Unlike last year, the second edition of the ongoing Palate Fest has participation of all the major hotels of the city. Arjita Mishra took a tour and discovered that not only are they serving their signature dishes but are also giving customers a five-star experience with their decor
With the ongoing season of festivals in Delhi, either a photo festival or a dance festival, now a food festival is been added in a row. New Delhi Palate Fest 2015 is a food festival where you can enjoy the delicacies of the five star hotels from Delhi and NCR and that also without making much affect on your pockets.
The three day festival is featuring some of the best kitchens in town. Not just that, there you will also get to see an amazing coming together of the greatest chefs from India and abroad. As we took a brief tour on the opening day at Nehru Park, we realised it had something to offer everyone.
For starters, the second edition of the fest is almost twice as big as the first with participation of over 100 stalls — big and small restaurants. Very interestingly, we found almost all five star hotels catering to the visitors.
As we entered through the gate, the very first restaurant that caught our attention was a makeshift canopy Dilli 32, the restaurant from Kempinski Ambience Hotel. They have re-created the actual ambience of the hotel in this small place.
Neelabh Chugh, director of food and beverages at the restaurant said, “We want people to have an actual experience of the interior of our restaurant as many of them cannot afford it. And the Palate Fest was the perfect place to serve Awadhi cuisine, which is our speciality.” The restaurant provides their signature dishes in smaller portion like sabj galawati, kacchi mirch ka paneer, murgh ka pasanda, nihari ghost, et al. at affordable prices. “We have kept Rs150 each for vegetarian and Rs200 each for non-vegetarian and Rs50 for the beverages,” added Chugh.
Next to the stall of Dilli 32, there is a stall from The Ashok Hotel, also serving Awadhi cuisine. Their signature dishes range from Rs200 to Rs400 and beverages are in the range of Rs50. In their menu, they have kabab-e-hazarvi, gosht biryani, paneer peshavari, et al. They also have snacks likesamosa and masala paneer patty but that is time bound — to be served between 4:30 pm and 7 pm.
The members of the restaurant accepted that are standing at a tough competition with the hotels and the restaurants at the fest.
Right across from these two hotels, The leela, Gurgaon has set up a unique bakery stall. It was a delight to come across some freshly baked pastries and macaroons, a slight departure from authentic food. Simran, the kitchen executive said, “We recently opened a pastry shop and with the help of this fest, we are trying to promote it.” In last year’s fest, they had set up a stall of their Japanese and continental cuisine but this year they planned to do something different. Their pastries are priced at Rs150 each and you can buy some macaroons for Rs50. They also have boxes like terrific truffle box, magical macaroon box and perfect praline box which ranges between Rs500 and Rs1,200.
What caught our attention, and we are sure most visitors at the fest, was the set-up presented by The Taj Group of Hotels. It had a terrace, a real makeshift terrace. We asked about the idea and Anan Sharma, manager of Machan restaurant said, “We want to give an additional view of the whole fest from the terrace to our customers so, we decided to put a terrace on our stall.”
Within the four walls of their unique set-up they are serving four classic dishes from all four of their properties in Delhi. “The dishes which we are providing are not expensive because we think that this is the only place and time where everyone can have our food, guilt free, without spending too much. Our non-vegetarian section is priced at Rs250 while you can have anything from the vegetarian section at Rs200 and dessert, one can have for Rs150,” said Sharma when asked for their rates.
With their chef from Bangkok, The Park hotel presented their Thai food. “We have recently introduced some of the new menu of Thai food in our restaurant and we are here to promote it,” said Harsh, manager of the hotel. In their menu at the fest boasts of steamed chicken kothee, mixed vegetable bao and Thai curry with jasmine rice. According to Harsh, “We definitely have a competition among us (the hotels) but we think that we are serving the best cuisine.”
Neung Roi, a restaurant of Radisson Blu, is also serving Thai food. Their stall was decorated with colourful Thai umbrellas, which is one of the main attractions of the stall. It made their stall look different, too. Sumit Bansal, director of food and beverages at Radisson Blu said, “I don’t think that there is any competition among us as we all are here to promote our cuisine.”
While taking a look around, we reached the stall of ITC Maurya. There we found a large display screen up front, screening a video of their chef busy preparing food in the hotel kitchen. Himanshu, manager of the hotel said, “We are serving our signature dishes which is a mix of North Indian, Hyderabadi and west India at flat Rs500.” In their menu they had harra kabab andparatha, mushroom fricassee, dal bukhara and naan in vegetarian section and galauti kabab paratha, lamb goulash and dum pukht biryani in non-vegetarian section. What’s more, they havephirni for desserts.