When somebody (read blogger) writes something not-so-great about you (read a recent food festival), there are a few ways to react. 1. You could stop talking to them ever. 2. Call them names and malign them. 3. Do more mean things. 4 All of the above!

There is a 5th option I guess. Make the blogger eat his own words by making sure the next festival will blow his mind! After a near fiasco with the Mumbai to Goa food festival, I thought I will never be allowed into Grand Chola. It was near scathing. Ideally, they should have kept a separate security guard to make sure I didn't come within a 200m radius!

But when they called me over for their new food festival, Coorgi, it was the packed restaurant that was the first sight. After the food, tt was like Anton Ego eating Remi's food! Really.

After a few minutes, three of us were seated and the trolley arrived with a simple but super yummy drink, the Coorg's Spice Market. Herbed and served with rum for the drinkers and without the rum for me, I am starting to have an affinity for these drinks. The starters then arrived, three of which stood out! The chicken. Oh-My-Kadavule! Stunner. South Indian at heart, mind and soul, this was the dish of the day for me. The super yummy lamb, followed and then a Banana Flower cutlet. Ha ha ha. What's a big deal about the 'Vazhapoo vada?'  It had the faintest of Asian flavours kissing the otherwise predominantly South Indian and made it a great great vegetarian starter. The sheer number of starters in the buffet was amazing. A fabulous mushroom followed all of which completely overpowered the Yam Cutlet which was average. We finished with brilliant deep fried prawns. What so amazing with the batter fried prawns? The batter! Richly flavoured, this was the Coorgi take on Golden Fried Prawns, I guess!

Dessert! Oh. Wait, there is main course.

A live grill with green chicken, red fish and yellow prawns. Now the fish and chicken were all nice, but I need to talk about the prawn. Small prawns, minced and stuffed back into whole prawns and tava fried. Looks simple, but it was so juicy, you could have it as your drink! Unfortunately it is at the back of the grill platter and I was in no mood to shoot it after I tasted it. It was dead anyway! Yes, pun intended!

Dessert! Oh. This was grill. There is still main course to come!

Simple as it can get. Sophisticated as it can get. Dosa. Idly. Nothing fancy with the dosa, everything fancy with the idly! Long and steamed in a shell and called the Kabudu, it went super well with gravies on offer, but one gravy that stood out was the Bamboo Gravy. Ha ha. Not just flavours, even the veggies were wide in variety. Stuffed as we were, I really wanted to try their mutton pulao. Wanted just one spoon, but went back and got another one!

Dessert. Yay! Dessert is the weak link in most buffets. And even more so in food festival buffets where they are usually disasters. Not here! A jackfruit halwa and a Khus Khus payasam. Who would have thought. The fact that I have to roll home is the only reason I didn't take a second helping! Special mention for the coffee that was served with espresso on the side. Why will you serve coffee with espresso? Turns out it isn't espresso! It was jaggery syrup!

Priced at Rs. 2200 plus tax, the net price will be Rs. 2600 odd for a super well researched food festival! 

Home cooked food is the best! But whose home? Gary of the Masterchef Australia's fame, I think put it aptly. "Food is never as good as your mom's. Or mine."

"What is 'authentic? I'm a Coorgi, married to a Coorgi, and both homes have completely different styles of food," was how the conversation started, a few minutes before we walked into Clubhouse, the all day dining at Taj Clubhouse!

Do both homes have 'akki otti?"

Yes.

Good enough!

So, Taj Clubhouse decided to partner with a Coorgi Chennaite to bring in flavours from the Coorg region. I thought the move was excellent. No matter how much you stick to your roots, there is room for 'experimentation' with flavours in a 5 star environment and partnering with a localite might help mitigate that! Yesterday, it seemed to have worked! I could have been eating all this at a home in Coorg and wouldn't have known that it was made in a 5 star hotel.  I learnt that Coorgis grow a lot of cardamom and so there is a heavy infusion of cardamom in their food. They also apparently grow rice and so every bit of the rice is used for something. So the husk is one roti (or otti as they call it), another part is a 'puttu' and a different part is a different puttu! And I heard that their cuisine is called the Kodava cuisine.

Deep fried dishes were the order of the day! At least the beginning of the evening. Mushrooms deep fried with crumbs. Fish, minced and deep fried with crumbs, raw banana, yep, deep fried with crumbs. But every deep fry felt and tasted like a home made deep fry! Light, fresh and tasty! The one and only non deep fried dish was a juicy, succulent chicken that vanished in no time. The 'attu kaal soup', or the lamb leg soup was excellent. My grand mom would have written it off as the flavours she made for me were almost entirely different, but I am sure many grand moms in Coorg might have praised it!!!! It was a very different attu kaal soup for me and it took some getting used to, but after 5 teaspoons of getting used to, I was used to it. And finished the bowl!

And then came the rice! With no rice! Well almost! The first was the coarse part of the rice. That was made into a coarse 'puttu'. And then the slightly finer part was made into a fine puttu. And the finest was rolled into a roti, that they call 'Akki Otti.' Those white round things are not rasagolla, but a rice puttu! For me, who has been around eating in multiple restaurants over the last week for a variety of reasons, the home cooked type food was a welcome. Friends, beautiful restaurant, home cooked food! Wow! The vegetable sides were perfect and the only things that gave away and had 'Restaurant' written all over it was one of the desserts - a cardamom custard! Essentially a caramel custard with an overdose of cardamom, but the overdose was intentional. And nice!

The Kodava/Coorg Food fest by Taj Clubhouse, partnering with Mrs. Smitha Kuttaya, is on till the 28th of Sept!!!