Navigating the tasting menu

Tasting menus in India range from mediocre to incredibly good.

Perhaps the most famous advice to diners in contemporary times is the line that accompanies the tasting menu from Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck—one of those restaurants near the top of my list of Places To Make A Disgusting Spectacle of My Greed Before I Die.

“Please allow four hours for this menu,” it says, hinting at a supreme culinary pleasure described in awestruck, tearfully grateful phrases by the blessed. Just two items will suffice: Mock Turtle Soup (c 1850) , with Mad Hatter Tea, and Powdered Anjou Pigeon, with blood pudding and confit of umbles. (The liver, kidney and other offal from a deer constitute its umbles, according to Samuel Pepys, who mentions an umble pie in his Diaries.) Per Se, in New York, is famous for its “oysters and pearls”— tapioca with white sturgeon caviar— one of the signature dishes on its tasting menu, which takes less than four hours to consume, but inspires a similar hushed reverence.

Despite its popularity and its obvious appeal, I’m a little conflicted about the metamorphosis and rise of the tasting menu, in restaurants across Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad. This may be the result of over-exposure. Your first tasting menu is an absolute delight, returning most diners to the absurd but unmistakable childish pleasure of miniature portions and a sense of endless courses. The sixth and the tenth start to feel tyrannical, the progression of the dishes robotic. It’s like eating breakfast at every meal: you could do it, but why would you want to?

New York’s restaurant critics were quick to note that the spread of the tasting menu was a response to recession times, effectively a bending-of-the-knee from restaurants to lure in diners in lean times. And as the tasting menu became a necessity, the line between a good tasting menu and a bad buffet is blurring. In Delhi, Indian Accent at The Manor does a brilliant tasting menu, with foie gras galouti kababs becoming one of its signature dishes; a less expensive option is the tasting menu at Veda, which has ranged from incredibly good to mediocre on the three occasions I’ve eaten there. (Veda lives, and occasionally dies, by its ambition.)

Restaurants like Indian Accent, Veda or Aurus in Bombay take their tasting menus seriously; the chefs never seem to mind the extra effort and time involved. But The Frontier at the Ashoka, which had a robust selection of kababs and elegant vegetarian dishes, illustrates the perils of degustation. The food is excellent — but there are too many courses, and little imagination. Without the whimsicality that the best chefs exercise, it’s like being at a cocktail party where endless plates of snacks appear and disappear on cue.

Having said that, I’d still order the tasting menu if there’s one on offer, especially in a new restaurant or one that you’re visiting for the first time. Or if it’s at the Park in Delhi, where chef Bakshish Dean’s exuberance and flair seem to have spread to all of the hotel’s restaurant kitchens. It’s one of the fastest ways to get a sense of the way the chef’s mind works, and to check on a kitchen’s efficiency — especially at peak hours, it takes a lot of back-end co-ordination to pull off a really good tasting menu.

The problem is when the tyranny of the tasting menu dictates that it must be offered, even by restaurants that have no interest in playing with their food — and a sense of humour is one of the essentials for a truly great degustation experience. At its worst, the tasting menu becomes a kind of interminable thali, with dishes that remind me of Anita Desai’s descriptions of meals “smudged out in saucers”, as if for a family of cats. Here’s my rule of thumb: if the restaurant has a reputation for good but unexciting food, skip the tasting menu. If it’s overseen by a chef like Hemant Oberoi or Bakshish Dean, someone who has a reputation for really loving food, settle back and enjoy the ride. n

[Nilanjana S Roy is a Delhi-based freelance writer and editor]