It takes three essential ingredients, namely, ambience, service and most importantly, good food, for a restaurant to create ripples. In reality, though, the three seemingly easy goals are often tough to achieve consistently over the years. But pastry chef cum restaurateur Shashvat Dhandhania has cracked the recipe successfully from the word go with his passion project To Die For. For the past seven years, the upscale diner has been serving some of the best continental vegetarian dishes with a delectable local twist, using a mix of fresh local produce.
This winter too, the zestful chef has curated a fabulous 10-course winter tasting menu served with dollops of innovation. "It's not often that I get to cook nowadays, so tasting menus are a way to tell my stories to our patrons. In this one, I have tried to showcase local produce in a way you have never seen before with dollops of stories from my culinary journey," says Shashvat.
Shashvat orchestrates a fascinating gustatory journey by rustling up glamorously plated dishes with very familiar and simple winter veggies such as corn, beetroot, carrots, peas, potatoes, and tomatoes to name a few.
To start with, we tasted the flavourful corn soup with husk oil accompanied by a corn cracker topped with corn mousse, pickled baby corn, baby onions and chives. The soup was a far cry from any broth consisting of corn you had ever tried and undoubtedly one of the best things to start a meal on a wintry afternoon. "The corn course is a leaf out of my memory of the popular sweet corn soup which I grew up eating," Shasvat reminisces fondly. The beetroot sushi with beetroot jus, fennel orange salad, seaweed oil and pickled radish was again a snazzy take on the regular detox beetroot salad and we loved every bit of it.
We loved how Shashvat gave a brilliant lift to the image of the humble potato with the unusually eclectic potato ice cream replete with leeks and amla chutney for company.
We also cherished every morsel of the broccoli and zucchini roulade with spiced cauliflower puree, kodo millets, and microgreens --- such a refreshingly healthier take on the regular bowl of salad. For those who are bored with their daily dose of carrots and peas, expect the carrots and peas course with an incredibly creamy pea puree, carrot dauphinoise, mint and celery juice to change your opinion about the humble pair.
Saving some space for dessert would be prudent as the toothsome Pistachio and Berries comprising pistachio sponge cake, berries, crumble, creameux, and jam is unmissable.
Meal for one: Rs 3,500 AI