I have been writing about food and travel for longer than I care to remember. I have written for magazines and newspapers about my twin passions: food and travel. My ‘best’ meals have been the ones in palatial surroundings cooked by Michelin starred chefs, but also those of bajra rotis and ground chillies under the stars in a village in Banni, Kutch. I hope this site fully captures the sheer sweep of life from 1987 to the present times. All published articles that date before 2000 are in Vintage. All reviews of existing restaurants as well as those that have closed, are in Reviews.
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About Me...
About this site
Pull up a chair. Take a taste. Come join us. Life is so endlessly delicious.
― Ruth Reichl
I first started writing as a profession in 1987. For the last 15 years, I have written exclusively about food. It is a vast subject, and my weekly column in Times of India is just one aspect of food. Ingredients, spices, utensils, regional cuisines, grandma’s secret recipes, five star hotels and their chefs, the chaat-walas in the bylanes of Delhi’s Chandni Chowk and Lucknow’s Hazratganj – all are equal contributors to this impossibly rich medley. I hope this site does justice to all of them.
Witches’ Brew
Jancis Robinson, the well-known wine writer, and Silverio Cineri, master chef from Italy, occupy two ends of the spectrum of food and beverage. But last week, both found themselves in New Delhi. While Robinson, on a private visit to the Capital, was co-opted by The Oberoi to hold a wine workshop for the staff, Cineri…
DetailsYauatcha
Cuisine: Chinese/Dimsum An international, upscale brand comes to town There is a remarkably high degree of standardization between the food in the Mumbai outlet and the Delhi one. I visited both in the space of four days. Atmospherics: Not nearly as plush as the Mumbai branch vis a vis décor, the Ambience Mall branch is…
DetailsEthnic shopping in London
On Edgware Road, I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn’t in Iraq. Burqa clad figures were out shopping: at one end of a side road, a vegetable market had been set up. Fabric shops sold lacy lengths of cloth with liberal helpings of glitter. However, it was the small grocery shops that were…
DetailsPriti Goenka
Go Goenka When you come from a Kolkata-based family that is famous for cooking, and the gastronomically inclined in-laws hail from Kolkata via Churu, cooking professionally as a passion is a natural corollary. That is what Priti Goenka has been doing, ever since shifting to Delhi. Her forte? Marwari food that has the flavours of…
DetailsCarnatic Cafe
The only known Karnataka restaurant serving home-style food of the Brahmin community. it is in the homely market that used to be Grandlay Cinema. Brick flooring, an open kitchen, cooks from villages in South Karnataka, prices so low as to be laughable and an owner who is in his restaurant from morning to night, going…
DetailsChina Garden
It was a Sunday night, the elegant restaurant in Ashok Hotel was packed to capacity. There were at least half a dozen five year olds on the premises and they were all making a beeline for my table because I was sitting near the fish pond that runs the length of the restaurant. The kids…
DetailsFinding Kashmiri Food in Delhi
If you are a member of one of Delhi’s Facebook food groups, you will have seen a question sooner or later in one or all of them: “Where is the best place to find Kashmiri food in Delhi?” The good news is that there are plenty of places, on an axis from Jama Masjid, South…
DetailsThe Real Mughlai Food
Forget about the too-greasy-to-be-true offerings that commonly go under the name of Mughlai food in restaurants. The real Mughlai food is not even a homogenous entity. It has, if researcher Salma Husain is to be believed, transformed itself from completely Central Asian from the time of Babur who came from Ferghana, to overwhelmingly Indian by…
DetailsIn the Kitchen of Kamal, Smita and Awadh
It is fascinating to know how various people strayed into the food business. And even more fascinating to figure out that how they were inveigled in and the strength of their bond with the business has little correlation. But I am getting ahead of myself. Gurgaon, also called Millennium City, is a haven for small…
DetailsCoastal Fish Curries
Kaveri G Ahuja from Coorg remembers the simple fish curries her grandmother used to make in Coorg. Swarms of tiny fish used to feed in the rice fields on either sides of the weir. Once the weir was opened, the water would recede and fishermen used to catch the fish. Kaveri says that they were…
DetailsMatamaal
“My granny cooks the best” Kashmiri Atmospherics: The modest-sized restaurant that has a full-sized shikara inside (it doubles up as a table!) is run by a delightfully hospitable Kashmiri couple. Surinder and Nalini Sadhu are the eponymous ‘grand-parents’ (Matamaal means naani’s house) and it is they who greet first-timers and regular guests with the famous…
DetailsA Blast from Bali
“With the advent of Coca Cola into Indonesia, the entire population began calling it Chocha Chola” chortled my guide in Bali a few years ago. In Bahasa, the national language of Indonesia that has 8844 named islands and over 10,000 more that have not been dignified with a name, the letter C is pronounced as…
DetailsThrough the Backwaters
There’s no doubt about it – the high point of my trip to Kerala was a trawl through the backwaters in a houseboat. My hotel – Kumarakom’s Radisson Plaza – has its own houseboat, but getting a houseboat on hire is hardly rocket science: in the course of around six hours, I probably passed eighty…
DetailsCzech-ing into Prague
“I’ll never run into anyone I know,” I said to myself while packing my suitcase for a trip to Prague. Indeed, I had never even heard of the Czech Republic being touted as a trendy destination: all the glory seemed to belong to the other countries of Western Europe. By the first afternoon of my…
DetailsFood Shopping in Hong Kong
My two traveling companions were far luckier than I. They were in Hong Kong to shop for electronics – cameras and cellphones. I was there to look around for food. They pored over catalogues long before our trip; I wasn’t even sure if there’d be anything for me to buy. They knew what they’d be…
DetailsSrinagar, An Insider’s Guide
Exploring Srinagar is largely a matter of personal choice: the delight of a shikara is its stately, unhurried pace; a cycle ride around is the perfect answer for seeing what you want. Stop every ten feet to take the perfect shot without disturbing anybody, travel by yourself if you are a loner, or with a…
DetailsFood and War in Sri Lanka
The best way of starting a war in Sri Lanka, is to ask a group of housewives the exact recipe of curry powder. It’s something that every kitchen on the island contains, because it goes into a wide variety of dishes. But, as I found out soon enough, it’s akin to asking a bunch of…
DetailsSantrampur: Dining with the Royal Family
In a supremely secluded corner of Gujarat, the 9 gun salute state of Santrampur occupies a rather interesting site in the intersection between three different states: Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat. The present ruler and his wife, HH Maharana Paranjayaditya Parmar and Maharani Mandakini Kumari, are the latest in a dynasty that has been in…
DetailsSorrento
Blurb: The best Italian restaurant in the NCR, to date. Cuisine: Italian Atmospherics: Shangri-La can be said to be a slow starter here in Delhi, but it’s fast gaining ground. Sorrento has a patio that feels like Italy, indoor seating that has nooks and corners, a wine cellar, and an open kitchen. Few restaurants outside…
DetailsPing’s
Blurb: The closest space Delhi has to a South East Asian hawker’s market Cuisine: South East Asian Atmospherics: The Ploof of old has been taken over by new management. The interiors are bright and colourful, there is an electric bell attached to an overhead light at every table: every time you want the attention of…
DetailsFrontier
It’s neither hot nor happening, but Frontier at The Ashok has something that few other Indian restaurants in the city can boast of: a signature menu with dishes that have been more or less invented in its kitchens and served nowhere else for decades now. Like its distant country cousin, Bukhara, most of the food…
Details64/6
Indian, western, Lebanese vegetarian Blurb: An all vegetarian restaurant in an all vegetarian hotel Intro: India’s only vegetarian hotel is a 15 minute drive from East Delhi. The coffee shop serves all three meals buffet style only. Atmospherics: Being a Country Inn & Suites, this branch in Sahibabad is located on a main road and…
DetailsBrew Buddy
Cuisine: craft beer with mostly small eats Blurb: Pub with grub Atmospherics: Brew Buddy occupies a prominent position in the crowded Sector 29 market, so that it has two frontages so to speak. The ground floor is for diners while the basement is for buzzing music, beer taps at each table and a cooler, more…
DetailsZura
Cuisine: Mediterranean Blurb: bookshelves, multi-level café, bar and restaurant with style and flair Gurgaon Sector 29 is a smorgasbord of restaurants and bars. Zura is for those times when you’re catching up with friends and want to nibble rather than gorge. Atmospherics: It is a breezy café with bookshelves and a laden pastry counter. You…
DetailsSadia’s Dehlvi Cuisine
A few years ago, I had been invited to sample a food festival in a hotel. The theme of the festival was the Muslim food of Delhi. The young chef was explaining to a group of us food journalists about each dish as it was brought out. For every question we had, the chef had…
DetailsSushi: At the Junction between Japan and India
It is not every day that a Japanese national moves to India to work in a Japanese company, falls in love with the country, leaves his job and decides to plunge headlong into a venture so novel that it seems almost foolhardy. Tomonaga Tejima’s big idea was to serve sushi to the local market in…
DetailsThe Great Indian Thali
Flip through Facebook, and you’ll see that the rules of the boasting game appear to have altered slightly. Instead of your friends crowing about the Sacher Torte they enjoyed in Vienna, now it is about a Sambalpuri thali from Orissa or an incendiary meal from Rayalseema. 2016 must go down in history as the year…
DetailsChef Mohd Irfan in the kitchen
When Chef Irfan told his Lucknow-based parents that he wanted to join hotel school, they were happy enough. But when he decided to specialize in kitchen rather than front office or food and beverage service, his businessman father couldn’t understand it. “In our khandaan, we call cooks to our house to tickle our palates; nobody…
DetailsSuhail Waza
Suhail Ahmed Khosa, the new waza in town You can actually count the number of Delhi-based wazas or professional Kashmiri cooks on the fingers of one hand. There are only three in as many different hotels and the latest to join their brood is Suhail Khosa, fresh from the Valley. WelcomHotel Sheraton New Delhi prides…
DetailsThe Kashmir Book Shop
The Kashmir Book Shop In the heyday of tourism in Kashmir, books were the last thing that visitors thought of buying. The 1970s and ‘80s were when silk carpets and woollen shawls constituted the main shopping of the tens of thousands of tourists that holidayed in the Valley. So, the two bookshops that stood opposite…
DetailsRed Blooded Royal
“Cumin and asafoetida is an appropriate combination, as is onion with garlic. Just don’t go mixing up the two combinations.” I was learning how to make the Rajasthani signature Lal Maas (which translates less than felicitously as red meat) from Arvind Singh of Mewar, Maharana of Udaipur. Shreeji as he is called affectionately, reportedly keeps…
DetailsInvasion of the Food Brigade
It’s reasonable to expect that expat chefs are essential if the quality of five-star cuisine is to remain international When chef Gabriele Montevechhio of Hyatt Regency’s La Piazza is called out of the kitchen by guests, he generally knows what is ,in store for him. “I get so many puzzled enquiries from guests wanting to…
DetailsCreating The Right Culinary Waves!
Waves serves interesting, hearty food, more in the style of mainstream America than that of its westernmost state. It’s a large, airy, good-looking restaurant whose focus is a grill. The streak of brilliance in the vegetarian section is herb-grilled sweet potato with Cajun mayo. DELHI IS diametrically opposite California, geographically and gastronomically. Where Californian…
DetailsThe Lore of White Tea
“You can find a diamond in a coal mine,” beams the genial Rajeev Mittal of Mittal Tea House, Lodi Colony, New Delhi”just the way you can discover white tea on a regular bush.” White tea – it’s not really white, but very pale green and its leaves are long and pointed – is, quite simply, the…
DetailsAr Razzaque
Cuisine: Mughlai Intro: A modest eatery in Zakir Nagar with a great chef at the helm Atmospherics: Those who have been dining at Made in India in MBD Radisson, Noida may know Chef Shams Parvez. He has recently left the hotel to start up his own venture. Zakir Nagar is not known for fine dining…
DetailsWorth its SALTZ
A designer’s creations that are adventurous and appetising, though surprisingly affordable Vijay Arora’s Gelato Vittorio has a brand new café upstairs. Attractive all-white interiors with huge glass windows, the café may be tiny, but the menu is large and ambitious. What it serves is a range of salads, imaginative sandwiches, pastas and noodles as well…
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