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Sun, sand and seafood

The Bay View Point offers a treat to the taste buds

PHOTO: K. V. SRINIVASAN

GOOD FOOD BY THE BAY At the Bay View Point.

The wind moved the unoccupied chair into a slow little swivel, Tai Chi style. The wrought iron chair shifted weight and settled down on the wooden flooring. I sighed.

With the Bay of Bengal at its best behaviour in front of us, and a healthy wind blowing in, even the sun above Taj Fisherman's Cove seemed to be kinder. The turquoise green walls of its alfresco bar, the wooden flooring, the discreet chairs and the easy courtesy of the staff of the new Bay View Point invite you to step in and relax over a meal.

The restaurant's infatuation with the sea has developed into love. The kitchen has been moved back to allow diners a better view. Thatched parasols and wooden flooring will make you want to dust off the sand and kick off your slippers, while you slide down your chair and let the jazz musicians serenade you.

The new menu's focus is but naturally global seafood cuisine. Pick fish, crabs, and lobster still wet and glistening, fresh from the salty Bay of Bengal waters, marinated the Goan Periperi, Chettinad, Cajun or Oriental way. The interactive kitchen, all glass and steel, encourages long debates over whether it should be the red snapper served Chettinad Style. Or if you must have the soft pink salmon, grilled with parsley and pepper and served with baked potatoes and aubergine caviar, accompanied by Pouilly-Fume, Henri Bourgeois Loire Valley France 2002.

The food's cooked just right, but is not overdone. Fresh asparagus soup has fresh asparagus the crabmeat is sweet and tender cooked in delicate flavours and the Kerala-style fish isn't buried in a pile of oily curry leaves. The fish baked in a banana leaf with a delicate curry style tomato marinade is homely and delicious.

Good food comes with 45 good wines to choose from. There's always the option of beer battered calamari, served with a chilled cowboy boot shaped pitcher of beer.

Food, even when it's a vegetarian salad, is served in an eclectic mix of designer cutlery. The chef's dessert sample of a chocolate mousse, cake and a little bowl of fruits is, for example, brought in on a mini framed wooden rack. But then who cares about the food, with such a splendid view of the Bay.

MEERA MOHANTY

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