ZORAWAR KALRA’S ODE TO INDIA’S LOVE FOR THE UTTERLY-BUTTERLY

December 5, 2020

Just when people had started believing that the restaurant sector was licking its Covid-19 wounds in one dark corner, the ever-creative Zorawar Kalra, throwing the collective wisdom of diet gurus out of the window, is celebrating our love for all things buttery. The baby Lord Krishna’s love for freshly made...

A CREATIVE TWIST TO THE CHATTER ABOUT CHAAT

November 28, 2020

Inventive chefs are seeing in the slowdown caused by the resurgence of the Covid-19 pandemic a huge opportunity for creative explorations. With international travel ruled out and marriages becoming less celebratory because of social distancing norms, and footfalls to restaurants still not picking up because of anxieties, chefs now have...

There’s more to do with a pistachio than chew on it

November 21, 2020

This is the age of virtual travel—and my latest destination this past week was California, where I saw pistachios being harvested from trees, which, as I learnt later, can live up to 300 years. The United States (mainly California, New Mexico and Arizona) and Iran are responsible for 72 per...

Kwality is still going strong at sprightly 80

November 21, 2020

It is not often that one gets to write about a restaurant that has completed 80 years—after having written about it on its platinum and diamond jubilees. When Pishori Lal Lamba and Iqbal Ghai, two young men from Lahore, opened a shop named Kwality at Connaught Place in 1940 to...

Craft gin brands stir a heady success story

November 21, 2020

India’s beverages scene is experiencing a seismic transformation because of a bunch of enterprising and inventive young professionals who have been relentlessly pushing the envelope of creativity. The India Gin Story, far removed from the industrial spirits that would rule the market, takes me back to the early days of...

DIWALI GIFTING DIPS BUT GETS INNOVATIVE

November 7, 2020

Taking about people changing professional tracks and discovering their core competence, I must mention Sid Mathur, who was a banker in London till he was bitten by the food bug. Coming from an Old Delhi Kayastha family, good food comes with Sid’s territory, and being an alumnus of The British...

RESTAURANT BRAND DESIGNER CREATES ‘CLOUD KITCHEN’

November 7, 2020

Ankur Gupta studied fashion design at Central St Martin, London, and worked with designers such as J.J. Valaya before branching out into brand designing. It was a project at Hyatt Regency that got Ankur interested in restaurants and it so happened that The China Kitchen, the five-star hotel’s signature eatery,...

IT’S TIME FOR US TO RAISE A CHEER FOR INDIAN CACAO

November 7, 2020

When Australian lawyer-and-chocolate-maker-turned-yoga junkie Jane Mason and her French husband (now ex-), Fabien Bontems, a sound engineer by training, launched their artisan chocolates named Mason & Co. from Auroville in 2014, I discovered India produced top-notch cacao, the basic building block of chocolate. Along the way, I met Nitin Chordia,...

A KHICHDI THAT TASTES AND SMELLS DIVINE

October 31, 2020

I am inspired by a WhatsApp conversation I had with Sanhita Dasgupta Sensharma, whose home-delivered Durga Puja meal I have just finished praising, to write this ode to the khichuri developed at the Belur Math and now served on festive occasions in Ramakrishna Mission outposts across the country. My late father used...

WINE IN A CAN? YES, AND YOU’LL LOVE THE IDEA

October 31, 2020

Sadly, Fratelli unveiled its revolutionary idea, wines in a can, just a couple of days after the tragic premature passing away of its 43-year-old co-founder, Kapil Sekhri. But the soft-spoken, forever-gentlemanly Sekhri couldn’t have asked for a better send-off from this world. The wines—Tilt (white, red, bubbly and rose) and...