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…
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…
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…
When Chef Noel Nalin Fonseka arrived in Delhi to do a trade test as the Corporate Pastry Chef at ITC Hotels, his interlocutors promised to get him the exotic ingredients he asked for “within two days.” He however, had no plans of working with exotic ingredients. He wanted to work with local fruit and come…
“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…
He hails from, not one country, but two, and both are in different hemispheres. Chef Vittorio Greco may have been born in the North of Tuscany, but what shaped his culinary style was his move to Brisbane, Australia, where he cooked for a largely non-Italian audience. His live-wire energy is his defining feature, and in…
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…
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…
Dean Nelson, South Asia Editor of The Telegraph, has been given the boot. “He was no good,” chortled his wife, Pamela Timms. “He just couldn’t concentrate, so we had to sack him.” On the other hand, Timms had nothing but praise for the Deputy Ambassador of Netherlands, Jeroen Roodenburg. “He could make the perfect cup…
On the whole, we’re a warm and hospitable bunch of people. Whether it’s a Sardar taxi driver in New York or a village woman living in a mud hut in Kutch, no stranger need fear that he’ll be dealing with an inscrutable oriental. There is, however, the flip side of the coin. We are loud…
