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!
No comments:
Post a Comment