Sourish Bhattacharyya on a Chettinad experience served on a banana leaf

This time around, Delhi's elite ate with their fingers, re-establishing the lost connect between their thumb and the brain.

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Sourish Bhattacharyya on a Chettinad experience served on a banana leaf
Tucked away in the Chettiar heartland, The Bangala has preserved a cooking tradition that can turn the humble chow chow into a taste sensation.

A couple of evenings back, it was a sight to see the Capital's Stiletto Set eating out of banana leaves in a fivestar hotel; Those with manicured nails used cutlery; those without, including some of the city's most influential people, from image makers to fashion designers, dug in with their fingers.

Priya Paul, who presides over The Park hotels, dressed like a Tamil daughter-in-law, which she is, being married to Sethu Vaidyanathan, had pulled off yet another culinary coup. Some time back, she got the high and mighty literally to dine 'under the table' - giving the expression a new meaning altogether. This time around, Delhi's elite ate with their fingers, re-establishing the lost connect between their thumb and the brain. What they ate was a Chettinad spread that turned our notion of the cuisine on its head. I have had Chettinad food in Chennai, but the delicate interplay of flavours, and the ability to turn even a humble vegetable such as the chow chow (an ugly cousin of the squash) into a sensation for the palate, which I got to experience at The Park, just blew me away.

Tucked away in the Chettiar heartland, The Bangala has preserved a cooking tradition that can turn the humble chow chow into a taste sensation.

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The spread had been laid out by the cooks of The Bangala, a heritage hotel at Karaikudi, a twohour drive from Madurai, of the fabulously wealthy and well-travelled Chettiar community of Tamil Nadu. Their business took Chettiars all over south-east Asia, which reflects in the depth of their culinary repertoire and the catholicity of their taste buds. Each dish has a distinctive personality you would-A Chettinad experience served on a banana leaf n't be able to forget in a hurry. This treasure chest of taste may never have come to light, had Meenakshi Meyyappan not decided to turn around an old and decrepit club house (built in phases from 1910 in the Chettiar architectural style) into a pretty heritage hotel; had Priya and Sethu not asked their good friends Sumeet Nair and Gitanjali Kashyap, who have had their share of celebrity spotlight in the fashion world, to visit The Bangala; and had Sumeet, a passionate hobby cook, not fallen in love with the food he ate there and decided to document it The Bangala Table: Flavors and Recipes from Chettinad.

"The fake Nair," as he calls himself, for he's a Punjabi born and raised in Mumbai, first made headlines when he set up the Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI) and organised the first India Fasion Week in the late 1990s. Having achieved the seemingly impossible task of getting so many creative but opinionated people on to one platform, Nair moved out to pave the way for experienced administrators - Vinod Kaul and Rathi Vinay Jha - till he was brought back to stage a rescue act in 2007. The FDCI was collapsing under the weight of competing egos and it was Nair who rescued it from certain disintegration.

The cover of The Bangala Table: Flavors and Recipes from Chettinad

All the diplomatic skills this Stanford Economics graduate mastered during his stint with the FDCI must have helped him prise the secrets of the Chettiar table from Meyyappan, the grande dame of Karaikudi. It took him six months to impress her. Nair then made innumerable trips to Karaikudi to master the combinations of spices and understand the nuances of ingredients such as the goondu maligai (berry-shaped round red chillies), which he now also uses to make kung pao chicken. He roped in Atul Sikand, shepherd of Facebook's most vibrant recipe-sharing community, Sikandalous Cuisine (21,000-plus members, and counting!), to test the recipes. Sikand can't forget how his Palam Vihar home was "smelling like heaven" after he made The Bangala's Chicken Chettinad.

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Meyyappan's vision was to make Chettinad a heritage tourism destination, showcasing Chettiar houses and the work of the area's sari weavers, and in the 15 years since The Bangala opened, it has inspired halfa-dozen other heritage hotels to come up in Chettinad. Like so many success stories, this one too eluded our attention. Nair has ensured it would no longer be so.


Ramen Burger comes with a calorie top-up

Back in 2009, Keizo Shimamoto, a young American of Japanese origin, quit his computer programmer's job and hit the road in the mother country of his parents to get to the bottom of the amazing story of ramen noodles. His blog GoRamen.com became a global hit and his invention, Ramen Burger, edged out the cronut as the big food trend of 2013. In a ramen burger, the regular buns are replaced by two chewy and not crunchy discs of compressed ramen noodles made according to a proprietary process perfected by Shimamoto. It may be a year late, but Guppy by Ai at the Lodi Colony Market, my favourite neighbourhood Japanese restaurant, can justifiably claim to be the first to put ramen burgers on the menu. Shimamoto used only a soy-based 'secret sauce', arugula (rocket), scallions and a chunky, juicy beef patty with a higher fat content than the standard burger patty. At Guppy by Ai, the options for fillings include beef, pork belly and bacon, chicken tsukune (meatballs), fried egg, five kinds of mushroom, sake-braised onions and Kewpie, Japan's most popular mayonnaise.

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AFTER the Uphaar fire tragedy, it has become mandatory for cinema theatres to educate their customers about fire exits. Well, the next time you go to a restaurant, look for a fire exit. Consider yourself lucky if you find one. When you are in the third floor of a Hauz Khas Village restaurant, it is not comforting to realise suddenly that in case of a fire, the only escape route is the window on the far side. Most restaurants also don't have water in the tank that is meant to be kept permanently filled for use in case of a fire emergency. The daily struggle for water makes this basic fire safety requirement a low priority for restaurants.

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A brainless law & restaurant fires

It can be disheartening to wake up one morning and learn that an old favourite restaurant has been gutted as a result of a short circuit in a freezer kept at the entrance. Yes, that's exactly how I felt - disheartened - when I read about the fire at The Embassy in Connaught Place. It was the second fire in two days at Connaught Place.

What followed was utter shock when I learnt that restaurants in the city are not required to get a fire clearance if they seat less than 50 people. It has become common, as a result, especially for the pigeon holes of Khan Market and Hauz Khas Village, or Paharganj to under-declare the number of seats they have. It saves them the struggle to acquire the fire licence The subterfuge also saves them the money they would have to spend on the licence, the fire safety equipment, and the inescapable 'facilitation' expenses.

Can someone explain the rationale of letting restaurants with less than 50 seats get away with no fire licence? Each restaurant is a potential fire hazard unless approved fire safety equipment are in place. Are lives less valuable in restaurants with less than 50 seats, or those that claim to be so, but cram twice that number of people in? It's almost a rule for smaller restaurants to abuse the 50-seater rule to dodge the fire clearance.

I have a three-step solution to this life-threatening legal sleight of hand. One, introduce onestop, online licencing for restaurants to reduce their incentive to dodge the process. Two, make annual fire safety clearance mandatory for all restaurants and bars, irrespective of the number of seats. Three, industry bodies need to work overtime to sensitise their hotelier/restaurateur members to the nature of the time bomb they are sitting on. They must, in fact, mandatorily be made a part of the inspection teams to ensure no compromises are made on the issue of safety. The industry owes it to the consumer.