Jiggs Kalra at Jamavar: Mewari Cuisine

Lunch with a friend

When you get a call from the country’s best-known gourmet, you answer your phone at once, and snap to attention. When you get a call from a friend, you answer your phone,  drop whatever you’re doing and make the time to break bread together. If the friend in question is the country’s best-known gourmet… well then, you’re one lucky ducky *insert smug smile.*

Jamavar at The Leela Palace recently showcased the cuisine of Mewar, Rajasthan in the form of a menu that the aforementioned gourmet/friend created through painstaking research into the history and culture of the region. He insisted that I sample the wares, and I gladly accepted.

Cantonese Cuisine: At Home

Gavin struts his stuff

I enjoy “Indian Chinese” food. I even enjoy “American Chinese” food. That said, I have often wondered what the good people of China think of perversions like “Gobi Manchurian” and “General Tso’s Chicken”. A random tweet, from Gautam John of Pratham Books, bemoaning the lack of authentic Chinese food in Bangalore, sparked an idea.

Gavin Mak, who belongs to one of Bangalore’s oldest ethnic Chinese families, has been catering at our home for years. While Mak Hospitality, his catering company, dishes out some very good Indian, kinda-European, and desi-Chinese cuisine, Gavin  never serves authentic Chinese food, because he believes that “no one will eat or appreciate it”. I made a deal with Gavin: If I could find 10 people who would enjoy the “bland” flavors of true Cantonese cuisine, he would have to come and cook it himself.

Mezze: World Cuisine Network, Indiranagar

Mezze at World Cuisine Network

I’d heard several people mention the World Cuisine Network in Indiranagar, but hadn’t been motivated enough to check it out until musician Avril Quadros suggested I do so.

World Cuisine Network, part of a Dubai-based chain, serves multiple specialty cuisines in separate restaurants housed under one roof.  The Bangalore establishment comprises Lebanese, Italian, and Indian restaurants, plus a coffee shop. I chose to check out the Lebanese restaurant, Mezze.

Pizzeria Romano, Koramangala

Pizzas... right?

What would you expect to find on the menu of a restaurant that names itself “Pizzeria Romano“? Duh. That’s what I thought too. However, I have asked several people – articulate, knowledgeable, well-traveled people – this question, and they have all, without exception, been wrong (this has less to do with them than with the restaurant in question).