At Avartana, drumsticks — wrapped in a crunchy gram flour coat — appear to be they hopped off the Met Gala pink carpet. Buttermilk — spiked with pepper, jaggery, beans, asparagus and toasted almonds — resembles an embroidered sari with pink-yellow petals and inexperienced leaves.
The award-winning restaurant, launched in Chennai in 2017, is understood for its progressive South Indian delicacies. The meals is avant-garde, poised on method, and marries shocking combos. Loyalists are accustomed to the menus out there. Now, the crew of cooks has added an creative new assortment of recipes to the roster. But you can not simply stroll in and get them organized.
The chilli guava palate cleanser
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Anoma, Avartna’s limited edition menu may be ready for a minimal of eight friends with a prior intimation of 48 hours. Targeted at celebrations and get togethers, Anoma means illustrious in Hindi, explains Chef Nikhil Nagpal with an air of a pedagogue.
We pattern the 10-course menu, together with a vibrant slew of cocktails. The resort has been working exhausting on its cocktail programme, underneath its younger normal supervisor Shaariq Akhtar and mixologist Chingngaihlun, and now presents the flexibility to do a bar crawl throughout its six eating places and one bar.
However, enamoured by Anoma, we keep at Avartana and sip on heady guava picantes, spiked with ruby pink dry Chettinad chillies, and Uthukuli butter washed Cognac with banana, cinnamon, filter espresso, and butter biscuit cream. The new beverage menu Kaleidoscope makes use of native elements — fruits like mango, banana, jackfruit, and narthangai, paneer rose, nannari root — to craft 9 cocktails and 5 mocktails.
The crew at Avartana
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Nikhil doesn’t wish to give away too many spoilers, however the meals, in typical Avartana type is thoughtfully engineered to be a enjoyable, shocking collection of conventional, acquainted flavours recreated with surprising elements, trendy methods and creative plating. Keep a watch out for the seabass, encased in a crisp, tasty pumpkin leaf. Also, be ready for a little tour mid-meal, full with eye masks.
Twirling his trademark moustache that has now turn out to be synonymous with Avartana, Nikhil says that of all these dishes, it was the Potato Malabari that appeared most difficult. “It may sound simple but it took us 12 trials to perfect the technique,” he says, including, “The challenge was to get the texture of the potato right when mashed and used as an outer shell to encase the curry. If you just take mashed potato and steam it, the curry inside tends to leak. We had to add starchy ingredients like amaranth in the right quantity to get the soft texture of the potato, otherwise it can get hard and chewy.”
Duck Neer Dosa
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The cogs are constantly turning at Avartana with the crew of cooks — Mayank Kulshreshtra, Satheeswaran Loganathan, Lakshmanan Subramanian, and Nikhil — consistently figuring out elements and pairings, after which engaged on turning them into dishes. One of the distinctive combos in Anoma is the aromatic marikolunthu paired with lobster.
While placing collectively the duck, it began with a Kerala type preparation with these spices. Then the crew felt the flavours had been just like that of the quail and aborted that. We paired orange with that however it nonetheless needed to be South Indian. So, we moreover made a sauce made with bydagi chillies, says Nikhil.
Payasam with a twist
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The dessert is a poster youngster for the phrase ‘If looks could deceive.’ It’s a dish that showcases the flavours of banana, jasmine, and apple, with a fake banana, what appears to be like like a crumpled brown leaf, and stones. Make positive you decide the fitting one!
Price on name. Avartana is positioned at ITC Grand Chola. Tel: 044 2220 0000.
