The newly revamped B-Bar at Saket is offering food lovers a taste of Robatayaki, Japanese slow charcoal grilled delicacies, apart from other exotic dishes from the cuisine. Shrabasti Mallik checks out the fare
For the well travelled with seasoned tastebuds, having an authentic maki roll, with traditional chopsticks sitting at the heart of the Capital is not strange — not any more. It so seems that Chinese, Continental, lebanese or for that matter of fact Italian and Spanish are passe as Delhiites are slowly (yet steadily) warming up and accepting Japanese cuisine.
Among the handful of places offering the cuisine is B-Bar, although many would identify the place by its former name Buddha Bar. When we dropped in a visit to the revamped restaurant it was like walking into the set of Skyfall, where British actor Daniel Craig (nay James Bond) sips on a martini at a casino bar in Macau while looking dapper. It transits you to a fancy space with its inhouse lounge music and natural light falling in from its transparent roof while you are ensconced on a silk brocade and velvet sofa.
As we sat soaking in the ambience, Naresh Kumar, our culinary guide for the afternoon offered us the B-Bar salad — both veg and non-veg. It was quite fresh with crunchy Chinese cabbage (which we mistook for lettuce) and red cabbage tossed in a few drops of sesame oil and garnished with sesame seeds. What led to the munchiness were generous amounts of fried wantons. In the chicken caesar salad that we tried they added nicely cooked chicken crumb and bread crumbs. A much needed refreshment on a sultry day.
We cleansed out palate with a cool watermelon mojito that Naresh served us delectable chicken katsu maki rolls (fried breast of chicken and cucumber served with bulldog sauce, made with sake — a kind of cooking wine made from rice — merin, alpi sauce, bit of salt and pepper for seasoning) and tai sushi (red snapper). Accompanied with soy sauce and wasabi (hot radish), the maki rolls were delicious. So was the tai, which was placed over a layer of rice.
But the real taste of Japanese cuisine we got through the Robatayaki, which literally means ‘fire side cooking’ in Japanese. It is the traditional Japanese barbecue in which food is slow-grilled over hot charcoal in front of the customer and served hot. Since we were already trying out a different cuisine we decided to taste something from the Robatayaki menu which stood out and ordered the Akame (baramundi fish) with Teriyaki sauce (made with mirin, soy and sugar/spicy). We saw chef Richard B coat the fish chunk with salt, pepper and less than a tea spoon of olive oil, and then place it over red hot charcoal. He applied sauce of the customer’s choice on the raw meat (or vegetable) when it was half grilled. “This ensures that flavours of both the meat and the sauce are intact,” the chef said.
We found out that Akame is an Indian Australian fish and that it was grilled over bin chota charcoal. “Everything — from the fish to the charcoal — are all imported,” the chef said from over the counter.
“If you ar eating tandoori chicken, you need to marinate it first. But in robatayaki if you are having fish, you need to have the taste of it. The fish, be it salmon or red snapper are all grilled with salt and pepper on the grill, said the chef and explained why local ingredients do not work. “We need to import the fish because fresh fishes are not available here. In Japan the option of fishes are aplenty. A fish does not taste good if you freezer it for a longer period of time. We have a supplier who deliver us the fishes starighaway from the airport,” he added.
As good as the fish was, the Yasai o mikkusu (mix vegetables) paired with lemon herbs sauce (lime juice, fresh herbs, olive oil) was a let down. We asked the chef why he chose bottle gourd as one of the ingredients. “There are vegetables which do not grill properly on charcoal and it is one of them. If you grill broccoli, it wont get grilled properly. So we experimented with a lot of vegetables that can get grill at the charcoal. We straightway do it on the charcoal so we have to be careful with the choice of our vegetables,” he explained.
The chicken breasts, however, were tender and juicy and was delectable with miso mayonnaise sauce (white miso paste, mayonnaise and chili flakes). But if you really wish to try something exotic, we suggest the Painappuru to kohitsji (tender cooked lamb from Australia with pine apple).
Next we tried the Japanese bento box (a single portion home-packed meal consisting of rice, noodles, meat and vegetables). We were hoping colourful Maki rolls and vegetables in the shape of animated characters (thanks to the numerous shows on television) but we received a corporate bento box with chicken katsu maki, Yakitori chicken, General Tao’s chicken, noodles and miso soup. Although we helped ourselves to small portions of each, one bento box is quite fulfilling.
We wrapped our meal with some quite unique desserts. First was the chocolate sesame (finger sized chocolate bars with crushed hazelnut and sesame base) served with bittersweet coffee ice cream. Then we tried creme brulee in three flavours — green tea, chocolate and vanilla. The chef said, “Green tea creme brulee is not traditional but Japanese like green tea very much so we have put them in the dessert.”
What stole our hearts was the cheesecake, set on a layer of bread crumbs and raspberry coulis.
The chef told us that traditional Japanese dishes do not use chicken in sushi. “But for the Indian customers we had to tweak the recipe a bit because it will take some time for Indians to adapt to the palate,” he rounded up.