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.
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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…
DetailsHome Style Kashmiri Mutton Recipe
Ingredients: Mutton, 1 kg Onion, 1 Garlic, A few cloves (2 cloves garlic per piece of meat) Cinnamon, One small stick Black cardamom, 1 Green cardamom, 2 Clove, 1 Saunf/ Fennel seeds powder Haldi/ Turmeric powder Kashmiri Mirch/ Red Chilli powder (preferably ‘MDH Kashmiri Mirch’) Vegetable of your choice (Peas/ Potato/ Tomato/ Cauliflower) Shahi Zeera…
DetailsVega
Vegetarian dining It is not the most fashionable dining space in this day and age of PR-led restaurants. It is pure vegetarian to the extent that you cannot get onion or garlic while you’re inside. And the chaat alone is worth a visit, especially if you want the taste of chaat in the 1960s, when…
DetailsSmokehouse Room
In the bright firmament of the restaurant scene in our city, there’s a brand new star and that is Smoke House Room. It sounds like a cliché to claim that it is a never seen before concept, but that really is the case. It is a small dining room – a 40 seater to be…
DetailsPurani Dilli
It is not as well-known outside the immediate locality as, say, Karim’s is, but Purani Dilli is headed for its place in the sun. No artificial flavourings (like kewra or screw pine), no lashings of pure ghee. Just no-fuss surroundings in the heart of South Delhi, good biryani and down to earth prices. You’ll have…
DetailsThai Pavilion
A brilliant Thai restaurant with modern tastes. Atmospherics: The rest of the hotel may be young and trendy, but Thai Pavilion is sombre, being completely wood-panelled from floor to ceiling. Service is managed by a bunch of seriously young people who can talk extensively on the finer points of every dish. The management can take…
DetailsKashmiri Chutneys
Visit any Kashmiri banquet, and you’ll be proudly told by the host that no fewer than 30 dishes are being served. Just try to put down half that number of dishes at a single sitting and you’ll know that it’s impossible to stuff yourself after a point. Yet, the hosts aren’t lying, so what’s the…
DetailsLittle known facts of Kashmiri food
It was my very first meal at the family homestead in Srinagar. We were all seated on the thickly carpeted floor, with copper bowls in front of us covered entirely with a fine layer of tin. The soft, warm glow of copper was lost, alas, but the gleam of tin in the family kitchen made…
DetailsChef Luzinier
When Chef Luzinier lived in his ancestral village near Bergerac in South West France, his grandfather had a particular way of drinking his soup. Every night of the year, bar none, Grandfather Luzinier would eat garlic soup, about which more in a minute, into which stale bread would be crumbled. When he was just short…
DetailsEating 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…
DetailsMemories 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,…
DetailsPopular Breakfast Dishes Across India (Part 2 – Mumbai, Goa, Amritsar and More)
In Part 1 of this series, Food Expert Marryam H Reshii took us on a delicious journey across South India as well as the Eastern part of the country. From Buns stuffed with bananas to puttu or dosas. from Kochuri to Ghugni, it was a glimpse into how our country breakfasts. This is in continuation…
DetailsFatburger
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…
DetailsKashmir 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…
DetailsThe Olive Growing World
Spain has a population of 30 million people and 300 million olive trees, the highest in the world. Tunisia has a population of 10 million and 70 million olive trees. It is Greece that has the highest olive oil consumption in the world, because olive trees grow in all parts of the country: in Italy,…
DetailsAlila Fort Bishangarh
Less than 200 kms from Delhi Airport is a tiny piece of heaven, especially for city-dwellers. Called Alila Fort Bishangarh, it was originally built 230 years ago by a member of the ruling Kachhawa clan of Jaipur. Bishangarh was just one of the forts that was strung out like a necklace around the precious Shekhavati…
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…
DetailsNine things to do in Bangkok
I’ve been to the City of Angels several times, and I’ve discovered that even more important than “what to do” is the question of what not to do when time is short. This is my pick of the most interesting things that Bangkok has to offer. It is easy to suggest ninety things to do…
DetailsBurmese Kitchen
It is surprising that out of all the cuisines that exist in Delhi, most come from far away geographically. Italy is hardly a close neighbour; even Thailand is a 5 hour plane ride away. We have never tried to explore the cuisines of our immediate neighbours, so although Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Myanmar have cuisines…
DetailsAndrea’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…
DetailsWD House
Unbelievable quality in GK II Serves World cuisine Atmospherics: An elegant, timeless restaurant on two floors. Their Chandigarh restaurant Whistling Duck is the finest stand-alone eatery in the Tri-city. While it is early days yet, WD House seems all set to beat that record. Muted décor, Le Corbusier-inspired chairs, classic table arrangement and well-trained staff…
DetailsGuppy by ai
Ai moves across the city in a new, playful avatar. Colourful interiors; great food Most restaurants grow older with the passage of time. Guppy (formerly ai) has grown visibly younger. Having the corner plot in the Lodi Colony Market means that the area comprises a courtyard, a bar and the restaurant. The bright, cheerful colours…
DetailsEest
Eest in Westin Gurgaon embodies the eternal dilemma of international hotel chains in India. Whether to have expatriate chefs or Indian for their Chinese/oriental restaurant. And if the former, whether to take the cuisine to stratospheric levels or keep it suitably dumbed down for the local palate. Eest has not one but five expatriate chefs…
DetailsThe Toddy Shop
Serves Kerala cuisine The exact tastes of home-style cooking of Central Kerala Atmospherics: Owned by three partners, one of whom hails from Kerala, this restaurant serves amazingly authentic food in the afternoons and goes completely off-track in the evenings! There are a couple of reasons for this dichotomy. The lady who is the consultant-chef and…
DetailsThe Ethnic And The Rustic
Vishalla, evolved out of a passionate desire to live away from urban centres, is a little haven outside Ahmedabad. The rustic surroundings of this complex house an ethnic restaurant, a utensils museum and a few handicrafts shops. An evening here is a memorable experience. The ethnic boom of the 1980s spawned a crop of furniture,…
DetailsThe Sim-ple Things in Life
I’ve always wondered exactly what an expatriate chef de cuisine does in his kitchen. Does he himself cook? Really? Every order? And here we are talking about 200 orders per day, so is it humanly possible? Or does he stand languidly by, rapping the occasional knuckle, while his beleagured team sweats it out at the…
DetailsChef 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…
DetailsThe A to Z of Punjab Grill
In the universe of the food and beverage world, you will see several restaurant models that keep playing out, over and over again. One is the family-owned restaurant where the colour scheme has not been changed since the ‘80s. The other is the modern bar that opens in January and has shut in November, after…
DetailsKashmiri Kitchen
It is probably unique in the annals of Kashmiri commercial food, but two ladies have got together to set up a take-away kitchen and a tiny restaurant in Delhi. For anyone who is familiar with Kashmir, it sounds like an impossibility. Every last waza in the Valley is male, and unlike most other towns and…
DetailsBegum Kulsum – One for the Road
Once upon a time there lived a king and his prime minister. Each had a slew of palaces in the city where they lived, one more fairytale than the other. Cars, retinues of helpers, suitcases of fabulous gems – they had them all. Even when the privy purses were abolished, they lived happily ever after.…
DetailsCanton Capers
Once upon a time, Chinese food meant chilli chicken and chicken Manchurian. Now, thanks to the growing tribe of chefs from China, it is possible to get a more authentic taste of what Chinese food is all about. By definition, Chinese food in India can never be really authentic: food in China is usually cooked…
DetailsUmmami
Ummami is a fine dining restaurant built over a huge scale, in a building that is, as yet quite empty. It is in the corporate office area of Gurgaon and both times I have visited at lunch time, it has been full of corporate honchos having lunch meetings. The wine library is not just a…
DetailsGourmet Vegetarian Food: an Oxymoron?
It’s easy enough getting vegetarian options in an Indian restaurant: there’s paneer, dal, vegetables and snacks galore. But, how about vegetarian options in a non-Indian cuisine? That’s a tough one. Some cuisines such as Lebanese and Italian do have interesting vegetarian choices. Others like Chinese lack the basic concept of what vegetarianism is, while still…
DetailsSmoke 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…
DetailsTantalizing those taste buds
Never did I imagine that I’d ever equate Mexican food with the cuisine of Pakistan, but in the last fortnight, that’s exactly what happened. Taj Hotel invited me to a Mexican food festival where celebrity chef cum TV food show hostess cum restaurateur Monica Patiño was showcasing the food of her country. (Today is the…
DetailsPintxo
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…
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