The monsoon is a convenient season for a restaurant to build a menu around. There is corn, there is mango, there is the collective memory of eating something hot and fried while it rains outside. Indian Accent Mumbai has gathered most of the expected references for its new seasonal tasting menu, then given them a seat at the fine-dining table.
The meal starts with Kadhi Kachori, Delhi Papdi Chaat and Pao Bhaji. In practice, the pleasure depends on how much you enjoy seeing familiar things rearranged. The kadhi kachori comes with snap melon; the chaat gets kachalu; the pao bhaji is finished with masala onion. The restaurant has a fondness for this kind of recognition game, where the diner is invited to identify the original dish beneath the intervention.
My favourite was the Monsoon Corn Khees. Inspired by the Madhya Pradesh street-food classic, it comes with jeeravan and mango kimchi, and has enough acidity and spice to keep the sweetness in check. The corn remains recognisable, and the additions give it a little more range without burying what makes it enjoyable.
Tawa Crab with chilli butter and charred bhutta makes sense in a more immediate way, too. Crab and corn are already good company. There is a pleasure in being served something that feels familiar, then finding that it has been handled with care.
The menu is at its most interesting when the regional references are allowed to sit in the background rather than being announced. That seems to be the balancing act Indian Accent is after: taking food that already has a strong cultural identity and applying enough technique to make it feel new, without polishing away all the things that made it worth remembering in the first place.
The desserts have more room to be themselves. Lucknow Doodh Jalebi with saffron sugar takes its cue from the city's late-night milk shops. Qatlama with dot banana ice cream looks towards the layered breads of pre-Partition Punjab. The Aloo Bukhara Kala Khatta Kulfi Sorbet is a welcome interruption, bringing a sharp, familiar flavour into a meal that can sometimes feel determined to explain itself.
Indian Accent's monsoon menu is most enjoyable when it stops trying to make every dish carry a memory. A good plate of corn, crab or sorbet can do plenty on its own. It doesn't always need to remind you that it comes from somewhere.
The rains already do that.
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