The Westin Kolkata Rajarhat rolls out a special festival menu from today — Chronicles of Up North India — to celebrate the onset of winter. The eclectic menu contains rare items from the cuisines of the northern part of the country and has a great curation of lesser-known dishes from Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Kashmir and Punjab by executive Chef Vivek Kalia.
A fitness enthusiast, Chef Kalia grew up in the verdant hills of Himachal and tells us, “Winter always means the season of a variety of fresh veggies and fruits and is the best time to bring to the patrons a few not-so-usual dishes from the northern states. I have planned this menu for over a year”. Sourcing the right ingredients to get that perfect taste on the plate was one of the tough tasks that the chef had to achieve to yield this flavourful and authentic fare. “I sourced the spices and ingredients myself from Punjab and Himachal to get the original taste. For instance, I got garlic from Kashmir, which lends an amazing taste to meat-based curries. There’s also a spice called mugh, one of the spices that comprise garam masala in Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. The lentils too have been brought from Delhi,” the chef mentions.
The buffet menu at the five-star’s all-day diner The Seasonal Taste will have tawa kebabs, an array of aromatic biryanis, bona fide veg and non-veg dishes to suit different palettes besides some decadent desserts. We started off with a chunky mutton kebab, Tabak Maaz, cooked to perfection with northern whole spices. The soft and delicate gosht galouti that was lined up next, reminded us of Lucknow’s famed tunday kebab. The wide range of soft handrolled rotis (bread) that we had with the curries is also worth a mention. The delicately-layered Churchur naan was soft and crispy in equal parts and went perfectly well with the quintessential butter chicken. The Himachali saag also went well with rotis, particularly the roasted bite-size seekh paranthas. From the valleys of Kashmir, the chef treated us to the mildly-flavoured madur pulao, loaded with dry fruits.
As the chef puts it, the dessert from the ‘talk of the town dessert counter’ could not be less impressive. Rich in dry fruits and clarified butter, Punjabi delicacy gajrela, which is basically a more condensed version of gajar ka halwa, took the crown for its consistency and texture. We also loved the simplicity in silona, an assortment of dry fruits tossed in ghee. We wished the items weren’t a part of a 10-day festival and we could savour them at any time of the year.
Rs1,699 onwards. On till November 21.