Home - Marryam H Reshii

About Me...

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 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.

Recent Articles

Coriander: the Spice and the Herb
April 17, 2022

Bloggers’ Meat
April 17, 2022

Butter Chicken
April 17, 2022

China Kitchen, Hyatt Regency Delhi
April 17, 2022

Trishna

Atmospherics: Most Gomantak/Mangalorean restaurants serving seafood are of the strictly no-nonsense variety. However, you cannot be in 1 Style Mile and still be no-nonsense, so the interiors (after a slightly grungy entrance) are stylish without being fussy. There’s an extremely popular terrace with gazebos, a small dining room and tables under the trees. Downstairs is…

Kopper Kadai

Every gimmick in the restaurant industry Serves North Indian Atmospherics: Every time I visit Rajouri Garden, I am convinced that there is no more place for another restaurant, yet at the next visit, I see a few. Kopper Kadai is one of the newer entrants. Situated on two floors accessible by lift, it has paid…

Smoke House Room

What do you get when you cross a bon vivant with a solitary translator of Ghalib’s poetry? You get maverick restaurateur Riyaaz Amlani. He has two sides to him. He is blessed with friends across the planet on one hand, yet on the other, he loves nothing better than to hole up in his study…

Casablanca

Blurb: the NCR gets its first Moroccan restaurant Forget the relatively bland Lebanese cuisine that has done modestly well in our city. The real McCoy is the cuisine of North Africa, including Morocco and Tunisia. It is much closer to our palate and it is sure to be the Next Big Thing in food trends…

Thai House by Kylin

Cuisine: Thai Blurb: A fresh look at Thai food by an Indian chef Atmospherics: In the stylish Greater Kailash N Block Market, next to one of the many branches of Fabindia, this brand new restaurant by a seasoned restaurateur concentrates on a single cuisine. Because the chef – young Nikhil Kanwar – studied Thai food…

Tres: The Second Coming

Effortless excellence in this chef-led restaurant Serves European Atmospherics: A bar with high chairs around it, a private dining room, an open-air enclosure near a tree, regular tables, chairs and sofas – and all this is on the ground floor. The music – Spanish and Portuguese ageless classics – and the fact that at least…

Kashmiri Dishes That Are Fast Disappearing From the Valley

I married my Kashmiri husband twenty-five years ago. When our entire family settles down to talk about the ‘old days’, meaning around 45 years ago when my husband and his siblings were children, it is almost as if they refer to a different place. For one, our daily meals at home revolve around rice, the…

Extra Virgin Territory

The first trip I ever made to the olive growing world was to Andalusia in Southern Spain around five years ago. It was an eye opener. Along with 11 other media people from Canada, USA, Russia, Serbia, China and India, I visited olive groves, travelled through Andalusia’s trademark low hills covered with neat rows of…

King Kebab

From nawabi to five star kitchens, the king of meats has come a long way. Now chefs and hotel consultants are uncovering recipes lost for centuries, including many from the royal kitchens of the Mughals, giving King Kebabs a new lease of life. Most people read The Mahabharata for ancient wisdom. When Salma Hussain reads…

Matamaal

“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…

Biryani

What’s the big deal about rice and meat together in the same dish? Plenty, especially if you come from Hyderabad, Lucknow or Kolkata. Some of the best biryani I’ve eaten has been at Delhi’s Maurya Sheraton, prepared by a Hyderabadi royal called Begum Kulsum. She’s married in Lucknow, but fiercely retains pride in the cooking…

Skill and Skillet

It’s dinner time at the Oberoi’s La Rochelle and to do justice to the candle-lit ambience, Chef Jean Marc Gonzales has traded his toque for more suitable evening-wear. His attention, however, is riveted by the plates of food arriving at the next table. It’s easy to see the single passion that runs like a thread…

Tunisia: in the Midst of the Mediterranean

As usual, we were having a party in the hotel room of our journalist colleague, Ye Jun. There were, as always, twelve of us. We met every year in the autumn, in various parts of the olive growing world. As guests of the International Olive Oil Council (IOOC), the twelve of us had, over…

Waking up to a New Sunrise ~ From the Archives

Traditional Srinagar, isolated by militancy for the past decade, is reinventing itself in the cyber age. A halfway house between the old city of Srinagar and its plusher areas, Dalgate is a colourful tumult of brick buildings, shops crammed with tourist kitsch, and a road too narrow by far to handle its traffic. Here, poised…

City of the Arts and Sciences: Valencia

My journey from freezing Madrid, where the weather forecast kept predicting snow, to warm, sunny Valencia took exactly two hours, but it was like going to another country altogether. The skies in Valencia resolutely remained fiercely blue, orange trees lined every street; one end of the city was bound by a beach, along which ran…

Extra Virgin Territory

The first trip I ever made to the olive growing world was to Andalusia in Southern Spain around five years ago. It was an eye opener. Along with 11 other media people from Canada, USA, Russia, Serbia, China and India, I visited olive groves, travelled through Andalusia’s trademark low hills covered with neat rows of…

Fairytale getaway

Srinagar’s heritage hideaway, Lalit The Grand Palace, has been made over by Bharat Hotels Once upon a time there was a king who lived in a palace. Not any old ordinary palace, mind you. It had a fairytale location, backed as it was by well wooded hills, with the finest location in the city, far…

In the Shadow of Shahrukh

It was 1988 and I was wending my way to Khajuraho in June. I remember that trip with clarity, despite the 26 intervening years. Partly because the muddy dull light of the height of summer crept into every one of my photographs, whether I took them at 6 am, 3 pm or 7 pm. And…

Indian Accent

The Manor in Friends Colony West is buzzing nowadays. Deservedly so: after a long time it has acquired F & B that is worthy of its classy interiors. Indian Accent may be new to the city, but it is the country cousin of Delhi’s Oriental Octopus and Chor Bizarre as well as Tamarai in London.…

Daikichi

The tiniest Japanese restaurant with a Japanese chef Atmospherics: The L shaped eatery is strictly no-frills. Tables seat four except the tatami table (semi-private) that seats six. Daikichi is the brainchild of a hotel management graduate from a vegetarian community who spotted an opportunity in Gurgaon and has set up a wonderful little eatery, currently…

Yokoso

The second brand new rabbit from an old hat in this amazing hotel Serves Japanese Atmospherics: In what used to be the lobby level bar of the hotel, Japanese food is now served. The result is a trifle unexpected, because the interiors are a little dim and the seating is ideal for lounging rather than…

Fatburger

Cuisine: Burgers and shakes Intro: Yet another import from the US of A Atmospherics: An acquaintance has an interesting theory. “Cyber Hub has such a great vibe that you feel you’re in a foreign country anyway. Which is why food here tastes 30% better than it does elsewhere.” There’s that, of course, but my own…

Side Wok comes to Connaught Place

It would appear that Connaught Place is the latest address to be getting a makeover. A slew of new restaurants are making their appearance, the latest (and most glitzy) of which is Side Wok, of Khan Market and Malcha Marg fame. The good news is that the Madras Hotel block is now filled to bursting…

Pout Cafe

Worth it for the peppy “fashion café” interiors alone, though there is food for every taste too Atmospherics: The best part of this café on two floors is the interiors. Broad black and white stripes combine with vibrant colours and an attractive collage on the first floor that occupies a whole wall. The first floor…

Rohit Aggarwal: The Trekking Caterer

“I am a failed trekking caterer”, Rohit Aggarwal of Lite Bite Foods tells me, with a woebegone look on his face. I assume he is joking, and guffaw appreciatively. After all, he and Lite Bite partner Amit Burman are among the three largest players in the restaurant industry currently in India, with no private equity…

Dishy Delhi

Details

The 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…

Kayasth Khatirdari

In Delhi, there are Andhra restaurants, Kashmiri restaurants, even Naga restaurants but no restaurants of the Mathur/Kayasth community, which is why many Delhiites are not even aware that the cuisine exists. That is something that has piqued Anoothi Vishal’s pride. This food journalist belongs to the Mathur community. As she describes it, “All Mathurs are…

Chef Olaf Niemeier ~ From the Archives

If you don’t wish to see a steamed up Chef Olaf Niemeier, try and refrain from muttering the mantra of fusion cuisine before him. “It’s become almost a term of abuse,” he explains of the trend, and pleads: “Please don’t refer to my style as fusion.” Eclectic international then, you say to yourself, mentally agreeing…

Fat Guyy

The genial patissier, Chef Nitin Upadhyay, was always pleasantly plump and when he thought of opening his very own patisserie, the obvious name he thought of was Fat Guyy. It does call to mind a roly-poly baker, surrounded by couverture, croissants and cookies all wafting delicious fragrances from the oven. However, so stressful was the…

The Srinagar Conspiracy

It’s not that the author is a television journalist who has crossed the floor. It’s not that Kashmir is seldom used as a backdrop for novels. It’s not even that the thriller is a little explored genre in Indian writing in English. The Srinagar Conspiracy is a compulsive page turner because it’s that felicitous meeting…

Singapore Fling

Budget travellers to Singapore head happily to the thousands of hawkers centres in that city-state. Two people can have a filling meal of noodles, soup, Hainanese chicken rice or something called roti pratha, and still have change left over from Singapore $ 5. Hawkers’ centres provide variety. In the interests of fairplay, owners of a…

Kashmir in the New Millennium

As symbols of normalcy go, the all-glass front of Pick n Choose on Residency Road, Srinagar, is as telling as any. Five years ago, you couldn’t find glass doors in Srinagar – they’d be a sitting duck for a terrorist’s bullet. Five years ago, you wouldn’t even have wanted the transparency of glass. Thick wooden…

Sunday Brunch

Few things are as pleasant as sitting out under the sun on a Sunday afternoon in winter, sipping champagne and going through the one meal of the week that doesn’t have to be hurried. It’s what residents of other metros like best about Delhi – winter, and our determination to enjoy it to the fullest.…

Bombay Brasserie

Hits the jackpot on every count Serves: Regional Indian Atmospherics: This part of the Outer Circle has no hassle parking, especially at dinner time. A lift takes you to the first floor. The best part about the décor is that the bones of the original structure has been retained: flooring has been kept simple, there…

Fairytale getaway

Srinagar’s heritage hideaway, Lalit The Grand Palace, has been made over by Bharat Hotels Once upon a time there was a king who lived in a palace. Not any old ordinary palace, mind you. It had a fairytale location, backed as it was by well wooded hills, with the finest location in the city, far…