The Hindu Business Line : On a painted platter

Joe Manavalan's new and hip dessert joint in Bangalore has taken dessert making to new heights. First, he serves you chocolate paint on your plate, then he treats you to exotic after-meal marvels.

You can't call Joe Manavalan just a chef or a confectioner or a baker or a restaurateur. This is because his passion for food goes beyond the call of duty. And it's obvious that he has made the science of preparing desserts a culinary art because there are no compromises on his food presentation.

"Painted Platters is Bangalore's first dessert parlour," he says of his venture. And no, `Painted' does not stand for ceramic art or snazzy modern art on chinaware. It's chocolate paint on every platter that the parlour serves and you can actually lick it clean. According to Manavalan, this is an art he learnt from the master chefs during his Oberoi days. "The Europeans are unsurpassed when it comes to making and serving desserts. I attribute all that I learnt to them," he says. So every morning Manavalan's team of designers, who have been trained by him, freeze about 100 platters in the refrigerator, then paint witty messages such as "My reality check has bounced," "If there's a will, I want to be in it," etc. Then the plates go back into the refrigerator till they are served to the customer with the desserts of their choice. "We do about 150 plates a day and each one of our guests gets a chocolate-painted platter." In fact, Manavalan's wife Tina says if they run out of painted platters, they simply shut shop!

Most desserts that Manavalan serves are new to the Indian palate: Crème Brulee is a traditional, baked custard with an orange scented caramel sauce. Rhum Savarin is a rum-soaked spongy cake with tossed seasonal fresh fruit mix, served with a scoop of ice-cream. Currently, Manavalan offers a Viennese collection to his guests: a Dobos Slice which has traditional Viennese biscuits layered with a lemony butter cream, a Malakov Torte which is a rum custard layered with sponge fingers and the Alhambra, a cashew nut cake with chocolate and rum cream. Of course, there are the regulars such as the Baked Chocolate Mousse, the Walnut Brownie, the Chocophile and the Tiramisu.

Manavalan and wife Tina, traditionalists at heart, play the perfect hosts to guests who are bashful about trying `foreign sounding desserts.' Tina explains the sequence of events when first-timers come to Painted Platters. "They walk in tentatively looking around for familiar smells and shapes. Then they look at the menu card and they are happy that there's Black Forest Sundae. I don't blame them because these French and Italian names flummox me too." Then either she or her husband explain to them that they could try any of the other goodies such as the Mississippi Mud Pie or the Kir Royal.

"Most of the time they do, but rather hesitantly. But once they have tasted our offerings, there's no going back," says Tina.

Then comes the more difficult part: The next time the guests come to Painted Platters, they insist on trying the same dessert. Again the husband and wife duo have to coax them into trying another offering on the menu card. This kind of personal attention is needed in a dessert parlour, says Manavalan. And hence the business has to be run by the entire Manavalan family. Tina's sister pitches in at the factory, while her mother-in-law keeps a watch on the recipes. "We don't want the secrets to go out of the family, or else you'll have hundreds of such parlours springing up all over," says Manavalan.

Though Painted Platters has a family-kind of atmosphere, Manavalan says that the business itself is run professionally. "I learnt systems and processes from my German chefs, creativity from my French chefs and traditional secrets from the Austrian and British chefs," he says. Then he surprises you with titbits of food history: "Do you know how the pastry Black Forest was created? In Germany, on wintry days in the Black Forest, you can see thick cherry trees with a dark brown bark and fully covered with snow on top. Little red cherries peep from behind the snow. As the dessert looks exactly like the cherry trees in the wintry snow, it is called Black Forest."

Manavalan also believes in mixing business and philanthropy. For, on display at the parlour are works of art by lesser-known artists, which guests can pick up. "We charge no commission from the artist." Probably because here everybody is involved in creating works of art, some with food, some with paints.

Picture by G.R.N. Somashekar

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