Latest news with #Uthukuli
The Hindu
a day 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.
Hindustan Times
05-07-2025
- 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.'
The Hindu
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Did you spot Chennai's Avartana in Ed Sheeran's latest music video, Sapphire?
You could not have missed Ed Sheeran's tall chef's hat in his latest music video, 'Sapphire', set in India. While Ed beams cheerfully from under the hat in the ITC Grand Chola's Avartana kitchen for only for a few seconds, Chef Mayank Kulshrestha, area executive chef, Southern Region, ITC Hotels, who was in the kitchen when Ed shot the video, said the performer spent an hour with the team, curious to learn how their menu came together. 'He flipped some coin parottas and tried his hand at sautéing and steaming,' says Mayank, adding 'He tried the lobster, fish, and Uthukuli butter chicken.' Mere months after his six- city India tour, Ed Sheeran released 'Sapphire' (part of his new upcoming album Play) in collaboration with Indian singer Arijit Singh. The song was just picking up momentum and finding its spot on trending charts when Ed dropped a music video that surprised the country. It featured actor Shah Rukh Khan, Arijit, and snippets from Ed's tour across India. The video, which is light, vibrant and fun, has over 2 million views and counting. Ed stayed at the ITC Grand Chola during his two-day visit to the city and dined at Avartana on both days. Avartana, the hotel's Southern Indian restaurant, has garnered numerous awards, including rankings of number 30 and 44 on Asia's 50 Best Restaurants in 2023 and 2024. During the tour, Ed played tourist whenever he could, riding in autos, getting massages, sightseeing, and sampling local food. 'This is kind of a selfish trip for me because I came here to be a tourist and spent the last two days just going around the city,' he had said during his Chennai show which saw a footfall of approximately 50,000. 'He was a very curious person, and anything creative requires curiosity and enthusiasm. He was very lively and said he didn't want to disturb us. Ed told me this was for a music video and asked us to just keep operating as usual. So we were preparing for the evening shift, and all the stations were busy,' says Mayank. 'He loved our triple-distilled rasam and joked about how he could write a song just for this,' says Shaariq Akhtar, general manager, ITC Grand Chola. To welcome him to the Karikalan Chola presidential suite at ITC Grand Chola, the team built a miniature replica of Portman Road Stadium in chocolate. This is the home of the Ipswich Town Football Club. 'Ed Sheeran is a huge football fan, and he supports Ipswich Town. He was thrilled because other hotels he stays at usually focus on him and his music, but this is an interest I share with him, so he loved that,' adds Shaariq. Another moment from Ed's stay at ITC Grand Chola, which also features in the music video, was one of him getting a true street-style head massage from A Sandeep, a long-time member of the 85-year-old Kerala Hair Dressers in Pondy Bazaar. 'He got the massage on the roof of the presidential suite,' beamed Shaariq. As for that tall chef's hat? Ed autographed it, and gave it to Chef Mayank. So now the chefs can blare Sapphire and dance to 'Don't you end the party, I could do this all week' the next time they make parottas and Uthukuli butter chicken. Ed Sheeran's eighth studio Play will release on September 12, 2025
