FOODTALK
New food philosophy
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A growing number of hotels and restaurants in the capital is now feting gastronomes with the new concept of custom cuisine, says NEETA LAL.
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A makeover -- the Hookah lounge.
WHEN did you last wolf down a four-course meal at a spiffy eatery and weren't awash with guilt? Tough to recall? Well, with a swelling number of hotels and standalone restaurants now feting gastronomes with the mint-fresh concept of custom cuisine — which addresses their eating preferences, dietary/lifestyle requirements and exercise regime — you can, quite literally, have your foie gras and eat it too.
Leading the diet-sensitive brigade in New Delhi, for instance, is Park Hotel, located smack dab in the heart of the city. The five-star hotel, which is undergoing a dazzling Rs. 32 crore makeover, has cobbled together an exhaustive diet menu for its contemporary Indian cuisine eatery, "Agni". Worked out in synergy with renowned nutritionist Dr. Shikha Sharma, the menu proffers different packages for people with different dietary requirements.
"Agni's" "Fibre-rich Menu", for instance, includes exotic whole grain breads like kuttu, sattu and the nine-grain roti, sprouted salads, smoked duck and fresh fruit kulfi rather than its traditional cream-rich avatar. The "Protein-rich Menu" offers a smorgasbord of paneer/tofu dishes, grilled chicken, mushroom, zucchini and fruits. Similarly, the "Carbohydrate-rich Menu" spikes its recipes with carb-intensive ingredients like potatoes, rice, peas and beans. "Agni" also uses lots of organic food, sourced from Navdanya (an NGO which promotes the farming and use of organic foods) spearheaded by Dr. Vandana Shiva.
"Our customers have requests which vary from the Atkins' diet, a high-fibre diet to the GM and a low-protein diet. With such a broad spectrum to tackle, we have customised our menus to suit variegated dietary and lifestyle requirements," elaborates Executive Chef Bakshish Dean. Cuisine research, says Dean, is an integral part of the hotel kitchen's agenda. Thus, Dr. Sharma's team evaluates and rates each of "Agni's" recipes and marks out shortcomings which need to be worked upon i.e.— too much fat in the recipe, wrong combination, too few calories or too many calories,.
Taste and health
Once this weaning exercise is over, the "Agni" kitchen gets into an overdrive to re-work the recipes till a balance is struck between taste and health. The menu, which changes every season, tries to include as much seasonal produce as feasible. No wonder the restaurant's offerings have gone down extremely well with the guests, especially the lunching ladies and the corporate set who phone in to place bulk bookings.
Dr. Shikha Sharma, who also runs a slew of weight loss centres in Delhi (Clinique De Rejuvenation) and boasts of a high-profile clientele admits, "Nowadays there is a huge awareness in the hotel industry about healthy cuisine.
Earlier, they could get by with selling greasy food, but now unless they offer low-cal, high-nutrition food, they run the risk of losing out on their well-heeled clients." Sharma acknowledges getting "a flood of offers from hotels and restaurants to revamp their menus in keeping with the new demand".
According to the nutritionist, the main reason behind this new age awareness is rapidly changing lifestyle trends. Increased travelling and eating out, more disposable incomes and the desire to squeeze the most out of life — on the family and job front — are forcing people to be more productive and take a re-look at their eating habits. "Healthy food isn't an option today but a necessity," she concludes. (See box).
Personality and body type
Tailormade -- sugar free dessert.
Pretty much like The Park, Radisson MBD Hotel in Noida, which debuted in 2003, has a section of its menu offering eclectic food items which address a guest's specific lifestyle need and dietary requirement. The hotel has taken the concept of custom cuisine to a new high by even taking into account the guests' personality and body types (pitta, kapha or vatta) before finalising its menus!
The hotel's Executive Chef, Arun Tyagi, says, "The guests' diet modes (low-carb/high-fibre/low sodium) and body type and exercise schedule are definite parameters for us to determine the kind of menu we suggest to them." He admits the hotel had introduced custom cuisine largely because "almost 10 per cent of the hotel's guest profile had specific food demands. And we respect their need to eat out without sabotaging their diet/exercise regime."
The hotel's 24-hour brasserie, "S-18", thus offers items like sugar free dessert, low fat butter, low fat cream, whole wheat and multi-grain bread as a standard availability of the menu. Most of the hotel's cooking is done in the heart-friendly olive oil and homemade flavoured oils and vinegars make up an integral part of the kitchen's grocery cupboard.
Following a similar food philosophy is Uppal's "Orchid", one of India's only two five-star outfits ISO-certified as eco-friendly hotels. It has regular health-food promotions and "healthy" brunches for women as a part of its agenda. Apart from its in-house bakery, "The Gourmet Shoppe", where health food items like chana dal, corn and kuttu bread sell like, well, hot cakes, the regular coffee shop menu too has items like Karela (bitter gourd) milk shake, atta drink (husked wheat flour with banana, milk and honey) wheat grass and lemon grass sorbets, beetroot juice and bel ka sharbat.
The hotel is also in the process of introducing cold buffets this summer onwards with interactive counters for sushi, sashimi and other Oriental products. Explains Executive Chef, Devraj Haldar, "Our clients always ask for tasty but healthy food. So we're kept on our toes by innovating on traditional recipes to give them a contemporary twist." Haldar personally interacts with guests to suss out their health profile (whether diabetic, asthmatic, allergy-prone, hypertensive or overweight) and then tailors his menu accordingly. His karela (bitter gourd) juice, for instance, was launched after interacting with several diabetic customers. It's an entirely different matter that the drink is now more popular amongst the non-diabetics!
`Clients knowledgable'
Not to be left behind in the health food sweepstakes, even standalone eateries have become more diet-sensitive.
Says the young Rajneesh Malik of "Hookah", the popular Lebanese cuisine eatery in south Delhi launched four months back, "I find my clients very knowledgable about food. And they are very assertive about what they want and how it ought to be cooked."
Just as well. Keeping in mind the demand of the ladies-who-lunch, Malik is in the process of introducing an exclusive "All-Arabic Women's Lunch" in his 100-seater eatery. For these weekly meals, he will offer grilled items, low-fat hummus, whole grain breads with sesame, fresh fruit and vegetable juices, mocktails, dried fruits, dates and figs. All cooking will be done in the heart-friendly extra virgin Figaro olive oil. However, the setting for the meal will be lavish — with Arabic music and exotic sculpted fruit decorations taking the sting out of a somewhat spartan meal.
Taking a cue from competition, even fast food chains — Mc Donalds — for instance, traditionally a bastion for heart-unfriendly and high-calorific food — are seriously considering more low-calorie options for their fast food fans. The Mc Donalds chain is planning to pump Rs. 100 crore into 20 new restaurants in 2005-06 in India. It is simultaneously trying to move away from its fast food image to supplement its product list with health food options. Avers India Mc Donalds' MD, Vikram Bakshi, "We're trying to move away from the fried to the baked or toasted options. `Mc Curry Pan' was our first baked dish offering. We are now working on adding other health options."
In other words, with more and more dining establishments wooing the picky gastronome with a more thoughtful culinary cache, eating out has never been so much fun! And so health-friendly too!
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If you have to eat out, nutritionist Dr Shikha Sharma suggests a few basic guidelines:
Try and pick dishes with lots of veggies and fruits — Thai, Chinese and Japanese — for instance. Eat as much variety of seasonal fruits and vegetables as feasible.
Stick to whole grains rather than refined flour. Wholegrain breads and pasta not only provide more fibre but because of their low glycemic index are also more cholesterol-resistant.
Don't stick to tried and tested dishes. Try out at least one item (or fruit or veggie) which you have never eaten before. The taste buds will love it and slowly you'll acquire a taste for it. Remember, the more variety you consume, the more the benefits.
Consume oil judiciously — in salads, with breads. Poached, baked and steamed are always better than fried.
Easy-to-make options at home — brown bread with fruit, steamed rice momos rather than white flour ones, tofu desserts instead of calorie-rich paneer ones, unpolished/brown rice, not white rice, baked samosas and paapri chaat rather than the traditional fried ones.
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