, Hemu Kalani Marg, Next to Bhakti Bhavan, Chembur East, Mumbai 400071; Telephone no.: 022-65169338 022-65169338 / 65169339). Our restaurant offers 100 seats & is divided in to 2 parts – an Indian sit-down section that has 26 covers & the balance 74 are in the main hall.
21 September 2011. After much thought and delibration, I am updating this post because it still continues to see a lot of hits.
I want to share that Ziya is no longer on my list of Mumbai favourites. My most recent dining experience at Ziya was extremely disappointing. I tasted the new Gourmand Menu in its vegetarian and non vegetarian avatars and found it very lack lustre. The non vegetarian version is too seafood heavy and 2 courses had no salt - an inexcusible mistake for a restaurant of this calibre. The vegetarian menu is heavy on gimmicks but low on flavour and just not worth the money paid for it. And most of the courses were red. There was none of the play of color and flavour and texture in this new menu that the previous one had. To be fair there were some good things, like the ginger sorbet bollinger palate cleanser and the whole wheat spinach combination that one of the dishes came on. But not enough to correct the balance. Overall, it was very disappointing. Like the day of my previous meal, the restaurant was aware I was dining there (AND bringing along a MOST illustrious guest.) I also want to state that this meal was paid for in spite of their offering to host it. (All those people who worry about anonymous reviews, this is a classic
example of what I say, a restaurant can brush up on service but if its
serves dissapointing food, it will do so regardless of who is being
served.) In fact it will take a lot of convincing to bring me back.
The Oberoi has always been one of my favourite places to dine out at in South Mumbai. Despite my high regard for it, however, I do not get to it often enough, living well on the other side of Mumbai as I do. But Ziya, their new restaurant had been on my radar, so being townside last weekend I took up their long standing invitation to dine there.
An interesting Amuse Bouche of Lassi and a Papad roll.
The Kebab Platter my companion ordered.
Tandoori Scottish Salmon also my companions choice - delicious!
Since I was invited to dine at Ziya, I am not going to comment on the service but I believe that the consistency of food will stay the same no matter the premise of the review so I will focus on that.
A large part of the dining experience at Ziya is the ambience. Heavy on gold offset by cream, but in an entirely elegant way, the restaurant has a show kitchen that is particularly arresting on one side and a breathtaking, panoramic view of Marine Drive, on the other. Designed to accentuate an enriching dining experience without the overbearing opulence a lot of ‘Royal cuisine’ restaurants use as a backdrop to lashings of cream and butter to justify their prices, Ziya showcases the signature "evolved cuisine" of Chef Vineet Bhatia, who, (as the menu at Ziya introduces him) is "the prodigal chef." This term of endearment stems from the Bhatias long relationship with the Oberoi. He worked as the chef at Kandahar with for five years before emigrating to the UK. Seventeen years later, he returned to render a contemporary Indian restaurant to replace Kandahar's antiquated north-west dining experience.
The menu at Ziya sidesteps typecasting the food as “fusion” or “nouvelle Indian”, suggesting diplomatically that “the light and imaginative dishes display a clever balance between innovation and an immense respect for the history of Indian cooking”. I have to admit here that I did translate this into marketing jargon to cover up something indefinable after reading the dishes on offer.
I was wrong!
I opted for the seven course Gourmand menu. I prefer to opt for a set or tasting menu when dining at a restaurant for the first time. Like the back cover of a book encapsulates the best of the book, a set menu showcases what a restaurant thinks is their best, allowing one to avoid wading through the larger menu, making wrong choices and generally messing up. And if the set menu appeals, one can come back to sample other things...
With Ziya, the Gourmand menu translates to an array of dishes presented in breathtaking detail to calculated to delight the eye as much as the palate; carefully arranged in stacks, towers and pictures, surrounded with artistic swirls of chutneys and raitaa, the colours and shapes make the food true to the Indian ethos of colour on the plate. And each plate set before you is a melange of not just colour but also flavour, texture and temperatures. With Ziya, the Gourmand menu translates to an array of dishes that make you gasp, once at their appearance, again on tasting and a third time when you finish your serving of that fabulous dish!
Let me take you through my meal....
The Crisp roti wrapped prawns, for instance, sets crunchy roti wrapped prawns against little cubelets of Bloody Mary jelly, and a velvety tomato soup. It is a lovely plate, that promises many surprises for the palate. My only complaint is that while the waiters at Ziya adequately highlight the components of the course, they fail to tell me the order in which to eat it. I ended up trying the soup first, then the jelly and then the prawn as the components caught my eye, because, unfortunately the prawn had little flavour, and was more about the crispyness of the roti ‘noodles’ it was wrapped in. When I tried it in the right order, the prawn first, followed by the creamy tangy soup that washed away fried and seafoody flavours of the prawn and concluded with the spicy Jelly to cleanse my palate, the dish’s play on textures came through.
But the food at Ziya is not simply about throwing together contrasting textures. There are a lot of exciting tricks on the menu, such as the playing of varying temperatures to surprise the mouth that followed in the next course, a Warm Wild-Mushroom khichdi came topped with a swirl of Makhani ice cream. The ‘ice cream’ of frozen butter chicken gravy, sat on top of a bed of rice separated by a crunchy cracker. Different textures and flavours, delighted the mouth but the warm khichdi that held to its savoury heals perfectly complemented the makhani ice cream that left a slow burn of heat in its cold wake down the throat!
The seductive tone of the meal progressed, with a Varqi 25 carat black spiced Chicken Tikka carefully laid on a bed of saffron upma, with the subtly sweet, barely spicy chicken garnished with pure gold leaf contrasting the pillowy seductively scented saffron upma perfectly in all aspects from colours to textures and flavours. It is a dish that I will be a long time in forgetting because it will take a lot to beat it.
I thought I had claimed that too soon with the serving of the next course, the Grilled Chilli and Curry Leaf Lobster that followed took the oomph factor of the meal a few too many notches higher, its flame colors contrasted by a bright green bed of broccoli khichdi surrounded by a moat of flame Lobster jus, the whole dusted at the table with spiced cocoa powder. But the lobster, like the prawn we had earlier, wasn't succulent or flavourful enough with not a hint of chilli or curry leaf in sight. A classic case of looks alone do not a great dish make!
Thankfully the fifth course, a palate cleanser, of a champagne sorbet in which a scoop of ice shavings were luxuriously smothered in Moët et Chandon made up for the a lavish letdown of the lobster, washing away the disappointment in a sweep of icy bubbles.
The sixth course of Smoked Tandoori Lamb Chops, silken potato mash, lamb samosa, spiced lamb and mint jus and lemon grass foam arrived at the table with a considerably less fanfare than the Lobster, but made up for its low key appearance with layer upon layer of flavour! The mildly spiced lamb chops were perfectly cooked. The meat separating almost lovingly from the bone, the silk-smooth saffron scented mashed potatoes offering ample contrast in texture to the crispy minced-lamb samosa that was very cleverly slightly spicier than the meat. A perfect bite of a dish that I could not get enough of!
For dessert (and here is where being a food writer helps) I opted for a Chocolate Palate, a platter of several chocolate concoctions including a white chocolate kulfi and hazelnut brownies, Chocomosa (bitter chocolate-filled samosas) and rose-flavored ice cream and a Paan Panna Cotta. And at the behest of my dining companion, a Coffee ice cream. Most of the chocolate offerings were banal, but the Coffee ice cream was delicious albeit not the best choice for dessert after the sumptuous meal I had just finished. The Chocolate Samosa, was an outstanding interpretation of a classic combination of crisp pastry and chocolate, right up there with detectibles such as churros con chocolate. The other exception was the Paan Panna Cotta, subtly redolent of Paan, a bowl full of just that would have made a far better sweet finale to the meal in my opinion.
I rarely dine out on Indian food (of the Mughlai, Punjabi ilk, that is, although I am all for smaller places that do other cuisines). I find the fare at this sort of restaurant too heavy. Knowing its popularity I am willing to admit that this might simply be because it does not meet my personal palate references. But the Indian Palate is changing. A host of international cooking shows, a flourishing travel industry and fabulous cookbooks showcasing the world on a plate are shaping the city's collective palate. Indian food cannot afford to remain mired in cream, butter and heavy upholstery. It needs to move forward and take its place in more contemporary avatars while respecting tradition. And Ziya, quite frankly, has proven superlative in delivering on this. Granted, the seafood options can be improved upon, but the negatives are far outweighed by the positives and I will certainly be back to discover more !
Located at the Oberoi, Ziya is open for lunch and dinner. A meal for two costs approximately Rs 4,500 without alcohol; the seven-course gourmand meal for two is priced at Rs 7,000 without alcohol.
It took a friend from Andheri to tell me, a resident of Powai, about a neighbourhood gem in Bandra! Mia Cucina.
I've eaten there twice now, both times for lunch. They have outdoor and indoor seating but I am a spoilt woman and I chose the booths that they had indoors both times. And the cosy ambiance was very appealing on both visits.
The menu is charming. It is printed to look like it is hand-written, doodles and all and explains each course generously. Coomprising of dishes that are simple but interesting it offers antipasti (appetizers), zuppa (soup), pastas, pizzas, main course, desserts and non-alcoholic drinks . I didn't bother with the wine list, I was more interested in the food. (I have my priorities extremely clear when it comes to food!)
I have to have soup if it is on the menu, so I started with soup of the day. Chicken with roasted peppers. It was disappointing. It would have been a much more interesting soup if they had peeled the peppers and pureed them instead of leaving the peppers chunky. That left a lot of annoying skin and I am not a fan of skins of tomatoes, peppers and similar debris, obstructing my soup experience. Some sort of cereal to bind things might have helped as well. The Lentil and chicken soup I had on my previous trip was much more enjoyable.
The rest of my menu was a repeat of my first meal,
For starters we had Suppli di Riso - Rissoto balls golden and crispy on the outside and melty cheesy on the inside, better than the first time I ate them when the cheese was not so melty. We also had the fig and feta salad which was a little bit sweet but my gujju genes were pleased. My grouses were that the feta was too crumbly and that the salad could have done with a few chunks of fig tossed in, even dried figs that had been soaked would have worked to add that figgy texture of small seeds that crunch between the teeth. But it was still an interesting salad, not their fault they got me for a patron!
For the Main course I chose the chargrilled beef with mushrooms. Not very innovative for a foodie, I know, but I had liked the stake on my last visit and I dont get it often enough so I indulged. The stake comes with potatoes but I asked for it well done with veggies to substitute potatoes. unfortunately the vegetables were underdone to the point of annoyance but the stake was grilled to perfection, well done on the outside but dark pink and juicy inside. The mushrooms added an earthy underscore tone to the smoky flavour and the sauce was so divine, I sopped up every drop I could!
For dessert I had the white chocolate cheesecake. Smooth and melting in the mouth, with that slightly salty accent that crumbly buttery bases lend classic cheesecakes to balance the mouth feel and the sweetness. Lovely and over too soon. But all their desserts have been winners. Last time I gave in to temptation and tried two cheesecakes so i can vouch for them.
Rating on a scale of 1-10 - I would give it a 6. I would have given it a 7 but cutting 1 for the soup and the undercooked veggies in the main course.
GYAN and links Mia Cucina, Gasper Enclave, 16/17, St John Street, Pali Naka, Bandra (W), Mumbai; Tel: 67104000; Price: Starters cost between Rs 120-195, mains around Rs 250. A meal for two with soup, starters, mains, desserts and beverages would cost under Rs 1,500. Website http://www.miacucina.in/
