There is definitely more than bats, owls, pumpkins and black capes to this year’s Halloween celebrations. Be prepared for getting a taste of juicy blood, burnt flesh and cheesy eyeballs, says Iknoor Kaur
A spider on the pie, an eyeball in the soup, a skeleton in barbeque sauce and blood in sangria — as appealing as this would sound to Dracula, he chose to hand over his midnight buffet to you this Halloween. Get ready to bite into your innermost fears with only a mouthful of bats and a sip of fresh gore. This 31st you may find yourself turning carnivorous against your will.
While you decide how to look your scariest best on Thursday night, restaurants all over the city are coming up with concepts that would add to the spooky fun. Right from pumpkin cheese toasts, eyeball pizzas and black dumplings to bloody ghoulish soup, owl-shaped sandwiches and spider pumpkin pies there is a lot to repulse any human with a good appetite. But Halloween is not the day for humans, or is itIJ
Spook a boo
There may be a lot of treats in store for all those in black, but beware of the tricks. You may not be going door to door trick-or-treating, but a few restaurants have their activities waiting for you, in a subtle way. “We have a dim sum platter with all the dim sums coloured in typical Halloween colours like orange, black and red. However one of the dumplings in the platter will be filled with chillies and the guest will not know. It is our way of adding thrill and excitement to the menu. So what if we can’t scare them with bats and spiders, let the food do it,” said Aashita Relan, director Royal China. Similarly in Pintxo, Tapas Restaurant, one can expect a spider thrown at their food any moment.
“I think on Halloween people come in for something scary. So, it is our job to spook them out. The blood we make is basically grape and cranberry juice with a little colour and the eyeballs are mozzarella cheese. Everything we serve is completely edible. It is just the appearance that may turn their blood cold,” said executive chef Sushmit Daniels who has introduced stuff like ghoulish soup, skeleton lambs and spider on pumpkin pie.
Dig your crave
Creativity definitely pours out of the interesting menus this All Hallows’ Eve, but is this creativity worth itIJ Imagine a plate of chilli paneer that looks like a platter of burnt fingers in front of someone who literally throws up at the sight of flesh. Well, this mindset that is etched in the Indian mentality may not work so well for Halloween celebrations here. Even for a non-vegetarian who claims to eat anything that moves, this sight may seem a little appalling.
If you are craving to eat a delicious meal, for which you are probably easing your pocket quite a bit, a plate of lamb chops smeared with blood is not exactly something that will tease your appetite.
According to restaurateur Shalini Vij, this concept is too American and literally kills the Indian appetite. “I have seen some really scary Halloween food abroad which people are implementing here as well. However, I think that such food still spooks people here,” she said. Nidhi Wadhwa owner of Zura downplayed her Halloween menu for the same reason. “last year I had an elaborate menu for Halloween, but this time I have limited it to the bakery,” she explained.
Just ‘kid’in
Halloween began in India only a few years ago for adults with nightclubs introducing theme parties and spooking their venues with witches, bats and cobwebs. However, in the past few years things have changed. Now, you would probably have to take your three-year-old son out shopping for his trick-or-treating costume. Vij who is also the owner of Hang Out said that the Halloween celebrations at her restaurant were not spooky. “We stick to pumpkins and potato smiley faces. Children here don’t understand Halloween that well. I have stayed abroad for long and seen that for children Halloween is trick-or-treating. That doesn’t happen here. So, we decided to focus on more characters rather than the elements. So we have owl sandwiches and eyeball pizzas,” she said.