Sen5es at Pullman merged the flavours of Asia to form a new grammar at its recent festival. By Iknoor Kaur
Every country in Asia not only offers different cuisines but lays out subheads too. Chinese is one of our most experimented cuisines with its Singaporean, Malaysian, Indonesian, Indian and American versions. Nevertheless, what defines each cuisine in South East Asia specifically is that they all have their individual tastes and can’t be mixed and matched. However, Sen5es at Pullman Gurgaon Central Park did just that in a good way. At their festival, Asian Confusion, they chose the best and the worst of Asian food and merged it to form a perfect blend. But you need to be a little smart to figure that out. What looks like a perfect Japanese, Thai, Korean and Chinese food fits into no other bracket but Asian — talk about taking the term too seriously!
Since nothing works better than soup as an Asian appetiser, it is what one would usually start with. The clear soup with chicken and vegetables was the best. The soups laid out in the buffet were tom kha gai (chicken galangal soup), laksa (spicy noodle soup from the Peranakan culture), noodle soup and hot and sour. The laksa was a good pick with appropriate spices and flavour.
After the soup one would expect something from traditional Asian starters which include dumplings and wontons. But here all one got was salad. One could make their own salad or choose from the seafood and kimchi salads. Though the kimchi salad was a little salty, the seafood salad was a total winner. Sous chef, Manish Kumar Tandon said,
“Japanese food is known to be a little more salty than others and since this is more of a pan-Asian festival, the adaptation to salt is subjective.”
On reaching the main course counter we realised that the lack of appetisers was a good thing. Though the dishes in this section changed by the day, we got a chance to gorge ourselves on shitake, tofu, peking duck, spring onion wontons, kalbi Korean braised barbeque ribs, Thai curries and gai yang Thai grilled chicken.
The wontons failed to impress as they were salty and lacked flavour. The duck, however, was cooked to perfection while the kalbi Korean braised barbeque ribs were slightly undercooked and thready. “If you pay attention to the taste, it is not the authentic pan-Asian taste but a mix of all the flavours,” stated the chef.
The dessert, too, was full of Asian specialities. Giving details of the tapinyaki, Tandon explained, “It is our speciality. We have a special chef who is an expert in tapinyaki. The trick with this dessert is that even though it looks simple, it is not easy to give it the required texture. We use nuts to enhance the flavour.”
Buffets in general can be a little tricky as the food served is prepared in bulk. However, the food at Sen5es was appropriately made.
“If we offer normal Asian food to people all the time even they will get bored. Our objective is to serve good and innovative food,” elaborated the chef as we sipped on the signature green Chinese tea to conclude the meal.