Marryam H Reshii - Page 2 - Food, Travel, People…

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

Fratelli Wines and Tuscan Flavours
December 25, 2018

Music & Mountains
December 13, 2018

Anticlock
December 7, 2018

Another Fine Day
December 6, 2018

Pout Cafe

Worth it for the peppy “fashion café” interiors alone, though there is food for every taste too Atmospherics: The best part of this café on two floors is the interiors. Broad black and white stripes combine with vibrant colours and an attractive collage on the first floor that occupies a whole wall. The first floor…

Zamozza

Blurb: A mixed bag of unbelievably good and ‘what the customer wants’ Atmospherics: It has much going for it, location-wise. On the ground floor of a building on Janpath, right next door to Shiv Sagar (same owner), it is down a narrow alley within the building itself. So the ceiling is a blaze of lights,…

Coffee Bars

Last fortnight saw major happenings in the tiny world of coffee bars. Barista announced its willingness to be bought out, Starbucks is – finally – poised to enter the country and Barnie’s made its entry into the country, the first outlet being in the National Capital Region. That means that Barista, Café Coffee Day, Coffee…

The 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,…

Chinese Section at K3

Blurb: A powerhouse of talent moves to Delhi Cuisine: Beijing meets Canton Atmospherics: The very first time I was brought face to face with Chef Zhang Xue Shi’s towering talent was in a hotel in Chennai five years ago. The world of food is not so large after all, and after fantasizing about the lunch…

Witches’ Brew

Jancis Robinson, the well-known wine writer, and Silverio Cineri, master chef from Italy, occupy two ends of the spectrum of food and beverage. But last week, both found themselves in New Delhi. While Robinson, on a private visit to the Capital, was co-opted by The Oberoi to hold a wine workshop for the staff, Cineri…

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…

The Kashmiri Way: Banquets

What does a meeting of political bigwigs, an office picnic and an Eid celebration have in common? If all three are held in Kashmir, the answer is wazwan, the traditional banquet. In conservative societies such as Kashmir’s, all occupations are hereditary. Carpenters’ sons pick up the hammer and saw, barbers’ sons will wield the scissors…

Travelling with my Chopsticks

What goes round the world, changing yet remaining the same? Marryam H Reshii discovers the answer: Chinese street food In the night market in Taipei, capital of Taiwan, every shopper sauntered around with what looked like a red lollipop. Not to be outdone, I ordered one too. One bite of it, and I was assailed…

Popular 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…

Dishy Delhi

Pakistani Passion

Every hotel vies with its competitors to host the most innovative food festival. There are a couple of variables. Though the cuisine has to be bold and novel – and of course memorable – it also has to appeal to the taste-buds of the public and be as popular as possible. There are a few…

Waylaid in Taiwan

My Browsing History

Everywhere I travel, I like to see the fruit and vegetable markets, the motor spare parts shops, the back streets where printers have their presses and the second-hand clothes and books bazars. For, much more than the manicured centre of town, it is these areas, with their hair let down, that you will get the…

Czech-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…

La Vie en Rose

A week after I returned from Paris, I visited an up-market restaurant near where I live. Though I have always been partial to their warm chocolate cake, I have to say it tasted like hell. It was chocolate brown all right, but the flavour defied description. It had nothing to do with the ingredient I…

The Hidden Face of Jaipur

Ladakh

Lakakhis are fond of comparing their cuisine with that of Tibet and they have a point. A huge range of soups, whose names change whether they have been made with barley and stock, plain stock, fortified with hand-made pasta or mince-filled dumplings; hardly any greens and just a few types of breads – it is…

Magique

Food personality, wedding caterer, TV show host and restaurateur – Marut Sikka’s larger-than-life personality dominates the garden restaurant in the slightly out of the way Garden of Five Senses. It is supposed to be a de-stressing zone with soft music, heaters in winter and mist fans in summers to take the edge of Delhi’s infamously…

Instapizza

The term ‘value for money’ was coined here Serves pizzas Atmospherics: There are a few high tables and high stools inside Instapizza. Should you want to sit outside (a good idea in pleasant weather) there are regular chairs and tables, but the tables look a bit grubby, perhaps because of the material they are made…

Farzi Cafe Version 2.0

Number 31

First Number 8; now Number 31 Serving Breakfasts, Asian Atmospherics: The thin, long floor plan is a challenge for any interior designer and fortunately, Number 31 has concentrated on getting the nuts and bolts in place: comfortable chairs, adequately large tables and plug-points that are sprinkled generously around. Seating is on the first and second…

Japanese at threesixtyone⁰

Quite simply, the finest Japanese chef in the NCR Serves Japanese (besides other cuisines) Atmospherics: Surrounded by a cerulean pool of water to cool even the most torrid temperatures, threesixtyone⁰ serves a variety of cuisines, but Japanese is your best bet. Chef Hiroshi Kagata is a powerhouse of talent. There is a work station of…

Frontier

It’s neither hot nor happening, but Frontier at The Ashok has something that few other Indian restaurants in the city can boast of: a signature menu with dishes that have been more or less invented in its kitchens and served nowhere else for decades now. Like its distant country cousin, Bukhara, most of the food…

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…

Chef Olaf Niemeier ~ From the Archives

If you don’t wish to see a steamed up Chef Olaf Niemeier, try and refrain from muttering the mantra of fusion cuisine before him. “It’s become almost a term of abuse,” he explains of the trend, and pleads: “Please don’t refer to my style as fusion.” Eclectic international then, you say to yourself, mentally agreeing…

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…

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…

Muzaffar and Meera Ali

In the heyday of Lucknow, say a hundred and fifty years ago, nobles delighted in presenting their guests culinary quizzes. There would be a table-spread of dishes that appeared to resemble lamb qorma and biryani but would in actual fact turn out to be made of spun sugar. In days of yore, says Muzaffar Ali,…

Dishy Delhi

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…

Xiian

Xiian embodies the power of numerology. My first visit was when the spelling of the name was regular. At that time, the food barely passed muster. On my second and third visits, the food has been improving by leaps and bounds. Coincidentally, it is when the spelling moved to the extra ‘i’. Whatever it is…

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,…

The Continuity of Indian Crafts

While shopping around for apparel or household accessories in India, the last thing on your mind is promoting the craft traditions of the country. But, incredibly enough, that’s exactly what you’re doing ! Just as Indian culture has the supreme ability to adapt itself to a succession of alien Influences over the millennia, so also…

Visionnaire Cafe

Cuisine: Italian Blurb: Straight from Milan is this café next door to a designer furnishings showroom. Visionnaire Café really does try to make a difference in Gurgaon. Especially in terms of the concept: a café next door to a luxury furniture showroom selling the designs of Ipe Cavalli and Fendi. Both are prototypes of the…

American Cafe ~ From the Archives

Ever wondered about the planning that goes into a restaurant? “It’s not unlike having a baby” chorus husband and wife team of Janis Fraser and Sumer Arora. When Janis and Sumer decided to go into the food business, they called in food consultants Under One Roof to thrash out a concept, plan a menu, design…