Bo Tai’s cocktails and appetisers surprise you with their many twists and takes, says A Sarkar
Located opposite the beautiful ruins of the Qutub complex is Bo Tai, the high point in superchef Zorawar Kalra’s bouquet, a mix between a casual dining restaurant and a pub from Soho which understands the kind of pan-Asian food Delhiites would appreciate and gulp down with ease. That respect and acknowledgement is responsible for an array of Southeast Asian innovation and fusion that doesn’t challenge your sensibilities too much.
Lounge in peace at the island bar or sit in one of the comfortable cane chairs with family and friends to wind down after a work day here. The low lights and the ambient music don’t encroach on your conversations. The cuisine here is influenced from the food profiles of the entire Southeast Asia region. However, it doesn’t burn any bridges, in this case, the inside of our mouths. The tastes are balanced for the cosmopolitan eater who seeks more umami than extreme tastes.
The evening began with a long line of appetisers and cocktails. The cocktails had Thai derivatives and kept away from being too sweet. Both Cool Heart and Full Moon Festival have fruity, floral and spicy notes with edible petals strewn over and served in avant garde spheroids and pineapple-shaped gold goblets. The gin’s bitterness in the Cool Heart was completely eclipsed with the essence of edible flowers and the fruits. Be it the elderflower with gin or the edible gold dust with whisky, the incredible lightness of feel would make you wash down the bite-sized appetisers. Normally, you expect to gush over seafood and fish delicacies but Bo Tai surprised us with genuine vegetarian innovations in starters and appetisers like the Stuffed Mushroom Corn, Cheese and Tempura cake, their temperate tastes balancing the spicier coconut pulp canapes that came before. And considering that the Thai flavour profile basically swings between sweet, sour, salty and spicy, we appreciated the standout degree of the vegetarian dishes like the Wrenched Jackfruit Red Curry Cream, served like an easy relish on a bed of leaves, and the Warm Corn Juvinile Coconut in filo cups.
But then the usual was not without its own delicate presentation. The translucent scallops, served as thin diskettes on a clear, thick plate filled with chilled water and topped with fish sauce, lime and coriander with an accompanying dollop of rambutan sorbet, was a mouthful of rounded flavours and textures. Bo Tai calls this a Tiradito, which is actually a Peruvian style of serving raw fish. Other unputdownables came in the form of crispy prawn caramelised with raw mango and the butterfly prawn broccoli. The prawn cracked from the middle and topped with a creamy broccoli gravy melted in the mouth. A little tough to de-shell but the taste took care of the effort it took. The crab cakes came in friendly dollop-sized bites that stopped you just short of over-indulgence. Or heaviness.
While the appetisers were all about experimentation, for the main course Kalra has stuck to traditional and familiar tastes. The Thai basil rice, the Kanon jin wheat noodle and the Massaman curry lamb (minus the overkill of palm sugar) were as we know them but remarkably light and easy. But, of course, the last word had yet to come. So there was the coconut creme brulee at the end, a normal creme brulee that was set over 48 hours in a small dried coconut bowl, just the shell minus the cream, so that the essence would get infused into the dessert without overpowering the senses with a dominant coconut note. As the liquid nitrogen wafted around the dish, crystallising its surface, like waves of a stormy night, the real technique lay in understanding the warm memory of the Indian palate and how it liked to be tickled.