Asian food has really taken India by storm. While it was limited to Indo-Chinese and Thai, now Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysian foods have become the new comfort eat out foods. While a restaurant each for the cuisines may not be feasible for all, the Pan Asian minus Japanese, I guess is going to be in for a while and seems to have taken out the sudden craze for mid eastern cuisine that was there for a bit.

Va Pho is a jugalbandi of everything. Is it a fine dine restaurant? Nope. Is it a coffee shop? Nope. It is a fun space that happens to serve food. There is an auto right at the entrance for photo-ops and selfie crazes. Walls full of graffiti. A large space with seats on three sides and two round tables in one corner that will be perfect for a large group that wants to nibble on food while playing scrabble. Oh, you don’t have to take your scrabble with you, they give it you. And chess. And some more board games. A high bar table with no bar! Comfy corner tables with some privacy. It is indeed a platter of things. A real fun atmosphere with a menu that comes with all inclusive prices, so what you see is what you pay.

I was there twice. Once with the wife and once with friends on the invite of Va Pho so I am going to try to focus on dishes. The soup, both times I had the Beef Pho soup. Light and warm, this definitely wasn’t the best pho and doesn’t stack upto Benjarong’s festival pho, but it is not pretending to be that either. Glass noodles were yum on the invite visit while the Spicy Malaysian fried rice was fantastic on my personal visit. It was really really spicy, but the tongue asked for more. Inspired by the Jungle Fried rice in Benjarong, the fried rice here is brilliant.

The bau buns are the next best things. Super soft, loaded buns with nice smoky chicken, but the thousand island type dressing spoilt it for me, so I asked for one without it and loved it without the sauce on top. The chicken satay for us with a modified peanut sauce was nice. I didn’t really like the dim sums. Rendang with coconut rice was also nice and tangy. The beef was soft and pretty much melt-in-the-mouth.

The chocolate dessert was fabulous. A nice mousse with a chocolate disc and the crumbs adding the crunch with the cherry was a beautiful dessert.

Va Pho is above Tex-Mex and Hot Breads on RK Salai, but with a dedicated entry via the side road, but valet parking is on the main road.

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Tian at ITC Maurya Sheraton, New Delhi has been eluding me for a while. Why Tian? That is where Chef Vikramjit Roy moved a couple of years back. During his few years here when he set up Pan Asian, it turned out to be a restaurant that served the whose who of Chennai. He developed a fan following! As a food writer, I was still getting my grip on writing about fine dining when I first met Vikram. As I've been more exposed to fine dining over the years, he has taken his food a couple of notches above. Over the years, we've connected over food. And that connection refuses to break, touch wood!

So when Vikram comes to Chennai, he is usually here on request to host something really big. And while he is here, he takes reservations from his fans and cooks up a storm. He was gracious enough to host us yesterday and a storm it was indeed.

You hear people serve art on the food. You hear of chefs tell a story through food. But not Vikram. He has to take it further! Dinner was the story of a Drop told via different art form via food! Since I am struggling to find words, I'll stick to trying my best to describe the dish.

It all started with a drop. A drop of lychee, but a transparent lychee as the amuse-bouche. Smoky. On top of a beetal leaf. The leaf to smell and the lychee to eat. Something amiss. Till you realise that the lychee has been juiced and then reformed into a sphere that makes it transparent! Genius.

Soup followed. A pumpkin soup served inside a bulb. Pumpkin soup always bring about the familiarity of that sweetness, but not here. With truffle pate and chilli oil, this was spicy and the small piece of bun to bite added some texture.

Salad course! A quinoa salad with mushrooms and pesto sauce with loads of micro veggies treated with liquid nitrogen or oxygen or malto-whatever! Stopped thinking after the last dinner here. Just mix everything together and enjoy!

The drop (remember the story?) now lands on concrete and splatters. This was represented by a prawn beautifully cooked with a black bean sauce served on top of cabbage mash!

When the drop lands on earth, it then spreads! Represented by the lobster carpaccio with micro greens and with burnt leeks! The art form used to depict this was coded graffiti which apparently used during Hitler's time to send across messages.

The drop moves towards the water and thanks to the story heading there, we get beautiful scallops on top of, hold your breath, herbed onion mash. I've had mashed potatoes and cabbage and beetroot, but onion? With the sand representing (literally) the crab, the sand itself was spicy. White and spicy? It was made with a Japanese fermented chilli paste and olives! A little too spicy and I wish I had something to wash it down.

Obviously when a chef who plans a 10 course meal to this level of perfection surely knows it was spicy, so he follows it up with a fantastic basil sorbet! Cools down your tongue and cleanses the palette!

Get set for main course. Ha ha. Indeed.

Chilean sea bass! Yum, but nothing prepared us for the next course! Pulled lamb lasagne! Not with pasta sheets, but with potatoes! Or was it pumpkin? I don't remember because the lamb was simply melt-in-the-mouth! Oh, before you taste the lamb, a thai curry was poured on top and some jasmine rice served on the sides! I finished the lasagna before I emptied the curry with rice! And satiety then hit me. How perfect? The 9th course is when you are full and you have just the space in the heart for dessert!

If the rest of the courses were exhilarating, dessert was exciting. Gives you a rose in hand and some art on the plate and he asks you to smash the rose on the plate. Before you realise what is going on, you end up following his instructions and the rose simply cracks open and smashes all over the plate! He gives you art and an art-tool and you complete the art!

Every single course was well thought out, with so many elements in each dish that all seamlessly blended together to give you a perfect dish. And every dish followed the previous dish seamlessly in flavour, depth and intensity to balance out the entire meal. The meal beautifully showcased the artist in the chef and the story that he wanted to convey. Now I want to see what he does in his 'home' kitchen at Tian, ITC Maurya.

Chef Vikram was in his second 'home', Pan Asian at ITC Grand Chola for a special event and took reservations for a limited number of guests during his stay here.  The meal was priced at Rs. 2250+ for guests. 

I completely understand why Antony Bourdin took Obama for the noodle soup in Vietnam! It was a no brainer, really! While Mr. President had the Pork Noodle Soup, two Vietnamese chefs are in Chennai recreating the soupy magic with their awesome awesome Beef Noodle Soup. Apparently cooked for over 10 hours, the Saigon festival at Benjarong is all about the soup and the starters!

If there is one stand alone restaurant in Chennai that doles out the best Food Festivals, it has to be Benjarong. This time around, it has taken one step forward and created a new printed menu for the festival, complete with some of their old favourites, so there is just one menu! Prices are on par with their regular menu, so kudos for that too.

The typical platter with the leaf and condiments did not arrive and my friend and me thought we were going to be disappointed. Far from it. The Beef Noodle soup, simply was stunning. Apparently in Vietnam, this is a whole meal by itself, but here it is best you ask for a bowl for yourself! I am still searching for words to describe this soup!

My biggest grouse is that when you have a festival, there should be an option for a platter, at least with the starters. No such thing on the menu, so I requested if they could make a platter. They happily did. The platter was another stunner! But two dishes in the platter were simply mouth watering. A little beef rolled onto lemongrass! Oh-mi-Gawd! Soft, succulent and yummy, this is one of the best starters I have had in a long long time! Another dish in the platter, a grilled chicken in a crispy fried outer shell, that I think is rice paper. Yummy. Yummy! The rest of the platter was pretty good too, with a nice satay, a grilled fish and Vietnamese Rice paper spring rolls. Platter was Rs. 999 for two pieces each of 5 starters!

Ideally with the soup and the platter, nothing more is required. There were some interesting things on the menu, but we moved to dessert and ordered two, a mung bean cake and a crystal banana cake. The mung bean cake was dense and full of flavour, while the crystal banana cake wasn't all that great. Having skipped main course, we were adventurous and had one more dessert, a mung bean something with ginger syrup. It was super yummy!

A meal for two with a starter platter, the definitely must try soup and dessert would be around Rs. 2000! If not in the mood for a platter, you could go with a single starter priced around Rs. 350-650 and get a main course.

*image with President Obama and Anthony Bourdin belongs to the Mr. Anthony Bourdin. The photo is posted here for a reference and no copyright infringement is intended. 

What is the meaning of Tao of Peng? I did try a bit to find out. Both before and after I ate there. Intriguing that Dr. Google has no answer. Or maybe I didn't try hard enough. Maybe it doesn't have a meaning. Or maybe it is complicated.

Just like the food it serves.

Keep things simple, they say. Sometimes, I guess if you complicate it correctly, you may be able to pull it off!

And when faced with situations like this, I feel it is best to leave it to the chef to complicate your meal for you!

Thats what we did. How else do you expect us to enjoy food in a restaurant that makes it seem like it is going to serve you some super authentic stuff, when you have your mother for whom Chinese food is incomplete without Manchurian? With others who have traveled around the world and have opinions of Chinese food? A bunch of 5 people with completely different tastes!

'Start with some dimsums and then we will talk about the main course,' the chef said.

When four boxes of dim sums came, I was worried. Mostly about what the bill was going to be! For a minute I thought 'leave it to the chef' may not have been a good idea this time around. Its worked before, but...... oh well.  However with every morsel of dim sum, the worry slowly and steadily melted away.

Maybe it was the lobster money bags, a fabulous dim sum packed like money bags. Not quite simple, but the flavours were awesome. I am still trying to figure out what the bag is made of. Or maybe it was the prawn stuffed inside something which was stuffed inside something else! All white. And yummy! Especially when the sauce was poured all over it. The wok fried chicken dim sum was gulped down by everybody! And the squid with the salmon caviar! Slurp! With so many dim sums I was wondering what was left to talk about the main course. The sisters wanted something crunchy.

The chef came out and did speak about main course. 2 fried rice, 1 crispy prawns and 1 portion of exotic greens. We didn't even argue when he made the suggestion. We had seen enough to trust him.

I saw the mom's plate. It was clean after the waiter served her these dim sums. I am safe, I thought to myself.

The crisp prawns and the greens magically went well with the fried rice and we didn't need a 'gravy' to go with the rice. The rice was similar yet dissimilar to what we are used to. Authentic but not too authentic. Slightly moist. But mom's plate was clean again. The prawns had that salty crispiness that left the tongue wanting for more. The greens were yummy enough to make salad a staple food! More importantly it gave the meal a nice balance.

And dessert. We were full, but the chef insisted we have dessert to complete the meal and offered us one with his compliments. 2 plates of some random name! It had a green tea panna cotta. Panna cotta in China? It wasn't wobbly, but what is more Chinese than green tea? Didn't matter. The dish with the orange ice cream and the chocolate with the green tea panna cotta was a super hit with the family.

Bill came. Rs. 5699 and dessert wasn't charged. So I am assuming that the dessert, all of which were priced around Rs. 375-425 would have increase the bill to Rs. 6200 and that would mean we paid about Rs. 1200 per head. Allowing Chef Avinash Naha to complicate our meal was a good decision, I guess. Who is this guy anyway? Never heard of him before and here is doling out some super fancy stuff. Have to get to know the guy and his history a little more!

Hyatt tried it with STIX, Leela tried it with China XO and these are all very good restaurants, but for me, the best Chinese Restaurant in South India is tucked away in a resort in Mahabalipuram. Given the right media attention, it can give better known ones in the country a serious run-for-the-money!

I only wish we hadn't eaten so many dim sums because I am sure there is a lot more to explore in that menu. And about the chef himself. Unfortunately it is a 45 minute drive away!

Tao of Peng is the Chinese restaurant in Intercontinental Chennai Mahabalipuram Resort, located about 45 mins away from Chennai on ECR.

I'm sure you know of my paradox. Loving breakfast but not wanting to get up for it. Especially Sunday. And an Asian Brunch? Where I know there are no waffles and pancakes and dosas. Forget it. Did it once for Chef Vikram at Pan Asian and would do it every Sunday for his food, but otherwise an Asian Brunch on Sunday is not very appealing for someone like me who struggles to wake up for dinner on Sundays, forget brunch.

But a new chef is in town. And he has stepped into the shoes of somebody I (and a lot of foodies in Chennai) adored and loved and while we wished him the very best for Tian (ITC Maurya, New Delhi), we secretly wished he stayed back here. I know it is going to be unfair to compare two chefs, but with Pan Asian it would be inevitable.

Especially if we are doing a chef's table where good is not enough. Excellent is the only way out. At a chef's table nothing matters. Not the name of the restaurant, not the waiters, the service, nothing. Its the chef all the way!

Our brunch started off with a Sashimi. Presentation was fantastic and portions sizes were perfect when you need the space for a 9-10 course meal. While the premium fatty tuna and salmon was great,  what I loved even more where the subtle ones - the fresh wasabi. I've never seen what it looks like and have never tasted a freshly grated one and I loved every morsel of it. It is less pungent, but equally flavourful and added a beautiful element to the sashimi. This with the Shisho leaf and Hanaho flower made up a great first course. Oh, there was little sea urchin full of flavour sitting right at front of the plate! Bang, we're on!

Next came a stunning Asian interpretation of the classic Fish n Chips. At least the fish part of it. A crispy fried John Dory (not the man, the fish), with a hint of garlic and chilli, shaped like hand cut potatoes fries. Everything about the dish was great!

This was followed by another first for me, a scallop dim sum with salmon caviar (or caviar-like). It was a different experience to have scallop in this form and lovely nonetheless. This was followed by the the grilled black cod that was mouth watering, but the smaller element, the poached pears were refreshing and added beautiful supplement to the dish.

Then came the course I had to refuse to complete. Completely didn't like the duck at all. While I'm not a fan of duck meat, in most chef tables, I end up liking them, but not here. Completely put me off!

Thankfully, the duck was followed by a beautiful lamb! Again, while the lamb was great and all, the chef added an interesting element, a hand rolled puff pastry, like a cigar that complemented the lamb really well!

Then came two not so great courses to finish off. While the platter with the chilean sea bass yellow curry and wok tossed lamb came with noodles and jasmine rice, it was non-flattering and simply did not live up to the first three quarters of the meal.

Desserts were a hit and miss. The platter had some strawberry with yuzu, a chocolate and hazelnut thingy and a macaron. While the chocolate hazelnut stuff ( I don't know what to call it) was yum, it was the only thing in the platter that was nice. The macaron was soggy and the yuzu curd with strawberries were blah!

The first set of courses more than made up for the last two as we were stuffed. While theatrics are minimal here with the focus on plating with ice and smoky, Pan Asian has an able new chef at the helm and I would like to look out for him and hope to discover more of his food.

I also have the feeling to just take a plane and go to Delhi and go to Tian right away!!!

Brunch at Pan Asian without Sashimi costs Rs. 2350 nett/ and the one with Sashimi is Rs. 1000 more per person. There is no buffet, the chef just doles out course after course and all you have to do is make the decision of veg or non veg, sit back and enjoy. And long. We went it at 1 PM and left at 430 PM, so it is a nice long brunch!