Back to Previous PageSesame Chicken salad on a sunny afternoon
Hey you have to give them an A + for the name, I thought, because sunny it sure was. A long narrow room was on the first floor with lots and lots of windows on the main sides and great gobs of sunshine streaming into the air-conditioned cool, making it a pretty pert little eating house amongst a virtual sea of dark and dreary dinners that seem to be this city's speciality of the day.
It was in Manhattan that Arjun Sajnani learnt the type of food that he chefs himself on the ground floor in an open and impeccably clean kitchen and serves. In India in 1992 he and his partner Vivek Ubhayakar who looks after the desert (more of this in a mo) initially started a take-away service till 1995 when they chanced upon the present place. It's central yet it's not surrounded and actually has an open space in front. What more can a man want? Well, this man wanted the Sesame Chicken Salad with creamy French dressing, bean sprouts and celery to start with but MC insisted on Fried Calamari instead. So calamari it was. Bad luck for Arjun some pieces turned out to be gritty but good for him to stop any more being served to anyone when we pointed out the same. Said something about not being able to buy the best all the time. I guess if you can't blame it on the catch what can you blame it on?Anyway, as usual, like idiots, we had started by nibbling away on the two pieces of brioche-like bread just because the herb butter was delicious till the whole thing had been wolfed down and could hardly do justice to the Fettucine with Chicken Breast (with sundried tomatoes, garlic, basil and cream) when it arrived. Or for that matter to the Shrim Diane (with tomatoes, parsley, capers, anchovies and olives). (Shrimps the size of horses, incidentally.) Are you begining to get an idea of kind of place this is? No? How about Broiled Seer Fish Steak with roasted tomato sauce, jalapeno and coriander?
It came as absolutely no surprise, therefore, when Arjun told us that a significant part of their clientele were tourists, NRIs, expats and Americans pining for mom's cooking. Along with, of course, the more foreign-food savvy among the younger and business crowd. Looking around I found exactly the mix he was talking about - two trendy youngsters smoking (surprise! it's allowed) and looking like they wouldn't be caught dead having lunch anywhere else; one white woman shovellingan orgy of Fish and Chips with sauce tartare into her four-year-old; a Virginia Woolf clone in a sari who was secretly writing a stream-of-consciousness novel in her mind; etcetera.
Then came the deserts. Yes, plural because we had become almost hysterical by then about not being able to eat any more. Ever solicitious, Arjun offered an apparently "tiny" slice of everything. So there we were, MC and I, going straight back into our nibble fandango once more. Me into the ganache tarts and mongo souffle; she into the chocolate mousse and walnut tart till we'd done it again. And what was left she took homeand what was left of the main meal I took home forthe lonely breadwinner I share my sinless bed with.
The best thing I can say is it's such a pity they serve dinners only on Fridays and Saturdays. But wiht this I'm a new-age born-again eater and so will you be.(Courtesy Mukul Sharma The Times of India 10th Oct)
