I must say I am looking forward to 2017. The year 2016 has had its share of sorrow. Fidel is no more, and Len Cohen has sung his last song. But let’s not go into that. On the last day of the year, as we make a new start, let’s look back at all the happy moments.
It was a good year for food, certainly. I realised that while trying to short list my best food experiences of 2016. I had some veritable feasts in some restaurants, and some delicious dishes in tiny eateries. Let me now try and recall the best of the best.
One of the nicest meals I had was at the Masala Library by Jiggs Kalra on Janpath, run by the veteran food aficionado’s son, Zorawar Kalra. The 19-course tasting menu has been created and crafted so beautifully that it leaves you blissfully happy at the end of it. Served in the most elegant of ways – some of the dishes look like Japanese art – the dishes included juicy Naga pork cooked with fermented black beans, sea bass flavoured with radhuni (a much used spice in Bengali kitchens) and served with crispy, crumbled pui saag and Mizo chicken stew with black rice. I ate a deconstructed samosa (globules of peas and potatoes on a thin layer of pastry), a fragrant mushroom soup and strings of gilawati kabab placed atop a small place of sheermal. Kalra presents the best of Indian food in the most picturesque of ways.
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One restaurant that has now become a favourite is Ping’s Café Oriental in the Lodhi Colony Market. The restaurant serves the street food of South East Asia. The Krabbi garlic pepper prawns, ramen noodles with roast pork, snow peas, black mushroom and water spinach and Penang chicken curry with rice were all delectable. The roast pork in the noodle dish was wonderfully tender, complementing the crunchiness of the vegetables. The Penang chicken curry, tempered with peanuts, had been cooked with coconut milk and shrimp paste, and was redolent with the flavours of kaffir lime and galangal.
In Kolkata, I tried the food out in two new restaurants – and was completed floored by it. At Spice Kraft, on Hazra road in the Ballygunge area, I had the most delicious pork rib burrah kababs. The juicy meat tasted sharp and sweet, since it had been flavoured with jalapeno, tamarind chutney and molasses. The chef, Sambit Banick, has the most creative mind, and melds the East and the West most skilfully.
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In Bodega Cantina Y Bar in Calcutta’s Park Street area (the entrance is through Camac Street), the hot tenderloin chilly fry, cooked with roasted spices, and crispy pork salad, with a citric dressing, fresh greens, pomegranate seeds, moong beans and small pieces of succulent pork belly, were outstanding.
I think the best shami kababs I had in 2016 were in Bhopal, in a restaurant called Filfora in Kohefiza. The kababs were perfect in every way – and the spices and the chillies were just right. The meat had been pounded (and not minced),which gave the kababs just the right chewy texture.
The other good news of 2016 was the opening of a takeaway called Evergreen EFC in Mayur Vihar Phase II. It sells the most delicious biryani – lightly cooked but fragrant, as a good biryani should be – and nahari, which is mouth-wateringly soft and gummy. The seekh kababs are excellent, too.
Another happy experience was at Kulcha King’s on Hanuman Road where you get Amritsari kulchas – filled with potatoes, onion, cauliflower and so on. The kulchas come with a dollop of butter, and are served with light and tart chholey.
As I said, foodwise, it was a good year. Let us all be happy – and well fed – in 2017.