Bombay Foodie

In a quiet residential neighbourhood in Delhi, there is a boutique hotel called The Manor. Several years ago, Manish Mehrotra set up shop there, cooking good Indian food. It's not molecular gastronomy but instead, it's a great combination of flavours and textures, plated in a style that's now called 'modern Indian'. Word spread slowly but steadily and Indian Accent is now universally recognised as the best restaurant in India. As I found out on my recent visit, this is a title that the restaurant truly deserves. I opted for an early 7.30 seating and surprisingly, the restaurant was already full. What was also very pleasantly surprising was seeing Manish himself as I walked in. Despite the acclaim, this is a chef who's modest and humble, even bringing dishes to the tables himself. A chef's tasting is the best way to experience the place but I was coming in after days of partying so I went ala carte. Manish was sweet enough to give me a starters tasting a...

Oh! what a week it was. I arrived in Delhi on April 15, all set to meet the other 7 finalists of the kitchenaid probaker contest. But the star of the show was chef Peachy Juban, who had flown in all the way from Manila to teach us cake decorating. It's a good thing she thought of starting with the very basics, specially for someone like me who hadn't even seen fondant before, let alone work with some. And so it started, five days of cake decoration. For the first two days, we made all the flowers you see on top of my cake. And then we went into things I didn't even know existed; like sugar quilling and brushwork embroidery. It was super tiring but super fun. All through the five days, the kitchenaid team made sure we were enjoying our evenings. One day, we went to the show at Kingdom of Dreams, another day it was dinner with the owner and chief menu designer of Johnny Rockets. There was also a dinner at Gurgaon's only Goan restaurant. The highlight of the whole wee...