Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Entertainment | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

Indian-American combo

East meets West at Sai Viswanath's DeWolf Tavern, rated among America's 20 best new restaurants. SHONALI MUTHALALY meets the master chef

INDIAN SPICE Sai Viswanath

He puts the world on fine china, and makes it twang with sophisticated Indian flavours. His restaurant `DeWolf Tavern' featured as one of `America's 20 best new restaurants' in Esquire, 2005. And he was back home in Chennai a few days ago, in search of a coconut grater.

"I also need potlikka masala, an idiappam maker, a dosa spatula and tava... " smiles Chef Sai Viswanath, adding, "I come to restock every year."

While flying all the way to Rhode Island with an idiappam maker tucked under one arm is probably rather taxing, the fact that he makes this effort to ensure authenticity is one of the reasons why DeWolf Tavern, which Sai runs with wife Melicia Phillips, ("We met in a restaurant kitchen in New York, when she was a Chef and I was a cook"), is rapidly becoming a destination restaurant after just one and a half years of existence.

Great ambience

Operating from a lovingly restored stone warehouse, dating right back to 1818, and set on the landing waterfront in Bristol, Rhode Island, the restaurant is worth the drive for the ambience alone. But the pretty view is not what's been making even hardened American food critics gush like they just tasted their first truffle.

For Chef Sai has managed to accomplish what every artist, writer, director and chef dreams of doing: he has created a product that's `different'. This new style of cooking "interprets contemporary American cuisine through the flavourful and colourful prism of Indian cuisine," according to the DeWolf website. Which, in fish-and-chips terms means "it's loosely Indian-American." Sai adds it's more about "adding accents of India" to food, rather than just doing fusion. So he uses Indian techniques and tavas in recipes where they work, instead of just bending rules to fit all his cooking into one slot. "It's more organic than that," he explains, adding, "I don't restrict myself... I do what comes naturally. Basically, I like good food."

Sai's Indian roots followed by his training at the Institute of Hotel Management and Catering Technology in Taramani and work experience in Mumbai's celebrated `Indigo' form the base for the creative cooking he does today. Add that to all the information he soaked up when he did a degree at The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, New York, American's best culinary school, and subsequent work as a Chef in New York, and you'll understand why stylish Indian-American cooking comes so naturally to him. But what sets him apart is his understanding of techniques and flavours and how he seamlessly joins the East and the West before he presents them on a plate.

"I use Indian cooking more as another talent, or skill, I have," says Sai, explaining how his roots influence the way he creates food. "I make a biriyani, with veal and truffle oil for example. Or salmon with kokum and vanilla bean." He also uses Indian techniques to alter Western flavours. "I would make lamb with truffle oil and lavender chutney, and then cook it in a tandoor."

Being Indian, and therefore truly understanding Indian spices and techniques, gives him a tremendous advantage. "It's a unique skill. Westerners are not so comfortable with spices," he shrugs, "They are limited to cinnamon and nutmeg." With processes too, he says Western chefs are more likely to just use spices in a blender. On the other hand, everyone who's ever wielded a masala tray knows that even just a handful of Indian spice can be used in a mind-boggling number of ways to create a kaleidoscope of fabulous flavours.

Indian influence

DeWolf Tavern couldn't have been born at a better time. "I think there's an upswing in Indian food," says Melicia, adding, "Now it's a trend, and we will eventually probably see Indian food becoming more mainstream." "There's a tandoor at the CIA," says Sai, adding that that means the many young chefs who graduate from there now have a fairly realistic understanding of Indian food.

More important, all this means that desi food is finally struggling out of the `cheap takeaway' rut it fell into over the past few decades. Till now, after all, Indian cooking had a distinct image problem abroad, being seen as spicy tandoori and greasy curries served by faceless chefs operating from cheap shadowy restaurants. "That's changing," says Melicia, "Fine dining Indian restaurants are coming up in Manhattan. In fact, they're replacing the row of cheap Indian restaurants that used to stand there." She adds thoughtfully, "It really depends on how you prepare and how you present your food."

Which is exactly why a restaurant like DeWolf Tavern is important. It's paving the way for Indian flavours. And, more important, doing so with a stylish `tandoor roasted spicy quail' rather than a non-descript Anglicised chicken tikka masala.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail