The humble iftar gave way to the other end of the spectrum, a luxurious, four course, iftar at Taj Coromandel! Gladly, there was no haleem here too, so, its not another run of the mill, me-too, iftar, but a perfectly crafted, gourmet iftar. Honestly, this is the first time I am coming across a gourmet iftar, so it took me completely by surprise!
The evening started with a huge bowl of fruits, a glass of lassi, a rose sherbet and water! The bowl of fruit was large, quite large and along with the lassi and the sherbet, was perfect to cool the stomach before the four course onslaught happened. And then the menu is presented with you and the first thing that caught my eye was the vegetarian options in each of the courses! Clearly, you can bring a friend and this is not aimed purely at the carnivores!
So the first course was a soup course, very much in line with 'nombu kanji,' concept, but a shorba. My friend opted for the veg soup which was excellent and while my chicken shorba too was excellent, it was a little too hot for a 14 four fasted tummy! Any other time, I would have gulped it down, but not yesterday. The next was a nice salad course to cool down the tummy! The chicken salad had lots of veggies and quite a few slices of grilled chicken and chick peas and was topped off with a simple dressing! There was a bunch of stuff in a bowl that looked like a chocolate wrapped in cloth to be opened and eaten, but it turns out that those were lemons. You can squeeze without having seeds fall into your dish. What a simple, but effective idea!?!
And then the choice of main courses - four options to choose from. We tried the roast chicken served with a rice and horse gram. Loved it. But the biggest surprise was the mutton biriyani! It was fantastic yesterday. The meat was super well cooked and you could cut it with a spoon! And the spoon could also hold the rice and it was nice and flavourful! Dessert was a platter of fruits, an excellent Om Ali and an even better Basboosa. It was smacked in no time.
Priced at Rs. 1250 plus taxes, this is a true gourmet Iftar and quite glad that Taj Coromandel has not fallen for the Haleem trap. Now that I have had the humble iftar and the gourmet iftar, its time now to try everything in-between.
The Iftar is available until the 28th of July.
0 comments: