Hoity-Toity High Tea

Afternoon Tea at the Raffles Hotel, Singapore

A very generous brother decided to take us for a teatime treat on our visit to Singapore, and where else would you go for Afternoon Tea other than the famed Raffles Hotel, a colonial style establishment that's easily the most famous hotel in the country. Having spent our entire childhood in the tea gardens of Assam, being exposed to amazing cooks from the British era who would bake the most delicious cakes, scones and pies, this was something we were all looking forward to. So we dressed up, skipped lunch and saved our appetites for the big one at 3 p.m.

Tea platter

We arrived on time and had to wait in queue to enter the Tiffin Room and be shown to our tables. Reservations are mandatory. The room had large glass windows and the tables were covered with crisp white tablecloths and had silverware and white porcelain crockery. The waiter brought two three-tiered trays to our table laden with mini sandwiches and desserts. One had food for two of us sitting across from each other and the other had food for three.

Silverware

As far as the food goes, the sandwiches were good. Of the mini pies and tarts and muffins, I liked the coconut muffin with the orange icing the best. The miniature size of the items on the platter were just perfect as that allowed you to eat lots of other things without getting stuffed within the first 10 minutes of sitting down. The buffet had four types of dim sums, patties, scones and lots of fruit. There was also a variety of cold fruit and herb teas. The service was a bit slow as the waiters didn't come around often enough to clear our plates so as a result the table got a little cluttered. The tiered trays looked like they had seen better days and were bent out of shape from the top.

Darjeeling Tea

The dim sums were alright, not spectacular and I thought the spread, large as it was, could have been a bit more varied by cutting down on the number of fruit plates and adding more interesting stuff. I was not too fond of the madeleines with the pink icing either. We had a nice time as a family but as far as a high tea goes, at SGD62++ a head, I felt they could have done a bit better with the menu selection. Still, my brother and I cleaned out our tray and I was stuffed by the end of it. My mom, uncle and sister-in-law, who were sharing a platter, were a little more restrained as you can see below.

Us

Them, by the end of it

Afternoon tea is said to have started in the early nineteenth century when Anna, the seventh Duchess of Bedford complained of "having the sinking feeling'' in the late afternoon. At the time people used to eat two meals a day, breakfast, and dinner at 8 p.m.  so the Duchess started having a pot of tea and a light snack in the afternoon in her boudoir. She then started inviting her friends over. The practice became popular with others too and then moved into the drawing room. You can read more about it here. Of course, we have none of those issues of limited meals. Most of the time I'm eating four meals a day and then complain about having a hard time losing the flab.

The queue before the hogging

As I write this, I do realise how fortunate I am to be able to eat this way while there are so many people in the world who are struggling to even get a single meal. I don't take it for granted and abhor wastage of food. Am trying to inculcate that in my children.

My favourite. Coconut cake with Kalamansi curd

Afternoon tea is very popular in London (no surprises there). Most hotels and lots of cafes and restaurants offer this in varying ranges and prices. Its one of the touted things for tourists to do. I didn't get the chance to do it on my trip a couple of years ago but would definitely do so the next time. Then I can have something to compare this with. The tea at the Raffles, which opened its doors in 1887 and also invented the Singapore Sling cocktail, was a nice experience though. 

Sunday Mall Madness

Mall of India, Noida

At first glance this could easily be mistaken for a railway station - a really posh one- at rush hour right? It's actually the food court in Noida's new Mall of India on a Sunday afternoon. This is the mall I've been waiting for, for years and apparently so has every other resident in the city and neighboring districts of Uttar Pradesh.

Before the Mall of India, the city had very few good dining, shopping and entertainment options and one would have to travel miles away to those in Delhi's Saket or Vasant Kunj or even cross two state lines to get to Gurgaon. The only mall of consequence, The Great India Place, about whose food court I went on a rant a couple of years ago, stopped being much good after the initial few years of its opening.

Now, with 2.7 million square feet of stores, restaurants and gaming, we need to look no further. The mall has well known brands like Zara, Marks and Spencer, the largest H&M in the country, Forever 21, Cole Haan, Gap, Hamley's and stores such as Armani Exchange are also on their way to opening their shutters. The shops also have large floor areas thereby giving customers a wider range of merchandise. 

It's also entertainment bonanza for the kids. The top floors have movie theatres, Fun City, a play centre for Kids with bumper cars, some rides and gaming options and Smaash, a gaming centre where you can hit cricket balls against a virtual opponent, play soccer, go bowling and have scores of video games to burn your money on. The piece de resistance though, is Ski India, the country's biggest snow park where you can go bob-sledding, tobogganing, tubing or just jump around in the snow. The lines for this place are unbelievable and if you don't come early on a weekend, there's little chance you'll even get to go in.

Now all these gaming areas are accessed through the food court. So, even though it is India's largest, with a 1,000 people seating capacity, on a Sunday, it was totally inadequate and practically bursting at the seams. There were easily three times the number of people the hall could accommodate and it took us two hours to get our food. We had planned to get lunch before the Angry Birds movie which started at 12.15 p.m. and decided on the food court as everyone wanted to eat different cuisines. Alas, being Sunday, we got lazy and missed the opportunity. So by 2.30 pm, when we emerged from the hall, it was madness. There were no tables free and people were hovering over occupied ones with a hawk eye ready to grab the seat as soon as their occupants finished.

Waiting for a table standing to one side with the two brats I was pleasantly surprised when in a few minutes a gentleman approached me and pointed to the table his family was vacating. Another lady from behind dumped her bag on the seat and was categorically told by his wife that the table was going to us. How sweet of them. It was nice to experience kindness from random strangers. I thanked him profusely.

Chairs are a premium. While the hubby was getting the food I was approached by at least 10-12 people who were polite enough to ask if the chair was free. One woman didn't even bother. She just grabbed hold and started taking it away. The `hey! someone's going to be sitting here' stopped her. How uncouth some people are. You get to experience all kinds of people in a crowded place.

In the two hours it took us to get the food - my husband and I took turns - one chair got swiped by someone which we managed to replace. Then the hubby saw a little boy holding an even smaller boy protectively on a table without any chairs while the mother went to get food so he gave him one of ours. He's a nice guy that way. Very generous in thought and deed. We got another chair soon after.

I don't see the rush abating in the near future as we are heavily dependent on malls for entertainment for at least seven months of the year because the scorching sun makes outdoor activity near impossible during the summer months. At temperatures ranging from 40 - 47 degrees Celsius only the very brave would go out gallivanting in parks and open spaces. We make full use of them in winter though. The developer of the mall has hit a gold mine and is well set for a good number of years before he sees any likely competition.

While in my earlier post I lamented about the quality of fare at Great India Place, this mall has no such issues. The range at the food court is large and the quality good. Dining options range from fast food such as Dominos Pizzas to KFC and Rolls King selling Kathi rolls to oriental options like Kylin and The Bento Cafe, which sells pretty good Asian food in box combinations including Malaysian black pepper crab, prawns in sriracha sauce and duck in tamarind sauce with fried rice or Japanese chilli udon noodles or Thai noodles. It's not cheap and the portions are small but the food is good. It's early days yet. Lets hope the quality remains the same and the standards don't go down. Right now I'm happy to have quality food and entertainment in my backyard.

Gourmet Meals on Wheels - Napa Valley Wine Train

Napa Valley Wine Train and Grgich Hills Winery

Some years back, I watched a program on the Travel and Living channel about the Napa Wine Train. They spoke about the overhauling of its rail cars, the route it took, the carefully crafted multiple-course dining menu and the places it visited, and I thought to myself, how nice it would be if I could experience that. And last November, I did.

There are quite a few options to explore Napa and its wineries. You could hire a chauffeur driven car or a limousine - they get as fancy as you want -or you could take guided tours, or rent a bike or hire a car and drive yourself. The latter would not be advisable for, after a few tasting sessions, your senses start to get a bit woozy and it would be a problem if you get caught driving under the influence. Same with the bikes. For the serious wine aficionados to make the most of Napa, you need to stay for a few days and leisurely tour as many wineries as you can. As we had only one night there, we decided to go for the Napa Valley Wine Train, which is highly recommended all round and since I was the only really enthusiastic wine drinker among the lot, a tour of one winery was more than enough. Also, it was our friend's 40th birthday, so that made it special. 

Chugging Along the Country Side

With much excitement we got on the train with its refurbished Pullman rail cars at 10.50 a.m. and were promptly directed to our dining car for our meal. If you read my previous Napa post on Hennessey House you'd know that we would have just stuffed our faces with a rather large breakfast less than half an hour before. The thought of lunch immediately after, was a bit horrifying, so we asked if we could eat our lunch on the way back after the winery visit. They very kindly agreed and we were directed to the lounge a few coaches down and just as we were about to get comfortable, we were told that we had to go back to the dining car as that was the only option for those that had chosen the single winery visit as opposed to two. Yikes.

Perfectly Cooked Tenderloin Steak

So, back we went to the dining car and prepared to eat our gourmet meals. Now three of us went to boarding school where we were perpetually hungry and I don't think we're completely cured of that yet, so back-to-back meals are completely doable. Two of us ordered the steak (their specialty), one ordered the pork medallions and another ordered the salmon? We ate it all, drank a glass of wine, then rolled out of the train to drink some more wine.

The Wine Train stops at the Grgich Hills winery and it's of significance as the founder Mike Grgich, a Croatian immigrant whose Chateau Montelena Chardonnay beat French wines for the first time in the Paris Wine Tasting of 1976, instantly catapulting Napa and Californian wines into the serious global wine map. He then set up his own winery.

It was a cool, crisp, sunny day perfect for wine tasting. So in we went, got a detailed tour, sampled seven different types of wines from chardonnays to sauvignon blancs to merlots and more. Towards the end of tasting, while we were on our sixth glass of wine, as I turned to our friends and remarked that this was probably the most wine the hubby would've drunk in his life (he's a whiskey drinker) I felt a sloshing in my glass. He had poured his red into mine. He just couldn't take any more wine. Karmic connection or what! After the tasting we were each given a complimentary Grgich Hills wine glass - which we brought all the way back to India - and those wanting to sign up to be a part of their wine club could do so. 

Mustard Rubbed Pork Tenderloin

After the tour, we got back onto the wine train and sat in the lounge car for our coffee and dessert on the way back. Each trip, up and down is about an hour's ride. The views in itself were nothing spectacular. We went parallel to the road for much of the journey and years of drought in California have stripped the lushness of the foliage.

I must admit we weren't sure what we would experience on the train because a few months before, there was a ladies book club comprising predominantly African American women who were escorted out of the train for allegedly being too loud and it became a racism row. The women in October filed a $11 million racial discrimination lawsuit against the company, according to the Los Angeles Times. 

Our Grgich Hills Guide and the Oak Barrels

However, our trip was very enjoyable and the lounge car on our way back was full of slightly buzzed people chatting among themselves and we had a short but entertaining conversation with the people on the table next to ours. The train staff are still a bit touchy about any reference to the book club incident and when someone joked about getting kicked off if he spoke to loudly, he was told to please refrain from bringing it up!

Wine Library Grgich Hills Winery

The wine train is a bit of an extravagance, but its totally worth the experience for those who enjoy fine dining and the good life. Have crossed that off my bucket list.

The Fatty Bao – Restaurant Review

 Fatty Bao Will Make Me Phat

Most of the time I've come out of a restaurant in Delhi being not so impressed with the food, given their exorbitant prices, or being completely disappointed. Not so with Fatty Bao, a pan-Asian restaurant which totally lives up to its name in R.K. Puram's Sangam Courtyard complex . You will certainly stagger out a kilo heavier after pigging out on its deliciousness and want to keep going back for more.

Scrumptious Seafood Salad 

Lets start with the char siu bao, a taco style steamed bread, stuffed with pork belly, green apple and cucumber. The bao melts in your mouth with its sweet smokey hoisin sauce and before you know it, it's all gone. That was the first thing I ordered in the restaurant and it ruined me for any other bao even though they are all good. Have had the duck bao too but it didn't compare.

The second and definitely as-amazing dish, was the seafood and pomelo salad. A light Thai style salad with pomelos, tempura fish, prawns and squid in a tangy tamarind, coconut milk dressing, feels like summer in your mouth and I devoured a bowl on my own. Was contemplating a second helping but thought that would too greedy. The starters are so good that most of the time you don't really end up even getting to the mains.

Char Siu Bao

The tuna tartare was subtle and came with a layer of jelly on top. We also had the salmon carpaccio which was pretty alright though I preferred the tuna. The Vietnamese sugarcane chicken was nicely spiced and the chilli, basil chicken fried rice and smokey chicken (which I cannot seem to find on the menu now) were good too but by then I was too stuffed and couldn't manage to shovel more than a couple of spoons in. As you can see the entire meal was non-vegetarian. A friend later told me that the veggie bao was amazing and I said I'd have to take her word for it as there's no way in hell I'm ever going there and ordering the veggie bao! Vegetarians, sorry! That's a whole different world you're going to have to experience through someone else.

As for the desserts I've only tried the Coco Caramel, an assortment of milk chocolate ganache, and fancy ice-creams and mousses and crunchy bits but was not overwhelmed by it. Am sure there are better items on the dessert menu.

What was Left of the Tuna Tartare Before I Realized it Needed to be Clicked!

Where the food is mostly great, the drinks are a let down. The cocktails were average and they could do a lot better. I would stick to a wine or a sangria or traditional drinks. My prosecco with raspberries was overwhelmingly dense with a raspberry puree which was quite sour and at 600 rupees plus tax was a total waste of money. The first time I ate here I had to return a cocktail that was highly recommended by the waiter as it was.... not nice. Still, the food really makes up for it and the menu is extensive. Am already looking forward to my next meal there.

Mind Your Head!

The kitschy decor and Chinese pop art on the walls make up the light and fun ambiance which complements the style of food served. However, the overhead hanging lampshades with Medusa like extensions with butterflies near the windows got too much for a poor young girl whose hair got caught in one of the spokes and spent what I would believe a few embarrassing moments de-tangling herself before sitting down to enjoy her meal! Yeah, watch out for that. Also, be warned, the restaurant does not allow children below the age of 10 at night.

The Hungry Monkey - Restaurant Review

Monkey Business!

Have you ever eagerly anticipated meeting someone only to find out that your good looking date has a brain the size of a pea? Or that their outward showoff does not correspond with their actual abilities? Well, that was my experience at The Hungry Monkey, one of Delhi's popular restaurant cum bars last week. I'd been looking forward to going there for a while as it had been mentioned in some popular blogs as having exciting food. Apparently Californian twist to European food.

While the ambiance and music were pretty good on the terrace and it was a pleasant Friday evening to boot, the food was a different animal altogether. We ordered the secret agent chicken, baked Brie and slow roasted mushrooms for our appetizers of which the only dish worth commenting favorably about was the mushrooms which were pretty tasty. The Brie came wrapped in parcels of filo pastry which were quite tasteless and not very fresh but the accompanying raisin jam was good. The chicken lollipop style was OK though it had a little too smokey (almost burnt) kind of flavor and the meat from each lollipop would barely cover a fourth of your fork. That was the better part of the meal.

The entrees... Two slider dishes, one, a crispy chicken slider, which came with three mini burgers and three shot glasses of warm beer (don't know where they were going with that) was pretty much picked at with only the slider filling being eaten. The beer shots went to their natural resting place.. at the far end of the table, forgotten in its uselessness. The falafel slider, another set of three, also didn't get finished, and came accompanied by three shot glasses of Bloody Mary, which promptly joined the beer. Not good. Or maybe would have been appreciated by people who love tomato juice, so not judging that too much.

My seafood linguine, with literally three small to medium prawns, some calamari, topped by one dodgy mussel, which didn't seem to have been cleaned so well, was smothered in a fairly tasteless tomato sauce and liberally sprinkled with at least a bush of fresh rosemary, was seriously underwhelming and not to mention annoying. Am all for roughage generally but it really wasn't my ultimate culinary experience plucking out tough long leaves and sticks (yes those were also thrown in for good measure) of rosemary from my mouth with each bite of food. And at 695 rupees plus tax, the dish was so not worth it.

Imperfect Parfait

The dessert gets a special mention. By the time we finished our mains we were a bit hesitant to order any more stuff but being the hogs that we are, decided upon the white chocolate parfait, which was supposed to be accompanied by a Baileys/ Kahlua float and almond and vanilla filo pastry cigars. Come on, how wrong can you go with dessert, especially at a fancy restaurant? Seriously wrong, I can tell you. A jam jar held a white pasty filling that tasted of concentrated milk powder sauce, rancid filo pastry cigars and no Kahlua/ Baileys float. This was where they should have actually added the liquor. Not to the burgers! We returned the dish after two bites and refrained from ordering anything else, though the sweet potato pie with pecan praline sounded interesting.

Don't remember the last time I've been so disappointed by a restaurant - actually it was Monk at the DLF Place mall in Saket about six years ago. If the company was not so fun, it would have been pretty miserable. Maybe the chef was on leave that day, or they were just having an off day, because the service was not so hot either. Whatever it is, at 3000 rupees a pop, just good ambiance is not enough for a repeat customer if the food is not up to the mark. And the day we went, it wasn't.