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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

I Love Paris in the Baking time

Not only is it a handsome, majestic city, where just walking around the streets can be an enchanting experience, but it has vast depths for whatever your interest is. Do you want to visit museums till your eyes bubble? You don’t have far to look. Do you want to explore world-class shops? You’ve come to…

Chicken Plaza

Don’t go looking for a gourmet treat. At Rs 100 per head, on a Daryaganj pavement just under the overhead footpath, Chicken Plaza won’t give you a five star meal, but you will have a surprisingly tasty snack at laughably low prices. Chicken Plaza is right by a tiny mosque, which makes it less than…

Hauz Khas Village in the 1990s

Delhi’s foodies are keeping their fingers — and palates — crossed that the trickle turns into a flood before long.Restaurants are opening at the rate of one a week. Most of these are of the stand-alone sort. Of these, Food Heritage in Hauz Khas Village is the brainchild of three young people. Sheemita Saxena’s first love may be sculpting,…

Lajawaab Zaika

Zaffrani Zaika serves classic Indian food without any newfangled twist My heart sinks every time I visit a new Indian restaurant, because I’ve noticed that in the recent past, our great cuisine has been hijacked by a bunch of upstarts who try — without much success — to reinvent the wheel. Fortunately, Zaffrani Zaika…

Andrea’s Eatery

An enormous menu that actually works Serving: South East Asian, western, Italian Atmospherics: The Amici of old has suddenly metamorphosed into a far more attractive version, with excellent food. Whereas there were formerly no doors, now there are glass partitions with black frames and a couple of shelves laden with mainly Italian ingredients, in the…

Give us today our daily tchot

It never fails to amaze me how Kashmiri wazwan has percolated the consciousness of every foodie in the country, yet how few know anything at all about Kashmiri bread. At the most basic level, there are three types of bread that are eaten morning and evening: tchot, lavas and tchachvoru. All are made with wheat…

Suhail 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…

Not by Bread Alone

Which came first – the chicken or the egg? And no, I’m not asking this with reference to the bird flu scare. It’s the first question I asked Chef Arun Tyagi, Corporate Chef of the MBD group of hotels when I visited a festival of breads that featured 100 different varieties. On the other hand,…

Aish

There are not too many restaurants dedicated to Hyderabadi food anywhere in the country, and even fewer that are dedicated to royal Hyderabadi cuisine, which is so painstaking that it was more or less fated to wither into oblivion. All that remains in the city of its birth is a motley collection of unpretentious eateries…

Explosion of Kashmiri Restaurants

“But where’s the dal?” wail a distressingly high proportion of customers to Tarami in Delhi’s Hauz Khas Village. Tarami is one of the many new Kashmiri restaurants that have cropped up in the capital in the last six months. And though there are a modest number of takers for Kashmiri cuisine, first-timers expect it to…

Marwari with Mukta

With most of Delhi’s chattering classes making their way to the cooler climes of Europe these days, Mukta Khetan is one busy lady. She is one of the few members of the Marwari community in the city to cater to the culinary needs of her tribe. So well-known are her samosa potlis, chivda and kalmi…

Invasion 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…

Feast in the Valley

Details

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…

From the Archives – Kutch Embroidery, Reflecting the colours of the desert

Details

Dining in Dubai

Travel around Manila in the Philippines and you’ll be struck by how many branches of Jollibee Burgers there are. It’s a brand you are unlikely to encounter elsewhere in the world, because the rather sweet sauce that is Jollibee’s trademark, is a Philippine brand. If you visit Mumbai, you are like to be surprised by…

Eating Indian in London

You don’t want to visit an Indian restaurant in London?” My friend, chef Vivek Singh of Cinnamon Club, was incredulous. “That’s plain bizarre! Everyone knows that the best Indian food on the planet is in London.” It was my turn to be shocked. The whole point of visiting a new city in another country is…

Hong Kong: at the Centre of my Universe

Ethnicity and modernity go together very well. On my first trip to Hong Kong five years ago – which was also my first trip to South East Asia – I was wonderstruck by the forest of looming skyscrapers that were lit up with Chinese characters. The road with the most western name – Des Voeux…

Cooper’s Grill and Bar

Cuisine: American Blurb: It has much going for it but needs a bit of refining to realize its full potential Intro: This brand new eatery is the brainchild of two hospitality professionals who know their onions, so expect it to get better and more polished over time. Atmospherics: This is where the restaurant falters. It…

Fat Butterfly

Serves Western-style café Utterly charming, owner-run space Atmospherics: What do you get when you cross a home baker with a gal who is obsessed with butterflies? You get a cosy café on two floors that excels at cakes and waffles, called FatButterfly. Vidyun Tewari has transferred her joie de vivre from the customized cakes created…

Whisky Samba

Gurgaon is in for a treat Serving: Peruvian inspired Atmospherics: In the spacious courtyard of One Horizon, a particular doorway buzzes incessantly with activity, and that is Whisky Samba. Maybe it is the name – an intriguing blend of an alcoholic beverage and a Latin American dance – or maybe it is the glorious sight…

The Drunken Botanist

The Drunken Botanist A failsafe formula Serves Modern Indian Atmospherics: a surprisingly large space for Cyber Hub, this one is accessed from the entrance of building no. 10 but is also not far from entrance No. 1. Do be informed that it is a considerable distance from entrance no. 2, the most popular entry point…

Mr. Choy

Four times the size of the tiny original Serves: Dimsum and oriental Atmospherics: Whereas the original was on the ground floor, it was altogether too tiny for its popularity. And its size did not warrant a bar licence. So, the proprietors (the same as for Townhall and Public Affair) moved it to a bigger venue,…

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…

Ismail Merchant: From the Archives

When Ismail Merchant brings back souvenirs from his many travels, he doesn’t put up them up on his drawing room shelves but in the refrigerator. For Merchant is at once a gastronome, a citizen of the world, a film-buff and a film-maker. His varied interests show up as much in the spread he lays out for…

Chef Raymond Sim – Crab Tales

It´s the norm that most hotels have expatriate chefs that arrive on two-year contracts. Some contracts are renewed once, which means that the chef stays with the hotel for four years. So, what would you say about a chef who has been with one hotel for an astonishing 15 years? That chef is Raymond Sim…

Calligraphy

The recently concluded Islamic calligraphy exhibition held in New Delhi’s Iran Culture House was not the first of its kind – such exhibitions are held periodically. It’s another matter that calligraphers routinely outnumber audience. Nevertheless, the perseverance of the Culture House and the steadfastness of the calligraphers themselves are probably why the art itself has…

Bloggers’ Meat

Lolzzzzz was the cryptic comment in reply to a facebook post I had made on social media. I had just vented my spleen about how social media had taken over our social lives. How every time I opened my facebook account with trepidation, I would encounter several ‘invitations’ to a confusing welter of subsidiary sites…

Rathin Mathur and his Hmmmutton

Rathin Mathur has been a corporate honcho with two decades of experience behind him, but, as the saying goes, there’s no tie quite as strong as that of blood. So when he comes home after a tiring day in the office, he likes to relax by exchanging his blazer for an apron and getting into…

Stephen Twining on Twinings Tea

Everybody who has ever received a Diwali/Christmas/New Year hamper would have received a carton of Twining’s teabags in it. It is something of a silent revolution, and not unlike carrying coals to Newcastle, but that’s a fact that both Stephen Twining and Georgina Durnford would stoutly deny! You see, much of the tea that is…

Secret Ingredients

Is it the recipe that is important or the writer ? A backlane in New Delhi’s tony Uday Park is where you’ll find the famous Ahad Waza of Kashmir. The cavernous commercial kitchen is the scene of unusual activity, for alongside a team of assistants who work with the precision of an army, chopping onions…

Ismail Merchant: From the Archives

When Ismail Merchant brings back souvenirs from his many travels, he doesn’t put up them up on his drawing room shelves but in the refrigerator. For Merchant is at once a gastronome, a citizen of the world, a film-buff and a film-maker. His varied interests show up as much in the spread he lays out for…

Invasion 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…

Yum Yum Tree

Ignore the decidedly non-serious name. This stylishly appointed restaurant in the heart of New Friends Colony Market has a first to it: the cuisine is Singaporean Chinese, one of the few types of Chinese food that is consonant with our palate, yet one that frequently gets overlooked in favour of classical Cantonese. One of the…

Not by Bread Alone

Which came first – the chicken or the egg? And no, I’m not asking this with reference to the bird flu scare. It’s the first question I asked Chef Arun Tyagi, Corporate Chef of the MBD group of hotels when I visited a festival of breads that featured 100 different varieties. On the other hand,…

Looking for Quality

Genuine marble inlay can be expensive; but make sure you’re not getting dyed mother of pearl in the name of the original. When Shah Jehan commissioned the Taj Mahal for his beloved empress, marble inlay was to form the single most important decorative element in the complex. Records inform us that semi-precious stones were brought…