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

The Leela and The Oberoi Gurgaon

It has been a while since high profile hotels have opened in the capital. No fewer than two opened in the month of April. The Oberoi Gurgaon and the Leela Palace New Delhi have been keenly anticipated, but nobody could have imagined just how divergent the styles of both hotels would turn out to be,…

Beeryani

Cuisine: North Indian The food of a dhaba and the soul of a college hangout Atmospherics: Safdarjung Development Area caters not so much to those who live in the vicinity as to the army of students at the nearby IIT and Beeryani is no exception. The restaurant is on two floors, is dark, has cut-outs…

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…

Dishy Delhi

YWCA Kitchen

The YWCA Kitchen is a great place to have a meal near Connaught Place: no messing with dug up roads and after office hours, there is plenty of parking too. The place is small and cozy and has a couple of tables in the charming pocket-sized garden. The Mediterranean blue and white eatery serves as…

Lucknow Food

One of the stories you’ll read in every account of Lucknow of yore, is the one where its best known nawab, Asaf-ud-Daula, ordered the construction of the city’s most prominent edifice – the Bara Imambara. There was a famine in 1784 and the people of Lucknow faced the danger of starvation. The tens of thousands…

Memories of Restaurants

It was our final evening in Tunisia. All twelve of us had met for the third time; we were fated to meet a few times more – food writers from all over the world, who would collect in a different country once a year at olive harvest time. All of us – from the US,…

Sadia’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…

Royal Birthday Bash in Udaipur

Maharana Arvind Singh of Mewar celebrates his birthday in style. Visitors from all parts of the globe, villagers from the erstwhile princely state of Mewar, townspeople from Udaipur, a phalanx of press people, even filmstars beat a retreat to the doors of the living quarters of the City Palace. While lunch was a strictly family…

Feeling Cheesy

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The Ghosts who Walk Kashmir

If there are any ghosts wandering around Srinagar City, they’re probably discomfited by how much the city has changed since they passed on. They probably cannot recognize it as the place in which they lived half a century ago. Not because of the pace of life, to be sure, but because of the skewed ratio…

No Reservations

We food writers have it much easier than our counterparts on television. We can conjure up images of childhood treats or aspirational exotica with words; those guys use reality, or their version of it. Writers and poets can relegate food to the status of ambrosia or to an irritating drudgery (“the smell of steak in…

The Gullies and Kuchas of Melbourne’s CBD

I was prepared to be swept away by the walkway that hugged the Yarra River in Melbourne, by the sheer sweep of produce that is reputed to fill the markets of the city, or even by the coffee that even the most ordinary café next door is reputed to serve. In the end, it was…

What’s Cooking in Kashmir

Think about Kashmiri food and the first thing that comes to mind is the justly famous wazwan. However, try eating it for two consecutive meals and you’ll be laid up in bed for a week thereafter, so heavy is it. Indeed, most visitors to Kashmir have no difficulty finding the ristas and gushtabas of a…

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…

Leela Palace Udaipur

My first glimpse of Leela Palace Udaipur was not of the building itself, majestic as it is, but of the way the management looks after its guests. Shortly after a date for my visit was set, I received an email. Would I please list out my preferences for music, beverage and reading material. And while…

Food 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…

Manali

Foreigners on the luxury coach from Delhi to Manali outnumbered Indians 3:1. That, however, wasn’t the curious part. What was unusual was that all the foreigners appeared to know exactly where they were headed. The Indians, on the other hand, yours truly included, exchanged notes about hotels uncertainly. The first one off the bus was…

Cravity

A tiny piece of Paris in our city Café with patisserie and sandwiches Atmospherics: Every food critic dreams of walking through some random door and having the meal of their lives. Well, that wish was granted not too long ago, when I walked into a lipstick-pink door that said Cravity, and spent the next hour…

Music & Mountains

You’ll lose yourself in the mountains Serves: western casual Atmospherics: After a day spent tramping about the city, retreat into the mountains, right in the middle of Greater Kailash Market. The (mostly retro) music is played at a low volume, the lights – that replicate candlelight – are low (you’ll have to use your cellphone…

Foxtrot

Yet another, hitherto unseen, face of desi food Serves: Indian food with an Azure twist Atmospherics: The partners of this remarkable restaurant company, Rahul Khanna and Kabir Suri along with their food director Janti Duggal have been bringing forth one sassy concept after another, from Mamagoto to Sly Granny to Hotel Delmaar and others. The…

Spice up the Wok

A new chef successfully walks the tightrope between authentic Chinese cuisine and Indian sensibilities One dilemma that all authentic Chinese restaurants in the city face is the place of the Chinese chef. Hire one at great cost, and the food that he produces will probably not cater to the local palate. Get in a team…

Delhi Pavilion

The newest all-day diner from the ITC Hotels stable Cuisine: Dehlvi, western Concentrated on Delhi since the Mughals. In a nutshell, all the Mughal-inspired gems are in the Medieval section, the regional dishes are on the Sanctuary page (people came from Tamil Nadu, Bengal and Punjab to Delhi), all the British Raj-inspired food is on…

Prankster

A modern take on soul food Modern Indian cuisine Atmospherics: Quite the largest restaurant, that too, on a single floor in the Sector 29 market, if not in the whole of Gurgaon. The theme is back to college, so the entire space has been broken up into verandahs and terraces, canteens and laboratories, class-rooms and…

Dishy Delhi

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What Makes a Landmark Restaurants

What is common to Koshy’s Bangalore, United Coffee House Delhi, Mocambo Kolkata and Gaylord Mumbai? They’re all landmark restaurants. None of them are particularly old-fashioned, and certainly none are down at heel; rather, they wear the patina of timelessness. Is the cuisine excellent? In patches, yes, but it is not excellence all the way. Most…

All Things

Have you ever gnashed your teeth, wondering why we in India cannot get great chocolate? Luscious, dark chocolate, made of real couverture with no compound (vegetable oil), wrapped beautifully. For years, it has been but a dream. Until a couple of bars landed up at my door last Christmas. At first, I assumed it to…

Anandini Tea

In this day and age of hype and bombast, you can count on the fingers of one hand the people in the food and beverage industry who know their onions. Anamika Singh, tiny pint-sized girl with the 360 degree smile is one of the foremost tea experts in Delhi. Not only is she the only…

Sadia’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…

Chef Raymond Sim

The infamous cuisine known variously as Indian-Chinese or Sino-Ludhianvi is not alone in the world. It is but part of a continuum that extends all over the world, except in China itself. Chinese cuisine is not only the most popular choice worldwide, but has the inbuilt capacity to adapt itself to local tastes. Don’t believe…

The Truth about Aphrodisiacs

There’s a nifty saying in Kashmiri that goes, “Pir chun’e bod; yakin chu bod” which translates as “It’s not the doctor who is great; its your belief in him that does the trick”. Two aspects strike me insofar as aphrodisiac foods go. The first is that the Kashmiris would appear to be right after all.…

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…

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…

Ambrosia Bliss

Cuisine: World food Intro: one of the largest restaurants in Connaught Place Atmospherics: whether you choose to sit outside on the two terraces, inside the large naturally lit all-white restaurant, at the bar, in the private dining area or in the nightclub, Ambrosia Bliss embodies the new wave of restaurants that have started to dot…

Pintxo

Serves: Spanish The smallest restaurant in the NCR No fuss, no pretensions . Just small plates in unassuming surroundings Atmospherics: It is not easy to find your way around Galleria. Café Coffee Day is a convenient landmark: Pintxo is just above it. Just 18 seats and a tiny open kitchen. The walls are brown, giving…

The difference between a biryani and a pulao

I’ve asked this question to several people, and by the end of it, I’m even more confused than when I started out. Marut Sikka, food impresario says with great conviction that pulao is made when rice and meat or vegetables are cooked in liquid so that the starch of the rice is absorbed. Biryani, according…