This Week on IFN: About Food Capitals and Capital Chefs

I was tasked with getting us a “nice” dinner reservation on a Monday night, in a city recently called the “food capital of India” by a well-travelled, well-fed, eloquent entrepreneur. The article suggests that in eleven short years, Mumbai transformed from a “culinary backwater” into a hotspot of “genre-defining restaurants” and “genre-defying cooking”.

Cool! This should be easy.

My date added a few caveats… no five star, no Indian, no Asian, and if I picked The Table again I was buying. Having just put down a deposit on a South Mumbai flat I was in no hurry to blow my savings at The Table, again. I’ll be fine. I was looking for a restaurant in India’s food capital. Easy peasy.

The article promised a “constellation of culinary stars”. Yes, a constellation. Not the sum total of two nice restaurants I was left with – Masque and Slink & Bardot. Masque, usually my top choice for a guaranteed delicious meal is closed on a Monday, and I’ve never quite taken to Slink & Bardot’s overpriced, under-portioned French food. This paltry choice apparently makes my favourite city in India home to a set of “trailblazing restaurants”.

We went back to The Table. We loved it. I paid.

I guess you can tell I'm in a bit of a mood. This last week in the food world has been perplexing to say the least. We lost the world’s first and most influential celebrity chefs to suicide. No tribute to Anthony Bourdain's brilliance, kindness, inclusiveness and compassion for people of all races and backgrounds will ever do him justice.

Meanwhile in Dubai, a Michelin-starred, Indian-origin chef chose to display his Islamophobia in response to an American TV Show. A TV show!

End rant.

As always, I turned to food for comfort. It’s a good thing my office desk is only a few metres from the IFN Studio Kitchen and we almost always have one of super talented home or celebrity chefs whipping up a storm at the stove.

It’s as if the chef heard me! I walked in to see the delightful Chef Kamini Patel making Chocolate Brownie Freakshakes. And one of them was for me. Slurp!

My sweet cravings continue through the week as I crush on a new Japanese Cotton Cake that is soon going to make an appearance at Kala Ghoda in July.

 

We have been celebrating #EidwithIFN all month. From a brilliant new collection of Eid recipes by Chef Sadaf Hussain each week, to our Eat From the Heart films and a whizz through food history with IFN Food Safari. The last in this series for the month of Ramzan is the story of Sheer Khurma. I hope you've been playing along with us!

A month of Ramzan fasts now ends and we have so much more to look forward to. The monsoons continue to tease us, even as we put together an exciting new selection of chai recipes for you. (Stay tuned!)

Along with truck loads of tea, monsoons also herald a new school year. While the kids let out a collective moan about the end of their summer holidays, we can hear the mums moan too! Last year we created Kissan Tiffin Timetable to help mums across India pack nutritious and delicious meals for their children. We appreciate the many roles a mum plays and wanted to help make the role of “tiffin-packer” as easy as possible. We gave them 200 recipes for 200 school days... and this year are back with 200 more!

Welcome to Kissan Tiffin Timetable Season 2! IFN teamed up with 10 brilliant chefs, each of whom have come up with 20 brand new ideas for children’s lunch boxes, giving us one new idea for every single school day this academic year. No child will ever have to eat the same tiffin twice! Season 2 launches today with tiffin recipes by Amrita Raichand. Our seasoned tiffin expert has prepared Rajma Sweet Potato Slider, Yam Hash Brown, Quinoa Paratha, Baby Potato Satay and Mixed Fruit Puli Balls to start off the school year.

Hungry yet?