Dining under the dimly-lit red Chinese lanterns at Vihar restaurant will take you down memory lane of Kolkata’s small Chinese food joints located in narrow streets, serving some of the most lip-smacking delicacies.
Not quite such an exhaustive menu, but nevertheless Vihar’s special menu for the ongoing Chinese Food Festival features all the top favourites. The sea-view restaurant at Rushikonda is celebrating the arrival of the Year of the Dog with the Chinese Food Festival till February 26.
With the city having limited options when it comes to Chinese restaurants, my Chinese cravings took me to explore the festival menu of Vihar.
If the décor at night felt warm and inviting, the food didn’t disappoint a bit. The festival menu is not quite off the ordinary. It is a typical menu of any Chinese eatery.
Chinese food has its own Indian version and it is that version which has topped the food charts for a very long time now. At the food festival, you find traces of this Indian version of Chinese which are simply hard to resist. The festival menu has starters like Mongolian prawns, dragon chicken on stick, drums of heaven, chicken wontons and in the vegetarian starters like Shanghai rolls and Mongolian vegetables.
My personal favourite was the Mongolian prawns and the dragon chicken on stick. You can start with the soups which has the regular favourites like tom yum vegetarian soup and chicken wonton soup. Being from a coastal city, giving a miss to the mixed seafood soup would be a crime for foodies! So do try this one for sure.
In the main course, the stir fried chicken with cashew nuts and minced chicken fried rice with spinach caught my attention.
And the adventurous will love the prawn in orange in orange sauce for the sweet and sour sauce.
Another must-try in the menu is the home style Fujian noodles tossed with crushed peanut and coconut.
It gives a distinctly different taste and goes well with the lemon chicken. The flavours are not so over-powering. The ingredients going in to each dish retain their original taste and the good part is the presentation is not overdone. After all you are here to eat to your stomach’s content and the restaurant chefs know how to tantalise your taste buds!
I wrapped up my meal with what else but the honey tossed darsan simply because I could not resist it even though my stomach was revolting. The banana toffee is something that I have reserved for another day.
If you are a Chinese food lover, the food festival at Vihar is well worth the visit. The festival is open for lunch and dinner till February 26.
