Ellipsis: Of Cognitive Dissonance

After months of waiting to gather the right crew for a pricey fine dine meal at an uber SoBo eatery, it happened. Assad suggested we meet to eat at Ellipsis, and the GobbleGangers did. Walked into this plush mansion across from IIS on Mme. Cama Rd. It's pretty but not too ostentatious. The large number of frames on the wall reminded me of Vietnamese or other Asian eateries States-side. Strange are the connections that the mind makes.

I thought people were messing with me when I was told that all the dishes that I really wanted to try would not be available for a weekend day's lunch. It doesn't compute (what restaurant does NOT have their bestsellers available for a weekend meal?) but that's how it was. And almost nothing on the seafood front. That bit of news crushed me. It's like a comet chaser waiting to see the Halley's comet during its transit after 76 years only to realize that it's a super cloudy day and the comet won't be visible.

We had to make do with a very curtailed menu. 

"Cognitive dissonance describes the feeling of psychological stress and discomfort that comes from holding two conflicting beliefs or having a mismatch between belief and behavior." 

Experienced an acute case of this phenomenon after the Ellipsis meal.

Some context...After a decade spent in the US and on a travel job for a few years, I've eaten terrific hearty tacos from food trucks and fine dines alike, lobster rolls in Boston, falafel pita pockets in Persian parts of LA, and burgers galore. I kinda 'get' American food...fusion or otherwise.

And there has always been this divide -- trucks, diners and dives give you massive portions of meat (or seafood) that ooze juice and are magnificent heart-stopping eats...like you see on Eat Street, and fine dines provide a sophisticated (and very tasty) take on those items. A spin that enthralls. Working with explosive mousse, foams, emulsions, smoke, or even secret uncommon ingredients that POP...

Ellipsis did neither for majority of the dishes that we trialled. My tongue-brain was telling me 'This is definitely not fantastic food...and for the money it's seriously over-hyped' and yet food columnists and bloggers believe it is the finest 'American food meets fine dine' in the city and I wanted to believe them and sip this kool-aid. Who's got their food wrong here?

Cognitive dissonance.

The net of the story is that after plying through a large variety of dishes, the only ones that rocked my world were the chicken wings and the lobster tacos. Pretty much all else flattered to deceive. I'd go so far as to say that even if someone else was paying for me and I was asked to judge the food fairly, standalone, I'd find it difficult to utter the words 'Incredible' or 'Sublime'. 

The truffle fries were great and smelled like a slice of heaven but a bit absurd at 950++ for an order. 

The dimsum, across the range of three items, was very ordinary. Stodgy, punchless eats like an aging workless actor demanding his 'at prime' rate. Indeed, the 'seafood' payload in the shrimp dimsum was almost like a seafood version of Spam (Google if you don't know what Spam is...)

The falafel was dry and ragged and could drive a vegetarian to consider becoming non-vegetarian for the day. And pita in small triangles? Sir, please! Falafel, generally, comes with semi-lunar pita pockets to stuff the falafel into with some hummus, tahini and harissa!

The pork belly baos were reasonably good but I've had so much good braised pork belly at a reasonable price in Grade A eateries recently, that this pork belly failed on the curve of diminishing returns for my money. 

The prawn tacos were reasonable but I've had far better prawn soft tacos for far less. I want more mouthy sour cream, guacamole, some pico de gallo, red cabbage, parsley. I'd gleefully accept a fine dine sophistication spin that would make my taste buds explode but even that wasn't on show. 

The lamb burger had everything a burger should have to give it heft and flavor-punch, and yet it did nothing for me. The taste buds remained off like city lights after a war plane attack siren. 

A similar situation with the lamb tacos. The phulka-like taco was falling apart and unable to hold together the lamb. 

The lobster tacos were, relatively, the relief on the day. They were juicy and thoroughly enjoyable. Still missing me some sour cream or avacado and parsley.

The chicken wings are pretty fab too. Some of the best in the city.

On the desserts front, the pancake was dry, obese and extremely ordinary but the French Toast wowed.

For a fine dine charging a bomb shell, the serviced consistently remained in the same zip code as 'Abysmal'.

After paying well upward of 2000 pretty beads for this meal, I felt cheated...more for the promise broken than for anything else...and for that deep unsatisfied feeling in my food-soul. And the cognitive dissonance.

Will I be back? Some part of me says 'yes' if only to try the prime seafood dishes I didn't get to try...but for that, I need to hear a person I trust to tell me that those plates are worth dipping into my Wasabi meal fund. 

Yes, yellow fin tuna. Yes, fish tacos. Yes, seafood pasta. Barramundi. Snapper. I missed you all and I'll try to be back.

The Fatty Bao: What A Great Meal Should Look Like

The Mildly Spiced loving soul is a tortured soul in a country full of people who generally love their food loud, heavy, and desi. Providers of Mildly Spiced mind-bending food are few and far-in-between, and if they do exist, and if they provide good food, and have scary words on their menu like 'salmon', 'Belgian', 'Chilean' be rest assured that you'd be selling your pretty silky minky hair at the neighborhood saloon, at a bare minimum, or a kidney to pay for that shameless meal at the said place. 

So, it comes as a pleasant surprise when a provider of such food sets up shop in a prime suburb and enables a grp of four to taste 10-11 very interesting things for around 1000 quid a head. Not cheap, but I will still have two kidneys. And if this has you intrigued, please dial the digits for The Fatty Bao and request the sweet lady to book a table for you.

It's new. It's hot. So they go booked a week in advance, but divine intervention and some undeniable charms and sweet talk got us a last minute table on a Sunday afternoon. Yups, that's what a miracle smells and looks like.

The four at the party (three fo sho) were food nerds. We knew the menu 'by heart' and had a long list and a short list of orders. We'd planned to only trial three things and walk away. We ended up with 10-11. Tells you something.

The fried eggplant baos. Now, this chap Karan Karayi is a picky and fussy eater. When I suggested we order this, he pulled a long face. I mean...who does NOT like eggplant? I lou it! That said, we did order it and it is a super dish to start with despite its severe shortcoming (primarily, that it is vegetarian), which is a back-handed way of saying...order it. I'd be lying if I told you that I could discern the flavor of miso (in the marinade) or of the sriracha. All I can tell you is, the combination of textures and flavors works beautifully well, especially when you're super hungry. 

MS Win.

Next up was the Brie Tempura. I'm a good-cheese guy. I love me a good brie. I love tempura fried stuff. This is the kind of marriage where the girl tells the guy 'If we're both still single at 35, let's hitch up and jump into the fryer'. They did, and did a darned good job of it too. Crispy on the outside, beautifully melty brie on the inside, it's like you accidentally walked in on a bit of unplanned passion...in the kitchen.

MS Win.

PB&J. The PG-13 adolescent in you thought...yay! Peanut butter and jam. The 'R' rated adult in you grinned and knew it meant pork belly with miso jam. This stuff leads to serious arousal...of the gustatory kind. Four generous slabs of pork belly marinated and cooked with pristine care lie next to each other topped with thick umami-laden miso sauce, microgreens, sesame, and scallion. If I had not had some extraordinary pork belly just a few weeks ago, I'd say this was epic. With that context, it came out second best, but in the story of the meal, it was still a worthy winner, and joins the pantheon of pork belly greats within this city's kitchens.

MS Big Win that stops an inch short of epicness.

The Wakame and Crabmeat Salad was an exact counterpoint to the PB&J. Where the PB&J was battling in the heavyweight flavors category, the salad is an exemplar of all things Mildly Spiced. The first fork-full had me thinking 'Japanese flavors!'. It's that kind of dish. Wakame is a gentle green, a delicate seaweed with a pleasant enough texture and goes well with the citrusy-nutty ponzu and sesame dressing. That said, the crabmeat seemed to be present in spirit, but not in flesh. A healthy topping of fried straws contributed the necessary crunch.

MS Big Win.

The salmon carpaccio comes in plated a bit more amateurishly as compared to a Continental variant at the Salt Water Cafe (Bandra) but is still a smorgasbord of flavors across the spectrum. A carpaccio, in essence, is not 'ang ko lagne wala khaana'. Indeed, it is meant as bit of sensory foreplay as various elements trigger off the different kind of taste receptors like a conductor conducting a Beethoven or Mozart symphony. To know that the various elements in play were ginger and garlic juice, yuzu (Japanese citrus relative of sour mandarin), soy, should tell you that all the receptors were lit up like it were Diwali.

MS Big Win

The Teriyaki chicken baos were a bit like the introverted kid at a school re-union. Was he here? Did he attend? It's only when you look at the pictures that you notice its presence. These baos just lacked flavor punch. A reason why I no longer order chicken in restaurants unless it's a well-known kabab joint. 

MS Fail for me.

We ordered the duck meat buns almost as an afterthought and what a good call it was. If you think of baos as a type of dimsum, the bao should soon be becoming very popular because the skin lends itself to a beautiful release of its payload. It also holds up when a dainty eater decides to make a 5-6 bite meal of a bao. The duck meat was fragrant and delicious! 

MS Big Win!

Next up were the sweet-nothings (aka desserts)...

The Fatty Hill. You know how they say light colors and pastels make you look fat? That's Fatty Hill for you. The rice crisps add heft to an otherwise small core of elements including the mint creme brulee, chocolat cream and the dessert was gone in about 60 seconds or less. The chocolat sorbet on the side is pretty darned good too!

MS Comme ci comme ca.

Thankfully, Nika had ordered the Green Tea Chiffon Cake and it's not a dessert I'd EVER order, and yet dessert-obsessed people will try the weirdest things. A dry-looking green cake is not how I like to end a wonderful meal, but happy endings can come in the strangest forms and don't never judge a dessert by its looks. Now, they make this thin green tea chiffon cake, plaster it with yuzu parfait, roll it up, top it up with a quenelle of yuzu sorbet and add in some lemon sable (French for sand) to provide some texture and orange honey for tang. This is citrus dessert fantasyland and the yuzu sorbet is just so incredibly...FRESH! 

Yes. I did lick the plate...in a full restaurant. That's a compliment. It's like PDA of the maddest kind. Some think it disgusting...others simply wish they had the cajones to do it in public.

MS Epicness. 

Ze Service: With food like this, I wouldn't have cared if they'd treated me like an especially grubby street urchin, but they showed us that food wasn't all they are good at. The service (a few short weeks after launch) was smooth. Patient order-taking, watchfully making sure we'd finished one plate before bringing another in, willing to switch orders, helpful suggestions, and the winner was...helping us get a no-show empty table without acting pricey. Aniruddha was especially helpful through my entire stay there, and he'd peek in at our table almost asking 'Hope all is OK with your experience' rather than 'When are you planning to walk out?'

The ambience is a tad dark in terms of lighting but whimsical and super on the decor.

VFM: With all this food, sans drinks, you'd walk out paying 1100 colored shells each. Not a steal but still excellent value for my shell collection.

Will I be back? Bet your second kidney, I will!