Impressive live kitchens, haute cuisine...Anoothi Vishal on the new Chinese restaurants that are making waves. |
Sitting in The China Kitchen, the new Chinese restaurant at The Hyatt, Delhi, taking in all the hustle-bustle emanating from its open kitchen and the sense of almost street mart-like energy so removed from routine five-star environs, you become convinced of one thing: this is going to work! |
The restaurant has been eagerly awaited ever since Djinns, the once-hip nightclub that used to be housed in these very premises, shut down. More often than not, such anticipation is a recipe for disaster. Not here. On a weekday night, it is full of guests (expats, but enough Dilliwallahs too) and it makes for a spectacular venue. |
The huge kitchen is visible from all corners, even from the private dining rooms a climb up. But more than that, the somewhat chaotic-looking seating arrangement (making for sundry lost waiters too) "" a corner here, a niche there, wine rack and tea corner, antique furniture sourced from the bazaars of Beijng strewn around "" is very charming indeed. |
But these are just appearances, what of the food? In a country where Indian-Chinese is van-food, essentially takeaway, comfort food, the cuisine is sufficiently distinct and smart to hold its own as, well, haute. The concept is borrowed from The Grand Hyatt Beijing restaurant Made in China that serves up essentially northern (but from other regions too) Chinese cuisine; local recipes that have been suitably "refined". |
At Delhi's The China Kitchen, it's the same "" all the cooking is done in the live kitchen whose various sections serve up everything from dimsums to Peking duck (truly the piece de resistance). There are different Chinese chefs for each section and corporate chef Jack Aw Yong for Hyatt International, who opened the Beijing restaurant, has been personally around as well. |
Yong is delighted when we put ourselves entirely in his hands. "Spicy or not?" he asks and when we tell him to cook as he would, he positively beams. What follows is fare that has familiar elements but tweaked so that there is a definite novelty edge. This is no Indian- |
Chinese or French-Chinese or American- or Peruvian- or even Japanese-Chinese, popular the world over. Instead, it comes as close to Chinese-Chinese as Yong's "refining" allows (including a Kung Pao chicken with an aftertaste, strangely, of tea). |
There are dimsums with pancake-like and carrot bases, there's some lovely, succulent seafood, bambooshoot shavings for vegetarians, a green tea-flavoured tiramisu and duck which has been prepared as carefully as it has been procured (from a local farmer who went to China for training). Surprisingly, the bill isn't much either. A person could have himself a whole meal for Rs 1,000. |
At China House, the new restaurant at The Grand Hyatt in Mumbai, the concept is pretty much the same "" different live kitchens and a very pretty restaurant (though the cuisine is Sichuan to go with Indian palates). This, with the bar, has made the restaurant Mumbai's most happening place lately. |
Effectively, together with The China Kitchen, the newly opened My Humble House at ITC Maurya in Delhi and other hotel restaurants (there's Bamboo at The Park, Navi Mumbai and Ano-Tai at the Jaypee Vasant Continental with a new authenticated menu), the restaurant has ushered in a new wave of trendy Chinese in the country. With the cuisine being the biggest money-spinner (after Indian), it is but natural for establishments and entrepreneurs to want to tap it. |
But in a scenario where even standalones are increasingly offering quality "" more seafood, more expat chefs "" and indigenous chain like Mainland China getting ambitious enough to take their fare to the Mainland (!), the challenge for any new, star restaurant is obviously how to make itself "cutting-edge" enough. |
My Humble House shows another way out. The Tung Lok Group of Singapore was possibly the first to put the gloss on Chinese (outside of sporadic experiments in Shanghai and the like). With its Club Chinois, it ushered in fusion-Chinese cooking "" the ingredients used were not always intrinsic to the cuisine (wasabi-prawns have become somewhat of a cliche since then, though they may be nouvelle in India) and the food was served stylishly pre-plated. Since then, other Humble Houses have opened up, including in Tokyo and now Delhi, where you can go through crisp pan-seared foie gras on grape salsa and steamed fillet of cod and other un-Chinese stuff. |
The degustation menus are on (the dishes come with poetic names and rice is brought out at the end) as also wines and malts. The ambience is "Zen" and while you may think that local palates will take time adjusting, considering that we may have had our fill of manchurian, you may just be surprised. |