Skip the crunchy masala dosa on the menu to go for dosa with stuffed paneer bhurji or pair the white soft aapams with mango fish curry. For dessert, relish scoops of ice-creams from cones made of dosa.
The mix-and-match scenario with food has never been this good, going by the menu cards of many restaurants. Fusion food only seems to be getting more innovative with restaurants dishing out a range of combinations. Besides pizzas, burgers and dosas, there are many interesting food stuff that are taking on new forms and appearances.
When S. Bhuvanesh was planning to start a doughnut shop in the city, the market survey did not seem favourable for him. However, the former e-Bay employee went ahead and the response from his two outlets in the last one-and-a-half months has been encouraging. With varieties such as three flavours of chocolate – dark, milk and white – in the light and fluffy doughnut and ingredients sourced from around the world, Mr. Bhuvanesh is happy.
“We have 26 varieties of doughnuts and we are still trying out more,” he says of his Doughnut House. “My Egmore outlet on weekdays sell nearly 600 doughnuts and on weekends it is over 1,000,” he adds.
Exotic aapams
Aapam is another food that is being served in various interesting combinations. Whether it is the bulls eye aapam where the egg is decorated on the laced pancake or the tutti-fruity aapam that can even be eaten as a dessert, restaurants says the big challenge is to ensure that the batter does not turn sour. “We use a little of the old batter on the new, thus ensuring the same taste is maintained,” says T. Karthikeyan, director (operations), Simran's Aappa Kadai, which serves 16 varieties of aapams.
According to restaurant owners, while fusion food has been the ‘in trend' for quite some time, it is getting popular as people are travelling a lot and like to experiment too. But, it could also turn out to be a flop. “A lot of such fusion varieties click depending on peoples' taste and the exposure they have. These foods have to be experimented, tried and fine-tuned,” says Chef Regi Mathew, COO, Oriental Cuisines.
But, sometimes tried and tested combinations work best for some.
