Marryam H Reshii
Marryam H Reshii
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  • Home
  • About Marryam
    • About Marryam
    • Interviews
      • The spice sleuth
      • Marryam Reshii’s ‘The Flavour of Spice’ has an extra kick
      • FLAVOUR guaranteed
      • People of India – Marryam H Reshii
      • Marryam H Reshii and her Days on Plates
      • Keeping up with dynamism of dining trends
      • Lessons from a Lifetime of Dining
      • Indian Restaurateurs Give Indian Food a Makeover
      • Remembering KT Achaya, the guru of Indian food history
    • Books
      • The Flavour of Spice
      • Books
    • Podcast
    • Photos
    • Videos
  • Reviews
  • Food
  • Travel
  • Vintage
  • People
  • Ask Marryam
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
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December 29, 2020
State of the Art in Kashmir
December 22, 2020
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December 21, 2020
A Century of Ahdoos
December 17, 2020
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Landmark Restaurants

Most of this list serves multi-cuisine, a certain recipe for patchy quality in a jack-of-all-trades sort of way, so the nature of the game is a few really great dishes and about ninety menu fillers. But just as likely, you may love a certain dish in a landmark restaurant, whether or not it is a…

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DEL – Roseate House

Blurb: So close to T3 as to be part of its lounge Cuisine: international Atmospherics: the very last hotel in Aerocity, closest to the International Airport, someone has very craftily designed not only the space but the menu too. The space is vast, disappointingly monochromatic, and as comfortable as a business lounge: upholstered chairs, squat…

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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…

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Good Food at Urban Nomads

Urban Nomads in Nehru Place has three factors to recommend it: a well thought-out menu, astonishingly large portions at modest prices, and the excellent system of half portions. The restaurant also doubles as a store for high-fashion garments, but that may be to stand up and be counted among the rash of theme restaurants in…

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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…

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Wasabi: the Pioneer of Japanese Food in Delhi

Want to have a thin crust pizza? Head straight for Wasabi at the Taj Mahal Hotel on Mansingh Road. Or what about some foie gras? Try Wasabi again. Or what about the all-American Surf and Turf where one element is from the land (turf) and the other is from the sea (surf)? It’s Wasabi once…

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By the Indians, for the Indians, of the Indians

There’s a branch of desi food that has never received attention. Actually, it isn’t so surprising when you consider how much leg-work the research would involve: How Indian food has traveled beyond our shores. So if you go to Trinidad and Tobago, you’ll find buss up shut; go to Malaysia and every last food court…

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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…

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The 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…

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Valley of Flavours

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Delhi’s world of restaurants as at 2002

There are approximately one thousand restaurants, many being of the type that you and I would like to visit, all over Delhi and its two satellite towns, Gurgaon and Noida. Out of these, the vast majority serves Indian food. Most of these are formulaic ones, where the menu never varies; some serve the Indian version…

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The Four Southern States

For most of us in the North, South Indian food is a largely homogenous entity, comprising idlis, dosas and not very much else. So I was in for a surprise last week when Trident Gurgaon invited me for a festival that was no short of brilliant. Not only did the variations in the food of…

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Lucknow

If Paris is the city of the Eiffel Tower and Agra the city of the Taj Mahal, it stands to reason, in these days of instant imaging, that Lucknow is the city of nawabs and kebabs. In fact, all the hoardings that deface the city tell you as much. “Bacardi Breezer – now available in…

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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…

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The Story Behind Hainanese Chicken Rice

On a recent trip to Singapore, I made my way to the Mecca of Hainanese Chicken Rice: Purvis Street. Right by the uber fashionable Bugis Junction, no more striking contrast can be found. Purvis Street has started the inexorable change towards modernization, but when I first visited Singapore in 2002, it was an old-fashioned double…

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Fish Curries of Peninsular India

All along India’s coastline, the staple diet of the locals is fish curry and rice. But, do you think that it’s a single recipe all the way through? No way. There are many dozens of different preparations, depending on which part of the coast you happen to be. Fish curry makes its appearance during breakfast,…

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The K – N ready reckoner

Your complete guide to the unexplored treasures of the breathtaking Kumaon hills in Uttarakhand A is for apple, which together with apricots, peaches and plums constitutes Kumaon’s fruit crop. Centred around Ramgarh, country houses belonging to the Scindias, Birlas and Dalmias dot the hillside, surrounded by orchards bursting with blossom. B is for bungalow. There…

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Guns in the Garden of the Sufis

The middle-aged gentleman in the seat next to me on the plane to Srinagar was waxing eloquent about a single line in a song in Mission Kashmir. “Do you know,” he boomed in a voice that easily outdid the roar of the aircraft we were in, “that rind poshmal gindini drai lo lo is taken…

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Lahori Shah

Blurb: Pakistani food as close to the real McCoy as possible Intro: LahoriShah is the closest thing we Delhiites have to a pop-up restaurant. It changes its name and cuisine every winter, but this time it appears to have hit the jackpot. Atmospherics: Into a car parking lot, right by auto workshops, while you’re wondering…

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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.…

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Café Illuminatii

Blurb: above a fairytale candle shop by the same owner Cuisine: world Atmospherics: good places are worth a steep climb. Illuminatii the store is on the first floor, while the café is on the second. There is a tiny terrace that seems to be the most popular area in the café, even when the temperature…

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La Riviera

Cuisines of the French and Italian Rivieras A well-appointed restaurant with touches of genius in the French and Italian menu A young Indian chef with international experience, a show kitchen with a Moltini range (the Lamborghini of kitchen equipment that costs around the same as the car) and contemporary style. Atmospherics: Off the lobby of…

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Farzi Café

Indian Molecular Blurb: Molecular gastronomy for Indian food goes well with wine and can be fun too Atmospherics: Four and a half months old and it is one of Cyber Hub’s more crowded restaurants. At any given time, it attracts the young, the middle-aged, those in search of novel flavours – or indeed traditional ones.…

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Chi

Chi is the latest restaurant to hit town. In the popular Safdarjung Development Area market, next to Masala Junction, it is a cool hangout place with a South East Asian menu serving meals and snacks. Noodles and noodle soups are what their claim to fame is, but there are starters and main courses too for…

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My Last Supper

If you feel sad when nice guys finish last, the reverse must also be true: that you become ecstatic when nice guys finish first. Chef Amit Chowdhury, Executive Chef of Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi, is one of the nicest chefs I know. Completely non-political and with a disposition that would give a ray of…

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Sushi: 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…

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Smitten Bakery and Patisserie

Mandakini Gupta gave up a career in television journalism to stay at home and bake cakes, breads, tarts and cookies to her heart’s content. As well known for her bran bread as for her chocolate zucchini cake, the cognoscenti of the city beat a retreat to her door come evening. That is when the day’s…

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Manish Mehrotra goes to Tel Aviv

Mustard oil Haakh Jaggery Banarasi aloo papad Sabudana papad Kolhapuri masala Whole aamchur Any guesses what these ingredients could be doing in Chef Manish Mehrotra’s diminutive office at Indian Accent? They’re getting ready to be shipped to Tel Aviv where Mehrotra is getting set to participate in a food festival. As festivals go, this one…

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Chef Prakash Pawaskar

Don’t underestimate Chef Prakash Pawaskar of Trident, Nariman Point, Mumbai. In the outwardly unassuming Executive Sous Chef lurks a connoisseur of the cuisine of Maharashtra in all its Spartan glory. Pawaskar’s links with the food of his home state go back to the time of Shivaji as a matter of fact: his father-in-law, from the…

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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…

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Singapore World Gourmet Summit

The phrase “spoilt for choice” takes on an altogether different connotation for three weeks every April in Singapore. That is when the World Gourmet Summit is on, with 73 events packed into 21 days. I was there for a modest two days and could not make up my mind whether to attend a gala lunch…

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Ummami

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…

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Five Food Trends in 2014

Go to Cyber Hub in Gurgaon, walk down the Singapore look-alike walkway with restaurants and cafes on either side, settle down in Sodabottleopenerwala for a Berry Pulao and Tamota Papeta Per Eeda (eggs poached on a bed of tomato and potato). You will have experienced two of the strongest food trends of 2014. The first…

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Watermelon

Bookies are probably placing bets as to how many more restaurants are going to spring up in already crowded Khan Market. The latest is Watermelon, in the corner of the middle lane of Khan Market, just above the Shahnaz Husain clinic. You will see a health café in light, bright colours. Don’t let the words…

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Viva Goa

The next time you’re in Goa, if you want to stir up hornet’s nest, try asking a group of house wives for the exact recipe of Goan fish curry. You’ll have a riot on your hands in no time at all. The exact details of the recipe may elude you — whether the gherkin-like bimbli,…

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Vinita’s Kitchen Of Plenty

My children, like most children everywhere, get tired of the same food with dismaying frequency. One of the few exceptions — that is, besides the eternal Maggi noodles — are the kebabs made by a lady who operates from her kitchen at home. We first heard of Vinita’s Kitchen at a dinner party where bite-sized…

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