If you want to relish great cocktails with mixed fare, this is the place to be. By Unnati Joshi
The owner of the restaurant must have been a big fan of Peter Sellers’ The Party, going by the phrase “birdie num num”, popularised by the protagonist. For those not in the know, Sellers’ character engaged a parrot to interact with him by throwing seeds at it. But the bird never bought the bait. Maybe you will at this eponymous outlet at the ground floor of the Global Foyer Mall, Gurgaon. Adorned in shades of blue and white, it feels like a breath of fresh air when you enter. look up and you can see beautiful dim lights, huge mirrors and railings like a hen cage around.
We sat on the first floor of the restaurant and kicked off the evening with their signature cocktail, liquid Bread, and some wine. Bourbon shaken up with in-house ginger syrup, the liquid Bread was the best cocktail we have had in a long time. The wine had a sweeter twist too.
The USP of this place, apart from its very innovative barman, is that it attempts to absorb local cuisine of all parts of India except the north, which is a menu staple at every Indian restaurant worth its name anyway. We may be familiar with some regional delicacies but this one gives you rich pickings of the unheard.
We started with the Bhoot jholokiya chilli cheese melt, an innovation on a common feature in the cuisine of the Northeast. Not for the faint-hearted, the menu read. This Assamese/Naga pepper, also known as a ghost pepper, has a world record of being the hottest variant. We couldn’t keep our hands off the water after biting into it. The cheese melt was served with tomato-salsa sauce and a yogurt dip (which helped to cool off). Great crunch with great spice, this one is a must-try, if only to have your senses blazing. Apart from the heat, it imparts very distinct, zingy flavours, which account for its use in varied cuisine. Next up was Telangana chilli chicken, expected to be hot but with the right amount of kick. The chicken was accurately cooked, it was melting down the maw. Then came the Stuffed snake gourd, a mundane everyday vegetable stuffed with potato mash, basted in imli sauce and topped with crisped up semolina. While the stuffing felt good, the gourd could be worked upon to take away some of its bland sogginess.
Then came Kasundi scotch eggs served in a nest like platter, half-boiled eggs coated with Bengali mustard spiked with mutton mince and served with kasundi aioli. It was delicate, runny and creamy, yet not messy, perfectly seasoned and densely coated with meat. We loved it. They next served us cornmeal nests from Kerala. Pan-friediddiyappam nests, topped with masala prawn, the topping was well-thought out and toothsome. The spiced prawns here deserve special mention, they were not overcooked or toughened but elastic enough to incorporate the spices down to the veins.
The mains were portioned into Royal Kolhapuri and Assamese bamboo shoot curry with steamed rice. The Kolhapuri was about spicy Maharastrian mutton but aptly cooked. But the bamboo shoot curry with chicken hardly made the mark. Not that we do not like blandish delicacies but this one came with an overpowering smell of something like a floor cleaner. Did it have something to do with over-chlorinated water or the maybe a bad variant of bamboo shootsIJ We are yet to figure that out.
By now, we were shouting for dessert and then came the rose tea cake. The cake was suitably infused with rose flavours and garnished with rose tea, this one made us fall in love with it. Overall, it was an amazing evening, providing an opportunity to explore the depths and range of Indian food, from coastal delights to the far-flung borders. Service was praise-worthy and again, a special word for the cocktails.