The Hindu Business Line : Haute green platter

Thomas Keller, a legend beyond his kitchen, should know. For, his rustic stone house restaurant in the Napa Valley offers two fixed price, nine-course tasting menus daily at $240 — the chef’s menu and the vegetarian menu. Each morsel is true food for the soul. Glimpses from their recent menu: a sweet-sour juniper berry aigre-doux dressing on a green apple/candied ginger salad; or matsutake mushrooms with gingko nuts, purple-green perilla leaves, broccolini and sauce Japonaise!

Such a stir over mere vegetables? But, of course. For the green gourmet has arrived globally, preferring planet-friendly fare over Strasbourg foie gras or Beluga caviar, perhaps in protest against mass farming or culling methods. Perhaps consciously opting for a healthier lifestyle.

Reflecting the trend, upper-crust standalone restaurants in Bangalore and Mumbai now give vegetarian gourmets their due. Their edgy Italian cutlery, Belgian table linen and Austrian glassware now honour this long-neglected clientele with full-fledged menus. Bypassing Indian vegetarian fare, they experiment with European cuisine or molecular gastronomy.

Take, for instance, Chef Manu Chandra’s ‘nine pages of bliss,’ in the eyes of a recent green diner at Bangalore’s Olive Beach, known for its Mediterranean fusion menu. On offer — a delectable vegetarian Lebanese kibbeh that banishes carnivorous mindsets into oblivion; a creamy veloute soup of spinach/coriander poured onto delicate zucchini fritters; plump pumpkin ravioli hinting at sage and Piedmontese Robiola cheese, perfect with brown brandy butter with walnuts. The steaming Moroccan terracotta tagine enfolds couscous encircled by a crisp-succulent vegetable medley, redolent of preserved lemon and orange blossom water. An unusual mushroom panna cotta is offset by sea-salt tossed fried brioche.

“The journey to the final choices was long and tedious. Initially I resisted putting cottage cheese on the menu until we found the best buffalo mozzarella that money can buy. We grilled, sautéed, baked, fried it at first. It was only when coated with (Japanese style) panko breadcrumbs and seared that it took on an exciting avatar,” Chandra explains.

Mango Semifreddo

Exciting enough to lure Fiona Caulfield, freelance writer and founder-CEO of the Love Travel Guides (“handbooks for luxury vagabonds”). Australia-born, now Bangalore-based, she has been vegetarian since relocating to India. Her picks from the Olive Beach menu – greenpea and asparagus soufflé, tomato tart tatin, and gnocchi with chilli.

What challenges does a green globe-trotter face? Fiona rewinds to an epicurean dinner (about Rs 20,000 per head) at the three-Michelin starred Pierre Gagnaire in Paris, headed by the eponymous father of French fusion cuisine. She flew in from India, her date from the US. But he had neglected to alert the chef that she was vegetarian. She declined a foie gras hors d’oeuvre, which the waiter noted. She recounts over e-mail, “Pierre then improvised a creative vegetarian menu for me. My date, who had ordered lobster and beef, tasted my food with curiosity, then great envy. The chef later invited us back to the kitchen. That outstanding gourmet meal, including a pea ice-cream, convinced me that vegetarian food is way more interesting than non-vegetarian.”

Clued in, Chef Abhijit Saha’s Caperberry restaurant and tapas lounge in Bangalore offers options a la Spanish fare fused with molecular gastronomy. Such as courses from its recent Chikmagalur truffle promotion, like baked asparagus with Parmesan and truffle. Other sumptuous a la carte choices include deconstructed salad Caprese, with orange balsamic jelly/ tomato sorbet; mushroom paella with garlic and parsley; trio of aubergine (stuffed medallions, goat cheese cannelloni, and aubergine-rosemary cappuccino).

What are the top notes in vegetarian fine dining? “Among the finest meals I’ve had was a saffron and pea risotto at London’s Pharmacy, a restaurant that was partly-owned by the enfant terrible of British art, Damien Hirst,” responds businessman-art connoisseur Abhishek Poddar, a lifelong vegetarian.

Fiona recalls her 13-course degustation menu (Rs 8,000, including drinks) at Tetsuya in Sydney (now a global chain), known for Chef Tetsuya Wakuda’s Japanese seasonal flavours with French techniques. Its wonders include cepe and chestnut mushroom soup with shaved mushrooms, carpaccio of beetroot with finger lime, even pea soup with bitter chocolate sorbet!

Poddar, shuffling memories, adds, “I vividly remember the Golden Mushroom in Detroit, which offered excellent dishes of morels, Portobello mushrooms or truffles. Except for the drinks and the dessert, it was all mushroom-based. At Wild Honey in London’s Mayfair, I had pureed fresh peas with edible flowers in pink and orange….”

Does it all boil down to the creative chef? To Saha, “Lobster comes a poor second to truffles or morels, if you ask me. One can work wonders with purple asparagus, zucchini flowers, fiddlehead ferns (lingri from the Kulu valley), even artisinal cheeses….”

Who knows, soon Indian vegetarians may find themselves in an oil and salt bar, arrayed with Himalayan rock salt or hand-harvested fleur de sel (flowers of salt), besides single estate extra-virgin olive oils? Or perhaps savouring edible flowers at Caperberry? That’s when Indian kitchens might offer Chef Keller food for thought. Cheers to the possibility – and to the green haute palate!

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