The Burmese pop-up at The Park is all about recreating traditional Burmese cuisine with local ingredients. Shrabasti Mallik finds out that a cuisine, outside its country, is always evolving as it adapts to different palate
How we taste our food largely depends on the place we grew up. So it is but natural that a North Indian masala loving person will not like the coconutty flavours of the South and a fish loving Bengali will not find satisfaction in the dhoklas, khakras and theplas of Gujarat. But strangely we have a penchant for adapting to international cuisine and new creations.
Fire at The Park has tapped into this evolving tastebud to recreate and create some new dishes keeping the rich Burmese cuisine as the main inspiration. But the dishes in the pop up menu (which concludes on September 20) are far from being traditionally Burmese. The cuisine had been modernised and reinterpreted by celebrity chef Bawmra along with Park executive chef Abhishek Basu.
Generally we place orders for two or three kinds of appetisers but in Burmese tradition the number triples. “like we have chaat and namkeens, in Burma they have toke. The starters are toke inspired. They are a burst of flavours but are served in small portions so that you get the taste of every one of them,” said Chris Dawner, manager of Bumra in Goa. We were served the seasonal vegetable tempura and shantofu with tamarind soy dip, Bawmra’s tomato salad (which tasted very much like the chaat mixture that is used in papri chaats and bhel puri), Bawmra’s spicy tuna larb with basil, coriander and kafir lime leaf (the aroma of the kaffir lime was a little overpowering but it lent a very distinct flavour to the dish), spicy raw mango salad with crab meat, which was quite refreshing and delicious (when this dish is served in Goa, pieces of mango are added to it), spicy aubergine and herb salad, lightly seared beef with basil, mint, coriander and sprouts, and pickles tealeaf salad (lah pet toke) amongst a few more.
The entire thing reminded us of the Spanish tapas (a wide range of appetisers). The shantofu was soft and creamy. The kind that melts in the mouth. Chef Bawmra told us that this particular tofu belongs to the shan group of tribe in Burma. “There are multiple ethnicities in Burma. This tofu has Chinese influence and is made from chickpea and not soya beans. Porridge is made from besan and allowed to settle. It is then cut and fried,” he elaborated. The soy dip was, however, not traditional as we tasted tamarind in it. The vegetable tempura, we were told, was actually Goan in origin but was taken by Jesuan priests to Japan.
As we sat savouring in the fusion of flavours still lingering in our tongue Chris told us, “Nothing in this menu is modified or recreated. It is a Western approach to Indian (Asian) food.” The dishes are prepared with very less spices so as to let the flavour of the ingredients take over.
The coconut curry with enoki mushrooms, milky mushrooms, lychee, waterchestnut and spinach that we were served for lunch was a simple curry. It was light and a little sweet to taste. The highlight of the main course was the sticky coconut rice, which was mixed with caramelised ginger and onions giving it a whole new texture and flavour. There were quite a number of options that we had to chose from the non veg section. We were told that the show cooked pork with pumpkin wasabi and kokum jus is cooked for about eight hours. The result of the long process was a thin crisp layer of fat and tender flesh.
“We use young pork so the subcutaneous fat is thin. Therefore it cooks easily and turns crispy,” chef Bawmra added. The steamed snapper with lemon grass and galangal was moist and perfectly cooked. It was accompanied with neuro ferns. “Everything in the menu chef Bawmra has created on his own. Wherever he goes he makes optimum use of the local ingredients in traditional recipes. For the fish and the prawns (which is also part of the menu) he went to the market and picked up the the freshest fishes he could find,” said chef Basu.
For dessert, we were given a platter of chilli chocolate mousse with crushed white chocolate, creme brulee with lemongrass and ginger and coconut panna cotta with passion fruit coulis. “The tender panna cotta is a dairy dessert, it is cooked creme. This one is non-dairy. It is our take on it. That’s why, instead of creme we have used coconut which is much lighter,” said Chris. He added that the classic French creme brulee has been prepared using lemongrass with candied ginger sprinkled on top. The last one as he explained was our favourite chocolate mouse with a pinch of chilli on the chocolate mouse crushed with white chocolate. We were advised to taste the panna cotta onto the creme brulee and then the chocolate.
During our chat with the chef, we asked him the reason why he chose to go for a pop-up than the traditional Burmese menu. “I tried it two years back but there is no market for it. This particular cuisine is not everyone’s palate because it is oily and the ingredients are not available everywhere. You need to acquire a taste for it and I think it would take a lot of time for people here to get accustomed to a cuisine like this,” he concluded.