Restaurant Week Recon - Hakka-Sad :(

I have been waiting to try Hakkasan ever since it opened, and finally got my chance to do so this Restaurant Week, without blowing a hole in my pocket. I was super excited to try a sampling of their menu offerings, and starved myself all day in eager anticipation.

The ambience of Hakkasan can be summed up in one word – it was very BLUE. I was honestly a little jarred by the electric blue lighting, which in an attempt to be trendy, felt a bit like a (very expensive) fishtank. The lounge-y music didn't do much for the dinner experience either, it was too loud and thumping. I’ll grant that service was very professional and just what you’d expect from a schmancy place like this.

Electric blue Hakkasan

Before coming here, I’d read what the menu was going to be and must confess that I was more than slightly disappointed with their selection. Sure, I’m a huge fan of dim sums and fried rice, but I expected a little something more creative from here. Anyway, we decided to give it a go.

The hot and sour vegetable soup I started with was very tasty. A little on the gelatinous side, but felt good on the throat. The sweet corn chicken soup however, tasted just a little tooooo sweet. They'd overdone the corn bit, so it was more like corn soup. It was decent, but nothing special.

Vegetarian Hot and Sour Soup, Sweet Corn Chicken Soup

Our starters consisted of chicken shu mai, chicken xiao xing, and crystal dumplings. Each was served with a cute little bowl of very delicious red chilli oil. The shu mai was good, but no different from what you'd get at Royal China or anywhere else. The caviar it was topped with was overpowered by the taste of the chicken.

Chicken Shu Mai with Chilli Oil

The aptly named almost transparent crystal dumplings were exquisitely prepared. It made for a good light bite, and went well with the chilli oil.

Crystal Dumplings

The xiao xing was the clear winner - crispy on the outside, tender and mildly flavoured on the inside, with a special brown sauce that brought out the flavour very well. This dish was clearly the highlight of the meal for me.

Xiao Xing Chicke

I was frankly disappointed with the main course. Egg fried rice and hakka noodles? It’s hard to innovate with something so standard. Anyway, the fried rice was whatever - I mean, how different can it possibly be? They had used a lot of egg yolk in it, which made it a little yellower, but otherwise, it was no different from anywhere. And the hakka noodles were pretty "meh" too. In fact, I thought it was a little too dry.

    

The San Pei claypot chicken was very well flavoured, however, very tasty, in a sweet soya like sauce and lots of red chilli.

San Pei chicken clay pot

The steamed snapper was delicious, too and had a very interesting sauce- spicy yet not mouth burning, very flavourful. A good one, though we had to fight a little for a slightly larger portion!

Red snapper in Assam sauce

Dessert was excellent. The strawberry and dark chocolate sorbets were fantastic, but the peanut butter one was delicious too. Their white chocolate mousse is a must try- airy and not oversweet.

White chocolate mousse

I'm going to go out on a limb here say my experience here was lukewarm. While the food was good, it was definitely not excellent. I wonder if their specialty menu is any better – I sincerely hope so, because I do want to give them a second chance. Service was very good and polite, but unfortunately a smiling waiter doth not a Michelin Star experience make.

Restaurant Week Recon - The Italian Job

I was rather excited to be visiting what was a new place, and at the Trident, no less! Restaurant Week’s array of options seems decidedly Oriental this year – so it was nice to get a confirmation for an Italian ristorante.

I’ve almost always eaten only at wedding functions here so I was pleased to be eating in one of their restaurants finally. We were a little early, so we sat around in the lounge, basking in the gold and white ambience that is typical of Trident hotels, enjoying the soft jazz music and eagerly awaiting the meal.

Botticino, Trident Bandra Kurla Complex

Service, as was expected, was extremely polite and well knit. We weren’t waiting long before we were ushered to our table, served water and menus, and a bread basket, which was the bane of the meal! But more on that later. I’ve heard that Botticino is supposed to be fancy, and boy did it live up to its reputation! It’s so fancy that they have little monogrammed butter paper for the thin slivers of butter they serve. Beat that!

 

My appetizer was a chicken roulade on a lightly toasted bun, accompanied with (a) wine soaked fig. Yes, fig, singular. My companion opted for something a little healthier, the pear and pecorino (we had no idea what this was – turns out it’s cheese) salad with balsamic dressing. Beautifully presented, very artistic.

Chicken roulade with wine soaked fig and caramelized shallots

The pear and pecorino salad was pretty good. But it wasn’t EXCELLENT, as we’d expected. In my opinion, it was a little too dry, though the accompanying balsamic dressing made it a little more interesting. The pears should have been cut a little smaller, we were making a horrendous mess while trying to cut it. I’d give it a 6.5/10.

Pear and pecorino salad with balsamic 

The chicken roulade was not up to the mark. It was prettily packaged – four “stumps” of chicken rolled around a single asparagus stick each, balanced on a grilled bun, with an artistic smattering of sauce and the chopped up wine soaked fig on the side. The sausage tasted like anything you’d get from a Venky’s cold storage, and the bun was slightly too burnt. The only good thing about it was the wine soaked fig, which was over before it started. 4/10.

Unfortunately the appetizers were too small to feel good about. A silly thing the restaurant seems to have done is combine the soup and salad course, giving you the option of choosing only one or the other. That’s not right – they should’ve allowed diners to choose both a soup and a salad! It just made us feel slightly cheated.

Before our mains arrived, we were served a little amuse bouche to whet our appetites– a slinky piece of watermelon with a teeeeensy little ball of feta cheese and a coriander leaf stuck artistically atop it. A good palate cleanser, tasty and refreshing. By this point, we were so hungry though that we were scarfing down the bread like we’d never seen food before. And maybe it’s a good thing we did.

  

Our mains were served to us. Mihir’s chilli encrusted red snapper with orange juice looked wholesome and interesting. My calamarata (seafood pasta) on the other hand, was one of the most disappointing LOOKING dishes I’ve ever seen. The idiot who invented humongous, larger than life plates should be roundhouse kicked in the face. My dish looked like an overturned derby hat, with a huuuuuge rim and a tiny little bowl for the pasta. I don’t know why any restaurant would want to use this- though there might be a decent portion in the bowl, it just looks instantly disappointing. Anyway, since I was slightly full with the bread I’d eaten, I didn’t complain too much.

Calamarata and seafood

The snapper was delicious – very nicely grilled and flavoured, though the orange sauce didn’t seem to complement it too well. Maybe that’s just me. My pasta was great – perfectly al dente and slathered in an extremely tasty red sauce, so what it lacked in quantity, it made up for in quality.

Chilli and fennel encrusted snapper in orange sauce

I thought our dessert was the best part of the meal. Tiramisu and berry sorbet and a selection of ice creams. Simple, yet satisfying. The tiramisu was creamy, rich, and had just the right tinge of coffee not to be overpowering. It was beautifully complemented by the sour-ish berry sorbet; both set the flavours off very nicely. My compliments to the chef.

Tiramisu and berry sorbet

The three little ice cream scoops were tasty too – stracciatella (I don’t speak Italian, but I think this means cookies and cream) is a you-can’t-go-wrong flavor, lemon cheesecake (zingy and refreshing) and sea salt and burnt sugar (salty caramel),  were all very tasty and went well together. Dessert clearly won this meal.

Stracciatella, Lemon Cheesecake and Caramelized Sea Salt ice cream

I’ll be honest here. Overall, it was a decent meal – the starters really killed it for me (in a bad way, for those who think “killer” is a good thing) and the main course, though tasty, would have not filled us had it not been for the bread basket. Dessert was good. Main takeaways for the restaurant:

1.  Soup and appetizers are not one course.
2.  Starter portions should be made decent if you don’t agree to point number 1.
3.  Throw away those giant plates like Frisbees and get normal ones please.

I’ll end here with an Italian proverb, one which Botticino would do well to learn by rote. Non si vive di solo pane. One does not live by bread alone.

Restaurant Review : Yauatcha

The Raspberry Delice, and Chocolate Ganache - a feast for the eyes, and the palate!

What Yauatcha lacks in VFM, it makes up for in style. Very elegant and modern, you pass the extremely tempting dessert counter up a flight of stairs into a spacious, electric blue, black and gold themed room, smelling faintly of mogra, with discreetly candle lit tables scattered around. The well stocked bar is the cynosure of all eyes, and if you are willing to splurge a little, help yourself to a cocktail or two.

Contrary to what I'd heard, the service was very polite and attentive, and we soon placed our orders (balking a little at the price of course). The menu selection is limited, yet interesting enough to tempt you with whatever is being offered. We started with the Peking dumpling, a beautifully steamed seafood and chicken dumpling, exploding with the flavour of lemon and red chilli. Sadly, the portion was only three little piece.

We tried the house specialty - Cheung fan something - basically crispy fried prawn wrapped in rice paper and drizzled with soya sauce. Exquisitely tasty, and the only dish that actually seemed adequate in portion. Try it, you must. The cuttlefish is a miss - it tasted like any old Squid Gassi you get at a fisherman's wharf.

For the main course - the braised pork belly is gorgeous, melt in the mouth and deliciously flavoured, the kung pao chicken was more like kung pao onion, and the stir fried french beans were decent, nothing special.

Dessert - we tried the Raspberry Delice and the Chocolate Ganache - was a sight for the eyes, beautifully presented. It was a little too mousse-y for me, but the others loved it.

The total damages were substantial, but we were ultimately full, and it turned out to be just the right amount of food. It's a one off kind of place, not sure I'll be going there again anytime soon.

Phone : 022 26448888
Address : Raheja Towers, Bandra Kurla Complex, Bandra East, Mumbai

Guzzle Quotient :