Festivals, like pasta, comes in all shapes and sizes. There are regional cuisine festivals, festival based festivals, street food based festivals, but besides biriyani, I don’t remember a festival based on one dish. No other dish seems to deserve that kind of respect, but the chefs at Leela Palace have conferred that honour upon the pasta.

I could talk about the thin Agilo Olio, the beautiful Lamb Ragout or the Boccocini Gnocchi, but that will be of grave injustice to two dishes that took the cake and the baker’s wife! The Duck Cappellacci, that turned a non-duck fan into one. Duck has never been my cup of, well, tea. I’ve tried some ‘fabulous’ ones in Paris, a carpaccio by Vikram and a few more, but nothing had me ever hooked to duck. In fact, I avoid it and if I have to choose a main course with duck as an option and a vegetarian dish, I normally go for the vegetarian. The chef’s table hosted for us had me regretting for not choosing the duck. A beautiful duck confit with a nice smoky flavoured pink duck meat to complement a set of four cappellacci which was stuffed with duck meat on a base of artichoke puree and sun dried grapes was the dish of the day. My co-diner was kind enough to share a piece, but I would have loved an entire plate for myself.

Because it got me loving a meat that I avoid, I called it the dish of the day, but make no mistake. There was a vegetarian dish that could have put most meat dishes to shame on any given day. A pyramidoli, stuffed with mushrooms and truffle oil on a base of porcini mushroom sauce, shimeji mushrooms and parmesan crisps was a stunner of a dish. The beautifully nutty flavour of the shimeji mushrooms and the creamy porcini mushroom sauce added so much of flavour depth to the dish that it was difficult to stop eating. What was a Japanese mushroom doing in an Italian dish? I have no idea, but a mushroom similar to Shimeji also grows in Northern Europe, but hey, Italy is way south! So either way, it is beautiful how an ingredient that is out of place has actually added something to the dish. In this case, the thorn has made the rose a little more beautiful.

Available till the end of May, the pasta festival is available as a-la-carte on top of the massive Spectra buffet. Without the buffet, a meal for two will set you back by about Rs. 2500. 

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Festivals, like pasta, comes in all shapes and sizes. There are regional cuisine festivals, festival based festivals, street food based festivals, but besides biriyani, I don’t remember a festival based on one dish. No other dish seems to deserve that kind of respect, but the chefs at Leela Palace have conferred that honour upon the pasta.

I could talk about the thin Agilo Olio, the beautiful Lamb Ragout or the Boccocini Gnocchi, but that will be of grave injustice to two dishes that took the cake and the baker’s wife! The Duck Cappellacci, that turned a non-duck fan into one. Duck has never been my cup of, well, tea. I’ve tried some ‘fabulous’ ones in Paris, a carpaccio by Vikram and a few more, but nothing had me ever hooked to duck. In fact, I avoid it and if I have to choose a main course with duck as an option and a vegetarian dish, I normally go for the vegetarian. The chef’s table hosted for us had me regretting for not choosing the duck. A beautiful duck confit with a nice smoky flavoured pink duck meat to complement a set of four cappellacci which was stuffed with duck meat on a base of artichoke puree and sun dried grapes was the dish of the day. My co-diner was kind enough to share a piece, but I would have loved an entire plate for myself.

Because it got me loving a meat that I avoid, I called it the dish of the day, but make no mistake. There was a vegetarian dish that could have put most meat dishes to shame on any given day. A pyramidoli, stuffed with mushrooms and truffle oil on a base of porcini mushroom sauce, shimeji mushrooms and parmesan crisps was a stunner of a dish. The beautifully nutty flavour of the shimeji mushrooms and the creamy porcini mushroom sauce added so much of flavour depth to the dish that it was difficult to stop eating. What was a Japanese mushroom doing in an Italian dish? I have no idea, but a mushroom similar to Shimeji also grows in Northern Europe, but hey, Italy is way south! So either way, it is beautiful how an ingredient that is out of place has actually added something to the dish. In this case, the thorn has made the rose a little more beautiful.

Available till the end of May, the pasta festival is available as a-la-carte on top of the massive Spectra buffet. Without the buffet, a meal for two will set you back by about Rs. 2500. 

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I wasn't too excited about mBessy. 'What is new about another resto-bar in a small hotel?,' I thought. Its the fashion these days! Tie up with a hotel that has the required 21 rooms and start off a watering hole! Hmm! Friends insisted on going when they launched and me, though dead tired that day, tagged along! The entry was typical. And the familiarity ended there!

This was a real fine dine setting hiding behind that typical-bar-door. We were whisked away to the first floor though and apparently that's where the action is. The setting is beautiful and eclectic. Completely different from the classy looking ground floor, this was a beautiful resto-bar! While I was still recovering from the beautiful setting that I least expected, we were seated in a nice eight seater with a low table. We can go down for the main courses after we are done with drinks and starters, said Mugesh, their manager. I have known him from his days at Casa Picola and he was as surprised to see me there as I was to see him there! 

Starters and drinks were excellent. I can keep going on and on about the starters as they were simply excellent. The crumb fried prawns, a bunch of nice big prawns, dipped in a flavourful crumbs and fried till crisp, was the pick of the lot, though the others were almost as good! Prawns took the cake as they I love them in general and was happy to not have to leave the shell on the tail behind. It was all done and you had to keep eating them! The Broccoli with cheese was quite excellent with the soft broccoli being coated nicely with cheese and the bruschetta that came along with it was fantastic. The other starter, the spicy chicken skewers were quite nice and didn't stand a chance compared to the other two, but that's okay. The mezze platter was pretty nice with fluffy pita bread to go with the dips. The drinks were excellent from a teetotaller's POV. Some had theatrics like smoke coming out to flavour a drink, but the mocktails weren't too bad. My drink had smoked pop corn on top and in general things were great this far!

And then they sort of went downhill. Being a bunch of six of us, we tried quite a few dishes and really none of them stood apart. By this time we moved down to the fine-dine type place with its rich looking decor and cutlery. Sadly, the food did not live up or maybe the starters were so good that the palate didn't like the mains. Whatever the reason, the pizzas were blah. The Australian lamb felt like it was being handled without care and was rather dry and leathery. The risotto was very very blah. Stuffed chicken breast was rather inedible. Dessert was slightly redeeming. While certainly not excellent by any means, it sort of cooled off the rather bad main course. 

 But going by the quality of the starters, I guess, this place since being rather new has a lot of scope to catch up and get on track with the mains. While the choice of menu is good, it needs some work to get it to match the ambiance and the starters! 

I'll be going back in a month or so to see how things have changed. Do the mains get to appetiser quality or vice versa? Only time will tell.

mBessy is in the ground floor of the newly revampING, Estelle hotel in Adyar, near the Aavin, the first building on the Bessy road. 

Places to host a little tea party are few and far apart. If there are, then you need to pick a fixed menu that varies between Rs. 400 and the sky and you get the same dish for everyone. Maybe okay for birthday party with 10-20 kids, but with three kids and 15 adults, my friend wasn't happy with a Rs. 650 plus tax for juice, soup, pizza/pasta and dessert type menu. Jonah's came to mind. I've been meaning to write about this place for a while, but never did. What stuck to my mind though was the little 16 seater part of the restaurant that is cut off from the rest and can be the right party place for a small crowd. And being a small place, a-la-carte would be great, we thought.

So after discussions, my friend decided to do it. We just blocked off the place for 16 people. Jonah's being Jonah's with their outstanding customer service that I wrote a few times about on social media, had absolutely no qualms about bringing a cake from outside. The kid's mom wanted a theme cake and Jonah's was super cool about it. Place was blocked and we had a blast. The ladies ensured that dishes that landed on their tables did not leave their tables!! The men though had to send what landed in our tables to the ladies. If not, there were glares!!!

I remember we ordering stuff left right and centre but these are the dishes that come to my mind!! Chilly fries - yum yum yum. We ordered almost three plates. Crab cakes - with six vegetarians and others not too fond of crab, just one portion was enough for the four of us who ate. The paneer with rice and gravy was yum!!! The fried calamari was equally yum.

At their Besant Nagar outlet, I had written about the really dry burger. Here it was juicy and nice. One interesting dish on the menu was the steak burger pizza. Its essentially the burger patty on the pizza for those who want to have the best of both worlds. I did not like it at all!!! There were lots more, but thats all I took photos of!!!

The bill for 15 adults and 3 kids was Rs. 9000 after a 15% discount that they offered for a group booking, which ended up being a steal for the amount and variety of food we had. Definitely better than the same soup starter pizza and a stale cake for Rs. 650 plus tax!!!! The minion cake was baked by Afsar's Magic Oven (9994088522)

Jonah's is on Kasthuri Rangan Road, the road next to the old Chola Sheraton, a few meters further down the Russian Culture Centre. 

There are sometimes I wish I had my camera with me, but there are times when I am absolutely kicking myself for not taking an extra step and borrowing a cam for shooting food. Caperberry, tucked away inside Fava, inside UB city terrace, is one such place. Ranked the No. 1 restaurant in various ratings for a few years and taking a huge shot after Garry of Masterchef Australia fame visited, this has been on my wish list for quite sometime. Missing out on it in the last restaurant week when an affordable version is available, four of us landed on Sunday for lunch when we had nothing to do in Bangalore! A bill of Rs. 6500 for four did not leave us disappointed. If four people ordered four desserts without sharing, that is quite something!

So, we started off not so good, though. We saw two interesting soups and two of decided to split the Chicken, walnut with celery soup. This was the molecular gastronomy types, aka, minuscule portions of the solids with generous broth. The flavour did not make it, mainly because the chicken in a microscopic sausage form wasn't enough for the plate. Maybe if we didn't split the soup, the solids might have been enough for the broth.

But then on, the food was going from good to great! The first to arrive was the lamb shank with tiger prawns, called the Surf n Turf. While the surf n turf, in places like Miami denotes Beef with Lobsters, lamb and prawns were not a bad combination. The lamb was literally pull apart with fantastic flavours while the tiger prawns were kick ass!!! Thats the dish I was eyeing, but our friend took it and gladly for us, she shared! Then my dish came - beef cooked medium with asparagus, sauce, spinach and potato parcels. The beef was also pull apart really. It was cooked medium and just kept tearing off. Then my adventurous friend's rabbit! Whoa. Lovely would be an understatement, but the best dish was my temporarily-vegetarian-friend's saffron ravioli! Dishes like these show us that vegetarian food is not being done good justice in India and there is so much more to veggie food.

And then all four of us wanted dessert. Each. So we had our way and had one. Each. The minute I saw churros on the menu, I wanted it, but the waiter said that it was a deconstructed churros. I wanted it even more. And loved it! It was powdered and flat churros with the perfect flavour with lots of chocolate sauce to dip. The live tiramisu was even more awesome. Belgian chocolate with orange mousse was excellent, but the best dish again went to my temporarily-vegetarian friend, a dish whose name I forgot, but flavour will linger along forever!!!!

Yeah, the bill was Rs 6500 for all of us, but it was better than most 2k plus buffets available all around Chennai and Bangalore. I would rather have this than have unlimited mediocre food!!!!

Caperberry is on the terrace at UB City Mall, Bangalore, with access from the Fava Restaurant. 

Slowly, but surely, eating out is becoming expensive. And cheap! Uh? Contradicting, right? What seems to be happening is that the per person eating out at common places are slowly going high. And for something similar, the 5 star prices are coming down. Now, a first look at the menu and this may not seem right. Prices look ridiculous for a casual eating out or meeting with friends, but over the past two years with a lot of business meetings in the coffee shop of hotels, the overall bill is a little startling.

And that is why when our friends came down from the US and a bunch of 10 of us had to meet, we met once in a comfort coffee shop and eat well. We paid about Rs. 6500, which is about 650 per head. And for the second time, we met at EST, Hilton. This time we paid about Rs. 6900! Thats why opening statement that is contradicting itself!

So we had lots of cake. The ones on the counter are priced lower than most coffee shops! We loved the mango cake and the pistachio cream cake among the four or five different ones we had. And then, surprisingly their orange juice was excellent. I mean, how much can you do to an orange,but whatever they did, it was nice. The price (and the reason the bill was high) was about Rs. 300, so normally it might be avoided.

And then croissants. And french fries. And pop corn, a very nicely flavoured cheese and jalepeno pop corn!!! Two of it, in fact. And sandwiches. More sandwiches. More fries. More pop corn, this time another flavour, I forgot what that was! Tasty though. My US friend finally caved in and said he wanted the Biriyani. We warned him. He couldn't care less. He ordered. We all had one spoon. He was left with three. He wasn't complaining. Biriyani wasn't fabulous, but was flavourful and the lamb was soft. When you're a bunch of ten, it is very difficult to remember all that was ordered!!!!

Everyone was happy with the bill. And the ambiance. With a nice comfy sofa all ten of us had comfy seating with a large coffee table in between. There are tables of 2,4,6 too for smaller groups, but only one that can accommodate 10. So, fancy hotels are attractive now, at least their coffee shops when they have a counter. But food from the menu is priced 5 star!!! The temporarily-US-return-friend was happy with the bill that he foot it himself and no one went dutch.

Happy Eating. 

When someone tells me that there is a vegetarian version of a non veg dish that I must try, I look up. When it comes from a hard core foodie who is a pure non vegetarian, then my brain is deciding when, how and who to go with. When the guy says he is going back there two days in a row and is willing to drive me, I'm sold!

And that is how I was introduced to Nicky's Fine Baking and Cafe. The dish in question here was the Pao, which I think they call Bao. Or maybe there are two ways to pronounce and spell it, I don't know. When in Hong Kong, my friend told me that I must absolutely taste the Pao/Bao and I took a trek to try it out from what he said was a great place for Pao! I had the veg version there because they ran out of chicken and the other option was pork, which I don't eat, and OH MY GOD, it was awesome.

So after my friend placed order for the Pao, my eyes wandered to the counters which had delicious looking food. The one thing that wasn't delicious looking was the sandwich. The chef/owner who was besides the place then walked over and suggested we try the sandwich the next time. My friend and me looked at each other and thought, why come back, let's do it now! And so the sandwich landed on our table.

So, here is something that needs to be told. Nicky's, at least now, is a cafe that is very Swiss, but vegetarian. Dishes are not completely tweaked to suit our South Indian palate yet, but on the flip side gives a glimpse into how simple street side cafes in small town Swiss towns are. The perfect example was the size of the sandwich which immediately brought back memories from Switzerland. Quarter size breads, simple, but tasty fillings! The pao arrived and it was simply awesome. Baked to perfection, the flour was soft, just right with the sweet (yes, it is slightly sweet and that is how it is supposed to be) and the filling was fabulous.

For dessert, we were debating between two desserts and a very French (I think) dessert, called St. Llorine (I think), which had a nice shortbread crust, some mango, some choux pastry and caramel, won the debate. The chef was quick to say that this is not the original version and that the original version has something else instead of the short pastry and the caramel is dipped..........well, it doesn't matter. The dessert was nice. The bill for the above and a nice macron was Rs. 425.

I plan to go back and try the rest of the stuff and also learn a little more about the chef who has trained in Switzerland. Wonder if he can make a fondue! Wink Wink. The menu is very interesting as they do stuff on order and they make profiterole and macaroon towers like the ones we see in Masterchef Australia! Wooooo.....

Vegetarian cuisine is not been getting justice in Chennai and places like this show us the there is so much more to veg cuisine and I am very glad! OK, this is not pure veg as they have egg based stuff, but still........

I love the tagline, Luxury is Personal!!!! It summarises the definition of luxury in a single line! What is luxury to me maybe a passé to you and vice versa! Of course there will be many for whom luxury is similar! Yesterday, it was the love of chocolates! The story is amazing - Our hot shot friend makes to a trip to Belgium and brings back premium Marcolini chocolates, gives it to the executive chef at Park Hyatt and he whips up a meal entirely of chocolates. And invites us to join the party!!!

Chennai is growing as a food destination and experiments like this will go a long way in our evolving city. Perfuming pairing at Taj, Masters of Food and Wine by Park Hyatt were all glowing examples of how hotels in Chennai were moving away from their comfort zone to experiment with food. While the demand for such is still small, so what? There is a demand, however small and the foodie in me is ecstatic that I don't have to go abroad to experience these once in a while! Yes, while on the topic, I was away for sometime, so I hope my writing skills have not taken a beating. Let's find out! I also used this to try out a little foodie video. I hope that's okay!!! Do not attempt to view the video in less than 720p resolution!!!!

So, the evening! A 5 course meal crafted with chocolates and the chef took the safest option for the amuse-bouche! The portion was much more than amuse, so I am going to call this the first course. A safe chocolate cheese pairing. Only this time, the cheese was blue! With a nice crusty chocolate filled with blue cheese, no ingredient overpowering the other, he nailed it! Yes, I loved it! The second course arrived in style! A beautifully plated bitter chocolate brittle, with pumpernickel crust, goat cheese and beetroot parfait. This was a miss! Ingredients overpowered each other and the end result was too sweet for my liking. That, however doesn't mean, I didn't finish the dish!

The third course was a shocker of a dish! Shocker in a nice way! We are given a plate of chocolate coloured pasta! Wow! OK, it was a tagliatelle. And instead of parmesan cheese, chef went around the table shaving our premium chocolate all over. Half way through the pasta, he grated more and left us wanting for more. My only temptation to not ask for more was the fact that there were two more courses to come! The palate cleaner was a nice raspberry sorbet with shaved chocolates that was wiped off! But at this time, I must make a special mention of the dark chocolate espresso crafted by the beverage manager, Abhishek. Different people like coffee differently and this is how I love my coffee!!!!

The main course was the amazing chicken with chocolates! There was a leg terrine and a blanquette with chocolate sauce poured over. It was excellent as no ingredient over powered anything else and the balance of the flavours were spot on. Spot on from a foodie's perspective! Slurp! Any guesses what was for dessert? A mini 5 course chocolate dessert that is going to need some explanation, so, I am not going to explain! Common, I am coming back after a break, so I can use the luxury!!! OK, one word explanation - excellent.

What a wonderful welcome to India and a great meal to start writing again. As for the break, keep checking this space for some excellent food from around the world, packaged into one blog post at a time! Next post will be much sooner. I promise!

Oh yeah. I know creating food is art, but the chefs took the words literally and painted a couple of pictures with chocolates. Chocolate paintings!!!

More about Park Hyatt's Luxurious offerings at www.myluxlist.hyatt.com