Grazing on (foie) gras

THE FOOD CLUB

When I dined at Graze, Taj Residency, Bangalore, several things struck me simultaneously. Despite the forest of crystal glassware on the tables, the restaurant is a warm, even noisy one, far removed from the formality of the yesteryears.

There's an open kitchen, and that's the second surprise: the presiding chef looks about 25 years old, and he's not French or even European, but Taiwanese. The third thing is that in spite of the presence of foie gras on the menu, nobody's calling it French. It is still true that calling a cuisine French is tantamount to sounding its death-knell.

Most chefs express their personality through their menu. The last thing they want to do is keep it simple. Chef Steven Liu on the other hand, obviously possesses more maturity than his appearance suggests, because his first menu (the restaurant is a couple of months old) is slightly more than entry level. Once I got talking to him, I realised just how inspired the Taj group was in hiring an Asian chef with a European background.

Chef Steven told me how he hand-picked his team, taught them to the level of the first menu and even motivated them to eat Western food on their off-days. As any chef from a Western country will tell you, that is the biggest hurdle in India: Indian nationals working in Western kitchens never eat the food they cook, so the nuances of their adopted cuisine are entirely lost on them. It is the reason why many middle-rung European restaurants across India suffer from over-seasoned food.

Many gora chefs that I have met "" there are a few excellent ones, including the Taj group's Ingo Moeller based in Delhi "" often speak to their team from a lofty perch. In Graze, Chef Steven, by virtue of being an Asian, is a role-model for his team, most of who probably aspire to work in the Dorchester and Savoy Hotels just like he himself has.

When I asked him why there were no touches from Taiwan "" after all, the restaurant promises contemporary European food with Asian undertones "" he said that all that would make its appearance in the second menu, due out in another month, after he saw guest preferences. "I'd like to work upwards slowly," was the way he put it.

Bangalore, with its young, floating population is an inspired choice for a restaurant like Graze. The city is host to Blue Ginger, India's only Vietnamese restaurant and possibly my favourite dining place in the entire country: croaking frogs, hot pink and royal blue silk upholstery on sea-grass sofas, no walls and a cuisine that gets its inspiration from China, India, South-east Asia and France.

Then there is the highly-rated Harima, a Japanese restaurant, Olive Beach "" probably the one branch with the finest food "" Southindies, a contemporary restaurant that serves the vegetarian food of the four southern states in wi-fi enabled settings, Harbour Market, a seafood restaurant that serves food from the west coast, but whose USP is Syrian Christian food from Kerala.

marryamhreshii@yahoo.co.in