logo
ENFRع
#

Latest news with #Avartana

Avartana at ITC Grand Chola launches a new limited edition menu. Here's what special about it
Avartana at ITC Grand Chola launches a new limited edition menu. Here's what special about it

The Hindu

time4 days ago

  • Entertainment
  • The Hindu

Avartana at ITC Grand Chola launches a new limited edition menu. Here's what special about it

At Avartana, drumsticks — wrapped in a crunchy gram flour coat — look like they hopped off the Met Gala red carpet. Buttermilk — spiked with pepper, jaggery, beans, asparagus and toasted almonds — resembles an embroidered sari with pink-yellow petals and green leaves. The award-winning restaurant, launched in Chennai in 2017, is known for its progressive South Indian cuisine. The food is avant-garde, poised on technique, and marries surprising combinations. Loyalists are familiar with the menus available. Now, the team of chefs has added an inventive new collection of recipes to the roster. But you cannot just walk in and order them. Anoma, Avartna's limited edition menu can be prepared for a minimum of eight guests with a prior intimation of 48 hours. Targeted at celebrations and get togethers, Anoma means illustrious in Hindi, explains Chef Nikhil Nagpal with an air of a pedagogue. We sample the 10-course menu, along with a bright slew of cocktails. The hotel has been working hard on its cocktail programme, under its young general manager Shaariq Akhtar and mixologist Chingngaihlun, and now offers the ability to do a bar crawl across its six restaurants and one bar. However, enamoured by Anoma, we stay at Avartana and sip on heady guava picantes, spiked with ruby red dry Chettinad chillies, and Uthukuli butter washed Cognac with banana, cinnamon, filter coffee, and butter biscuit cream. The new beverage menu Kaleidoscope uses local ingredients — fruits like mango, banana, jackfruit, and narthangai, paneer rose, nannari root — to craft nine cocktails and five mocktails. Nikhil does not want to give away too many spoilers, but the food, in typical Avartana style is thoughtfully engineered to be a fun, surprising series of traditional, familiar flavours recreated with unexpected ingredients, modern techniques and artistic plating. Keep an eye out for the seabass, encased in a crisp, tasty pumpkin leaf. Also, be prepared for a little excursion mid-meal, complete with eye masks. Twirling his trademark moustache that has now become synonymous with Avartana, Nikhil says that of all these dishes, it was the Potato Malabari that seemed most challenging. 'It may sound simple but it took us 12 trials to perfect the technique,' he says, adding, 'The challenge was to get the texture of the potato right when mashed and used as an outer shell to encase the curry. If you just take mashed potato and steam it, the curry inside tends to leak. We had to add starchy ingredients like amaranth in the right quantity to get the soft texture of the potato, otherwise it can get hard and chewy.' The cogs are continuously turning at Avartana with the team of chefs — Mayank Kulshreshtra, Satheeswaran Loganathan, Lakshmanan Subramanian, and Nikhil — constantly identifying ingredients and pairings, and then working on turning them into dishes. One of the unique combinations in Anoma is the fragrant marikolunthu paired with lobster. While putting together the duck, it started with a Kerala style preparation with those spices. Then the team felt the flavours were similar to that of the quail and aborted that. We paired orange with that but it still had to be South Indian. So, we additionally made a sauce made with bydagi chillies, says Nikhil. The dessert is a poster child for the phrase 'If looks could deceive.' It's a dish that showcases the flavours of banana, jasmine, and apple, with a faux banana, what looks like a crumpled brown leaf, and stones. Make sure you pick the right one! Price on call. Avartana is located at ITC Grand Chola. Tel: 044 2220 0000.

Chef Deepti Jadhav says 'modernising South Indian food is about reimagining it, not changing its identity'
Chef Deepti Jadhav says 'modernising South Indian food is about reimagining it, not changing its identity'

Hindustan Times

time05-07-2025

  • Entertainment
  • Hindustan Times

Chef Deepti Jadhav says 'modernising South Indian food is about reimagining it, not changing its identity'

Chef Deepti Jadhav, Head Chef of Avartana, ITC Maratha Mumbai(Photo: HTBS) South Indian food has evolved and modernised over the years, incorporating new flavours, ingredients, and cooking techniques while still retaining its traditional roots. 'Modernising South Indian cuisine, for me, is not about changing its identity — it's about reimagining how it's experienced. I believe in taking the soul of traditional ingredients and reinterpret them using modern techniques, refined presentation, and a deeper understanding of core memories. The goal is to retain authenticity while elevating the overall dining experience,' says chef Deepti Jadhav, Head Chef of Avartana, ITC Maratha Mumbai. Sharing how she incorporates traditional South Indian flavours even though she gives a modern take to her food, the chef adds, 'The foundation of my food always begins with traditional ingredients — whether it's the sharp earthiness of black Tellicherry pepper from Kerala, the umami of fermented raw rice batters from Tamil Nadu, or the delicate fragrance of curry leaves and coconut from coastal Andhra and Karnataka. Every dish I make starts with a deep respect for its roots. I might present a rasam as a consommé or serve a Talegaon potato sandwich instead of a classic vadai, but the soul of the ingredient remains South Indian. I also focus on balance — South Indian food is incredibly nuanced in its play of sour, spice, sweet, and bitterness. That complexity allows me to be creative without compromising on identity.' Some of her go-to ingredients include Tellicherry pepper, chillies like Byadgi, Salem and Guntur, jaggery and tamarind palm cake, Coorg vinegar and Uthukuli butter. Speaking about the techniques she uses to innovate and modernise traditional South Indian food, she shares, 'Traditional techniques like roasting of spices, hand pound cracked pepper and cumin for distilled tomato rasam, pulled sugar for fennel Panacotta form the essence of my cooking. Modern techniques like sous vide for cuttle fish and garlic, distillation for the liquid gold tomato rasam, dehydration of beetroot sheets for the Uthukuli chicken and morel dishes add a unique dimension to age-old South Indian ingredients.'

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store