lavana, the speciality restaurant at the newly opened Hyatt Regency Gurgaon, is a great attempt at the fusion of Awadhi and Rampuri cuisine, says Navneet Mendiratta
Salt is a very important ingredient in any meal. A little less and there is no flavour and a little more, it kills all that is there of flavour. It is interesting therefore that the newly opened Hyatt Regency Gurgaon should call its Awadhi specialty restaurant lavana, meaning salt in Sanskrit.
Incidentally, this also makes lavana the very first fine dining to exclusively offer authentic cuisine from the land of Nawabs. So when I set out to check this new property along the Delhi Jaipur highway, little did I realise the vantage it enjoys in terms of its location. Spread over six acres, Hyatt Regency Gurgaon is just 30 minutes from the international airport and is 15 minutes from Gurgaon city centre, making it a sought out property for business travelers as well as tourists to the Delhi-Agra-Jaipur circuit.
Even as the hotel is working on its soon to come up coffee shop with a difference (it is supposed to have live counters to keep the action going), lavana looked like a busy space already. Was it the weekend effectIJ I have no way to know.
A special promotion was on at the time with the hotel having flown in Master Chef M Rehman from lucknow to bring out the distinct flavours and fragrances from the land of Nawabs. Together with Chef De Cuisine Sunil Kumar Gangwal of Hyatt Regency Gurgaon (he heads the lavana kitchen), he took me through a delightful culinary journey, a la Nawabi style right at the fringes of Cyber City.
In style, they dished out a dastarkhan out of delicacies. It included machli ki pasande, nihari gosht, shahi galouti kebab, awadhi murgh, gosht biryani, dhungara paneer tikka and navratan biryani with delicious breads like gilafi kulcha and sheermal by the side. To finish the meal was shahi tukda. This was not the first meal that I had enjoyed by Chef Rehman. From my previous experiences, I have seen him put his culinary skills and extensive research to use to dish out a menu that plays with the regal flavours. He is a storehouse of ancient recipes from different regions spanning from Awadh, Rampur, Hyderabad, Kashmir and even dabbles with typically Mughalai cuisine. That he has worked closely with Chef Gangwal in the past and the two enjoy a good working relationship only reflected in the synergy in the menu.
“We plan to retain the flavours after the promotion,” said chef Gangwal, informing that the regular menu will continue to offer succulent kebabs, authentic biryanis, salans, regional breads and desserts. Keeping the flavours intact is the use of traditional cooking techniques in copper vessels and the three interactive tandoors in the restaurant, he added.
Certainly if the restaurant manages to retain its original authenticity, it is sure to give a lot many fine dining spaces in the vicinity a run for their money.