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A wok for Pan Asian cuisine

'Wok' as in a hemispherical frying-pan used in Oriental cooking. That by itself should give you an idea of what amazing things the Taj has done with that dreary old Rangoli at Vijaya Mehta's NCPA at Nariman Point.

My advice is: Take a walk to the wok today, for a 4 p.m. sandwich of steamed chicken breast and avocado chunks in a pepper brioche.

The Sidewok is a large restaurant that runs along a 50-foot long open kitchen, where you can watch, smell and, perhaps, taste the food prepared by a group of the youngest and smartest cooks in town.

They have all been trained by the Taj's Hemant Oberoi, his latest and certainly most innovative venture yet. The place is young and bursting like a spring day, 10,000 paper kites in the ceiling, 138 covers, constant movement of customers, waiters breaking into a song-and-dance act.

Go to the Asian Wok Market, instruct the chef on your own wok: broccoli florets, squid, butter chilli oyster sauce, with steamed rice.

The entrance is from Marine Drive, the main Tata Theatre entrance, through the garden and into the restaurant. The restaurant is part of the kitchen and the kitchen part of the restaurant. The food is Pan Asian interactive cooking, which means Lebanese felafels with Thai lemon grass and ginger. And everything cooked on order, a la minute.

UNDERSTATED: The entrance to Sidewok at the NCPA.

A lot of the food is served in the wok in which it is cooked, the wok placed on the table in a wrought iron stand, a little fire burning below to keep the food warm, one wok per diner.

So, what's the food? It is Thai, Burmese, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Balinese, Indian, with a Maryland crab and a Norwegian salmon thrown in, but everything cooked our way. Chef Hemant Oberoi explains, the ingredients come from all these places, but the food is cooked our way, to suit the Indian palates, so we have enchiladas stuffed with chicken tikkas.

I do not know if you like this sort of fusion. But you have to live with the times, be bold and eat away. For starters, there's tortilla chips topped with Mumbai-spiced chickpeas and melted cheese, baked, and served with sour cream and guacamale. There are chips on the side.

The guacamale is a salsa prepared with avocado, onions, chillis and spices. Rs. 95. The prices are quite comfortable and well within the Nariman Point small executive's budget. The Caesar's Salad has the usual iceberg and endive lettuce and garlic croutons, but also roasted coconut flakes and a spicy coconut dressing, and it is topped with chicken tikkas (Rs. 150) or cottage cheese (Rs. 130).

Other starters include dimsums, a spicy prawns and raw papaya salad, and the freshest green salad in town. The crab cakes are describned as Vietnamese, and are spiced with macroot, ginger and chillis. and they are served with spiced plum sauce. The cake is flat, oval, and very soft, you pick it in your hand and it crumbles.

And the taste of the crab meat, which some consider as the tastiest meat in the world, is well sealed in the cake, in spite of it being mashed. It is one of the highlights of the place, Rs. 195.

RIOT OF COLOUR: Behind the food bar the beginnings of a feast.

If you are a first-timer, a good idea would be to order a black plate. It is actually a large black plate, with samples of all the starters, including the crab cake. Non-veg Rs. 185, veg Rs. 155. And the three sauces are on the table for you to use with the samples. You can make a meal of this.

There are two soups, both vegetarian. A clear soup with vegetable wontons, and a Siamese carrot soup, It has a Thai flavour to it, with the coconut and the lemon grass, the carrots are pureed and it is a thick soup, with some of the ingredients also used in the Thai curry paste. Both the soups cost Rs. 50.

The Asian Wok Market offers several choices and combinations. You may have one or more meat from chicken, lamb, tenderloin, prawn, squid, sliced fish, and a whole lot of esoteric vegetables from zucchini to bell peppers, button mushrooms, asparagus, oriental greens, string beans. And you may have them with steamed or fried rice, or fried noodles.

The evening menu is more elaborate. The char-grill section has pink salmon, a fresh stock flown in every week. They are flown in as fillets, in chiller containers with temperatures at zero degrees (not frozen, because ice formation kills the taste).

Now comes the fusion part. The salmon is marinated in tandoori spices, not too much to smother the delicate flavour of the meat, then grilled in the tandoor. It is served with thin potato slices, also spiced with curry powder, fennel, onion and mustard seeds. And to make the transformation complete, it is served with mini naans.

I should have mentioned earlier, except for the sandwiches, no breads are served at the restaurant, only naans, small ones, the size of a chef's palm. Yes, the salmon is worth the experience. The tandoor, I understand, seals the juices of the meat and they come out direct in the mouth.

A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY: Patrons are wending their way to Sidewok but thankfully it's not a flood yet.

Salmon, if you have had it cooked the European way, tastes like expensive cotton wool. At least to my untrained palate. The salmon costs Rs. 295.

Prawns are also char-grilled, but in Balinese spices, a paste made of turmeric, ginger and kha ginger, which is more fragrant than the ordinary ginger. It comes with a spicy dip, Rs. 275. There are lamb chops, tenderloin steak, and potatoes drenched in a hot cajun dressing. The last for the vegetarians, Rs. 115.

There are a few signature dishes, including a lemon grass pomfret that Shobha De was having and recommending the day I was at the restaurant. It is a full pomfret, with the head and the bones, marinated in fresh chillis, ginger, garlic, salt and pepper, and crisply fried. Because of the bones inside, the skin retains its tautness and the flesh gets properly cooked.

The pomfret is then tossed with spring onions, powdered lemon grass and freshly ground chilli powder. It is served with the head, and you must make it a point to chew the head clean. Rs. 250. The surmai is steamed in a sealed clay pot. Naturally not the whole surmai, darnes of it, cut crosswise with the centre bone.

And it is cooked in a Vietnamese sdauce, prepared from caramel sugar, fresh chillis, oyster sauce and lemon grass sticks. If the pomfret is crisp and starched, this is soft and yielding, and the carmelised sugar sticks to the flesh. It is sweet, lemonish and spicy. I would advise Ms. De to try this the next time. Will there be a next time?

There will be many next times? Four curries, two veg and two non-veg. A Malay inspired chicken curry with cashewnut past, and a Balinese inspired prawn curry, to be eaten with string hoppers.

Or you may order a full chicken, deboned and marinated with Thai ginger, lemon grass, macroot and red chillies, the meat then reassembled to appear like a chicken, and steamed. Topped with steam vegetables, placed on your table, cognac poured on it, and flambeed. The flavours are ginger and lemon, the aroma cognac.

It is fully licensed, naturally, a place like this would be. There's whiskys and whiskeys, vodka shots, cocktails, a juice bar (a combination of celery, mint and cucumber juice), and beers of the world, from Holland's Heineken to the USA's Budweiser, Singapore's Tiger, Thailand's Singha, China's Tsing Tao and India's Kingfisher.

And, of course, the sandwiches, but that's where we came in, and where we are going this evening. Devilled prawn club, smoked salmon and cheese, pastrami and cherkins, ham and turkey served on twisted bread.

- By BusyBee
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