If the heat is spoiling your appetite and you are bored stiff of salads and raitas, juices and mango pannas, despair not. Even during this scorching season, eating out can be enjoyable. Here?s my list of some elegant summer meals that you could go in for in the capital
Fruits and kebabs
Fruit in your mains? and in your kebabs! Summer dining needn?t only mean salads and stir fries. While it may be good to up the veggie quotient, if you want something special, look for chefs and dishes that combine the goodness of fruits with meat, lentils and even curries to give you refreshing culinary surprises.
One of the most elegant meals I have ever had, anywhere, was at a restaurant called Mezzaluna at the Lebua, Bangkok. Perched on the 62nd floor of the hotel, the restaurant offers a stupendous view of the city below and has two German chefs presiding over the kitchen. What I can?t forget is the memory of a foie gras and muscat grapes entr?e. Before you could pop the berry into your mouth, a waiter came up with a shot glass full of grape juice that was poured on the dish. The creaminess of the foie gras and the sweetness of the grape juice made for a marriage concocted in heaven!
While grilled pineapple and chicken, and melon and Parma ham are classic combos which you may find increasingly attempted in India too, regional Indian food cooked with fruit can be very refreshing. Many parts of the country have a tradition of cooking mains with seasonal fruits; the Parsi salli boti (where apricots and meat are slow-cooked together) and arhar dal with raw mango in it, popular in eastern UP and Bihar, are popular examples.
More elusive recipes come by way of an Avadhi salan where mutton and ripe mangoes are cooked together not to mention an aam ki subzi for vegetarians where small tapki, typically those that fall off trees, mangoes are lightly saut?ed. For a southern India flavour, a mango stew with appams (available at The Trident in Mumbai, for instance) may make for an innovative summer meal. Salma Husain, food historian, also tells me of a wonderful qorma from old Delhi using pomegranate juice. But that?s for another time.
My pick: Ignis, the pan-India restaurant in Connaught Place, has an interesting fruits-and-kebabs menu. What you must try out are the fruity innovations such as a basa-orange kebaba (the fish is marinated with orange and ajwain), prawns in coastal masala with grilled pineapple, baby lamb chops with a plum chutney and even chicken tikkas drizzled with mango salsa!
Sorbets
Widely served as palate cleansers in French menus, sorbets have been gaining steady popularity in Delhi and Mumbai over the last couple of years. Restaurants now serve these regularly as course-breakers, complimentary first bites and desserts.
Today, it isn?t just restaurants like Olive (Bangalore?s Olive Beach has a lovely selection too) that serve inventive flavours of apple-champagne, melon and blackberry. Now, contemporary-Asian to contemporary-Indian restaurants do sorbets, flavoured with the likes of wasabi, even moilee and makhani sauces and lately even roasted red pepper and beetroot (the last at Olive, Mehrauli).
My pick: The rose petal and mint sorbet at Cibo, Hotel Janpath, that uses a dash of the fragrant and elusive cr?me de rose, a liqueur from Bulgaria.
Dim sum lunches
Dim sum may owe their origin to tea houses along the silk route but in modern dining capitals these make for undeniably chic lunch experiences. For years, Taipan at The Oberoi in Delhi was the destination for dim sum lovers and the weekend brunches with the trolleys rolling past made for some serious power dining.
Now, the dim sum has truly got democratised with enough standalones putting these not just on their appetiser menus but on special lunch menus too. Both the Yum Yum Tree at New Friend?s Colony in Delhi and Sidewok, with a new outlet in CP (the best of the chain in the city) have credible dim sum menus.
My pick: Undoubtedly Dimsumbros, a new restaurant in Ambience Mall, Gurgaon, which is perhaps the only dim sum-only restaurant of its kind in the country. The selection offered is huge, including both traditional favourites like the har gau or the char siu bao and inventive new picks including a dumpling dotted with fish roe. You can order four, six or eight baskets each for fixed prices, beginning at R550 for about 12 dumplings.
Go organic
No time like summer to latch on to this bandwagon of global goodness! Organic food is slowly getting trendier even in India with Bangalore being the epicentre with restaurants such as Modak and Lumiere and the coffee shop at the ITC Gardenia. But, of course, the image problem with organic food persists. This coupled with erratic and more expensive supply means that few restaurants offer elaborate organic menus?even if hip diners did want to settle for them.
But Fire at The Park, New Delhi now has a proper summer menu devoted to organic grains, masalas and veggies: everything from an organic dal makhni to stuffed brinjals and bitter gourd. The organic bread basket is definitely recommended with its jowar, bajra and ragi rotis, grains that we have all lost sight of even in home cooking these days.
My pick: Ai, the contemporary Japanese restaurant at MGF Mall in Saket, attempts to redress the image problem. Having tied up with the Altitude Store that has some very interesting organic pick-me-ups, chef Saby attempts a stylish enough organic (and local food) menu. Unlike other organic restaurants which serve predominantly Indian food, Saby serves up the likes of organic baby lamb chops, pork ribs and even an organic flour tempura for those who would like to indulge.
Cold soups
By and large, Indians don?t understand?or appreciate?this idea. But try the beetroot beauty that Ritu Dalmia serves up in her book and sometimes in her restaurants and you will be converted. The good thing about soups in restaurants with frills is that they no longer resemble soups! They are not even being served in bowls any longer. A mushroom cappuccino, for instance, may arrive in a tiny coffee cup, all froth and glory. The beet one is served up in a chilled shot glass.
My pick: Nothing beats a genuine gazpacho, the fresh and fragrant wonder that summons up the clear blue of the Mediterranean summer and its cool nights. At Sevilla, the Claridges, start off with their tapas but definitely pause for the Gazpacho Andaluz?the classic Spanish version that comes with a gazpacho gelato here!
The writer is a food critic