 "Amit Burman")
Catalunya in Singapore
Spanish food is becoming big in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Singapore. Catalunya's tapas are amazing and go very well with drinks. (The restaurant opened in August 2012.) The sausages and pork (preparations) on their menu too are excellent. I really like the pork bikini sandwiches and the ceviche. It also serves a full pig, which is quite a showpiece. But it has to be ordered a day in advance. It is good enough for five or six people. The cucumber gin and tonic is very good. (Its signature cocktail is Stairway to Heaven, named after the famous song by Led Zeppelin.)
Nobu in London and Dubai
I go there for its modern Japanese cuisine. It is owned by Nobuyuki Matsuhisa (the renowned Japanese chef). What I really like here is the white fish and yellow fish carpaccio, Chilean seabass, black cod with miso, and all sushi and sashimi. The food here has a distinct Peruvian touch. Like Indians, the people of Peru like their food spicy and use tomatoes, little chillies and jalapenos. That makes the food quite palatable for Indians. (That's because Matsuhisa, at the age of 24, had gone to Lima for three years to run a restaurant. He now runs 22 Nobu restaurants across the world.)
Le Petite Maison in Dubai and London
I go here for modern French cuisine. Its appetisers and salads are amazing. My favourite are fried calamari with green pepper, lentil salad, scrambled eggs with truffles, green beans with foi gras, and sea bream. Its steak is also very good. "Local produce, notably artichokes, courgettes, lemons, olives, tomatoes, peppers and girolles are used generously with sea food, meat and fresh pasta to produce a style that's light and healthy," the website of the Dubai restaurant says. "Oil obtained from olives groves on the hills of the Alpes-Maritimes behind Nice and extending into Liguria is used throughout."
Bukhara in New Delhi
It serves the best Peshawar (Frontier) cuisine anywhere. Located at the ITC Maurya, it is an iconic restaurant with the highest monthly sales in the whole of India. I love the burrah kebab, raan, kaali daal (Dal Bukhara), and tandoori jhinga. It serves very nice chicken khurchan. The restaurant was made famous by the Clintons during their official visit to India; it even serves platters named after them - the Clinton Platter and the Chelsea platter. The food is heavy, no doubt, but it's great. I used to go there once a month, till I opened (my own chain of Frontier restaurants) Punjab Grill.
Scalini in London
It is a mid-scale Italian restaurant on Walton Street, between Knightsbridge and South Kensington, which has been around for 25 years. It is spread over almost 3,000 square feet, can seat about 80 guests and even has a VIP room. Its portions are large and the food has a home-cooked feel about it. Its best dishes: lobster pasta, lasagne, carpaccio, Angus steak and grilled Dover sole with lemon-butter sauce. I eat here regularly whenever I am in London, at least twice a week. [Burman liked it so much that he acquired it some months ago for an undisclosed sum].
