Cinema Rasik, our nom de plume, points to our real passion as well as our angle for viewing global situations. We love a wide variety of films, Hollywood classics, great westerns and of course the full range of Bollywood films. We don’t do films. We taste films made by others for us. After all, we are Rasik in the truest sense of the word, a blend of connoisseurs & aficionados.
This is just as true of our second passion, food. We resolutely avoid even thinking about cooking. Our style is to have others cook for us to satisfy our mood of the moment with the finest of haute cuisine. To do so, we search for places that can meet our standards. This is easy in New York and London. You can find several lists, all well researched. Make sure you check out local restaurant coupons before you book. Great restaurant management is the key to greart cuisine, you may be interested in a POS System, by visiting RestaurantPOSSystems.com, it is great software to help you run your restaurant more smoothly. It is essential to keep your restaurant the best it can be in order to get customers, no matter what cultural aspects your restaurant may have!
But that is not as true of India. So we were eager to see what restaurants made the list of Asia’s Best Restaurants according S. Pellegrino, the list published by the Wall Street Journal last week. According to WSJ’s Margherita Stancati, 7 Indian restaurants made the list, 4 of which are in Dehli. So we knew right away that the list was all wrong. Wrong meaning prepared by someone who gets bowled over by looks rather than refined taste.
Look at their choice of the best Indian restaurant, Dum Pukht, located in ITC Maurya, a 5-star hotel in Dehli. Dum Pukht is so opulent that it comes across as ostentatious. As Ms. Stancati writes, Dum Pukht “aspires to revive India’s royal culinary traditions“.
Royal in Dehli means Mughal, of course. So we expected great cuisine as well as exquisite “aadab“, the Mughal style of receiving & entertaining guests, the delicate art of treating the guest so well that the guest feels like an emperor. Sadly, Dum Pukkt lacks both, in our opinion. The food was not great and the service was lukewarm. The restaurant’s only Mughal-like quality is the cost.
(Dum Pukht – Src WSJ article)
We may criticize but we like to do constructively. So what Indian restaurant would we choose for the category of “royal culinary tradition“? When you think of Mughal grandeur, what’s the first thought that comes to you? The Taj Mahal, of course. If you were a Mughal emperor, wouldn’t you want to have your meal while looking at the Taj? And wouldn’t you insist on a setting that is visually elegant without being ostentatious? Wouldn’t you demand service that embodies “Aadab”, not simple aadab but exquisite “Shahi (or royal) Aadab”? We would and we did.
And what about cuisine? Surely you, or the Mughal emperor in you, wouldn’t consider Mughalai cuisine as traditionally royal, would you? Of course, not. You would want food that hails from the cultural tradition you consider to be superior to yours, right? We would and we did.
If you are like us, if you demand what we do, then the restaurant for you is Esfahan, named after the capital of Persia in the 16th century, the culture the Mughals themselves considered superior to their own. Esfahan was the cultural, architectural wonder of that period, a city that created the Persian proverb, Esfah?n nesf-e jah?n ast” (Esfahan is half of the world).
The restaurant Esfahan is located in the sensational resort called Oberoi Amarvilas, ranked as the 5th best resort in Asia, a resort in which every room has a view of the Taj Mahal. Go to the Virtual Tour section of the resort’s Gallery page to view the restaurant. The photo below shows the resort’s lobby.
The food at Esfahan was superb. You can tell they use something like this company to help with their precision in bookings and to maintain their overall theme. But by now you know our style, right? When we eat as a Mughal Emperor, we don’t eat what is on the menu, entrees that are offered to the masses who stay at 5-start resorts. Shahi Aadab to us requires entrees specially prepared for us, delicacies that bring us a blend of royal Persian & royal Mughal culinary art. Esfahan treated us with such Shahi Aadab and, at our suggestion, the head chef prepared unique entrees for us, exquisite preparations with refined flavor, taste and presentation. The two evenings we spent in Esfahan were memorable indeed.
So we present to you, dear readers, the superb restaurant Esfahan, a touch of royal Persian-Mughalai cuisine served with Shahi Aadab as you overlook the Mughal wonder, Taj Mahal, in one of the best resorts in the world, the Oberoi Amarvilas.
(Oberoi Amarvilas with the Taj in the background- Agra)
The S. Pellegrino list also includes Bukhara, another famous restaurant from ITC Maurya, the 5-star Dehli hotel that features Dum Pukht. As WSJ’s Stancati writes,
- “Celebrities and foreign dignitaries are regulars at Bukhara, a
restaurant best-known for its tandoor-oven preparations, where visitors
eat with their hands in a Flintstones-style setting..”
“Flintstones-style setting”? – Quelle stupidity? Guess Ms. Stancati doesn’t know the spirit of Bukhara, the spirit of Uzbeck horsemen who rode to conquer, the glories of cities like Timur’s Samarkand & Tashkent.
The restaurant may be called Bukhara, but the food is of the North Western India, the region of warriors who struck terror wherever they rode. Their cuisine is not the rich, creamy cuisine of Dehli’s Mughals. As the Bukhara website describes it:
- Once a rustic cuisine, it was enjoyed in the harsh rugged terrain of the
North West Frontier, bringing comfort and succour to diners, with its
warm, robust flavours.
When we visit a restaurant, we believe in reliving the spirit of the region that created the cuisine. So we walked in to Bukhara and dismissed the table they offered us. We looked at the restaurant and demanded the seat we liked. As you know, the Mehmaan (guest) is to be treated with reverence by the host. So they escorted us to the seat we wanted.
As we ordered and ate, we noticed waiters and ushers looking at us with a touch of admiration. When asked, our waiter explained “you are sitting in the Clinton seat”. When President Clinton visited Bukhara, they gave him the best seat in the house, the seat that is now named “Clinton seat“. Unknowingly, we had demanded the Clinton seat and received that honor as a true Mehmaan would. Eating in the wonderful Bukhara is a treat indeed.
But it is not our choice for the best in Asia list. If you want to eat the best kabobs in the world, if you want to enjoy the food of the northern end of the Indo-Afghan continuum, you have to travel to the southern end of the Indo-Afghan continuum, to Maharashtra – a martial state “where even blades of grass turn into spears“. It is also a land of softness, of delicacy and flowers, where the most beautiful women from the North West Frontier come to live, women like the ethereally beautiful Madhubala & the exquisite Zeenat.
Allow us then to welcome you to our lovely Mumbai where a jewel of a restaurant named Copper Chimney serves amazing kabobs. The Burrah Chop, their flagship entree, is simply the best lamb kabob in the world. Nothing in New York, London, Paris, Milan or Dehli comes close. They have a large a variety of kabobs to suit every taste. We usually eat the green Chikori Chicken kabob as we wait for the Burrah Chop to be prepared for us. For vegetarians, we recommend the Tandoori Shaslik. Copper Chimney features several festivals but we remain true to their kabobs. By the way, we can only speak about the original Copper Chimney in Worli and our favorite, the Copper Chimney in Kala Ghoda, that lovely area of South Mumbai.
The above has put us in a Shahi mood. So if you a Rasik of food, music & beauty, allow us to present a scenario for the inner Mughal within you:
- Imagine yourself sitting in the poolside royal “shamiyana” (canopy in the photo below) of the Oberoi Amarvilas, enjoying a combination of Copper Chimney kabobs and Persian-Mughalai delicacies from Esfahan as you watch the Mohe Panghat dance performed solely for you by Madhubala & her reflections in the pool;
(shamiyana that overlooks the pool and the dance floor – Oberoi Amarvilas)
Now that’s living, isn’t it?
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