A Taste That�s Pure And Simple

UpperCrust's MARK MANUEL reviews India's first international restaurant of organic food, Pure at Taj Lands End in Bombay, where the chef is the legendary MICHEL NISCHAN of New York.

�The essence of life is expressed in the purest of ways: pure food, pure drink, pure spirit.� - Michel Nischan

MICHEL NISCHAN, the renowned New York chef and restaurateur, best-selling cookery book author and avid proponent of organic food, is the season's taste and flavour at Taj Lands End in Bombay. He and the hotel have given us Pure, a high-end Bombay restaurant of international cuisine, with a special focus on organic ingredients. Dining here is truly a different kind of culinary experience because the menu at Pure is an exciting mix of fresh, wholesome and organically grown vegetables, robust meats and delicate seafood. Steamed Kerala snapper with mushroom, coriander crusted duck breast with root vegetable gratin, lobster and sweet corn succotash, grill-cured salmon with caramelised cauliflower, pistachio and thyme-roasted chicken, grilled tenderloin with black pepper and parmesan mashed potatoes, that kind of food. Not unlike the meals you might find on the menus of fusion cuisine standalone eateries like Indigo and Olive, but certainly different. And the difference being in the velvety textured sauces with pure clean flavours in Pure that are created by using fruit and vegetable extracts and pristine stock reductions that allow the full-bodied tastes of the ingredients to come through.

Pure is located on the first floor of the Lands End, a 64-seater restaurant in off-white with minimalist bar space and an elevated dining area with deep rich tones enhanced by a candle-lit ambience. It is a Taj restaurant by Michel Nischan, just as the popular Japanese restaurant Wasabi at the other Taj in Bombay is by the celebrated Chef Masaharu Mori Moto, though neither Mori Moto nor Nischan are at these places all the time. Nischan's partner Chef John Mooney, who worked with him in New York, is in charge at Pure, and Mooney has a distinctive cooking style of his own with an emphasis on simple yet extremely flavourful preparations. Mooney worked at Michael Jordon's (yes, the same) The Steakhouse Restaurant in New York before joining Nischan's restaurant Heartbeat. And he has catered to as distinguished a list of American celebrity foodies as any chef may aspire to, including Frank Sinatra, Robert de Niro, Bruce Springsteen, Jerry Seinfeld, Cindy Crawford, Tyra Banks and George Clooney. Mooney is big and smiley, he moves about on light feet, and he looks, sounds and smells like a chef. Nischan, on the other hand, is tall, good-looking, and wears his hair in a long, blond ponytail. He does not resemble a chef at all. Over dinner with him, I was to hear Nischan being described by various people as a rock star, salsa dancer, Hollywood actor, French renaissance painter, and one enterprising lady even said he reminded her of Jesus Christ! The American chef was amazed at the comparison. �Oh God,� he said, burying his face in his hands in mock embarrassment, which I thought was an expression most suitable for the moment.

I have met Nischan before when he came to Bombay in 2004 to participate in the Taj's Chefs On Tour culinary programme. He is a warm and friendly man, extremely passionate about his cooking, which he describes as the process of achieving balance in every meal by eating what is wholesome, home-grown and at its seasonal best. �That means eating simply and eating well,� he had told me then. Which is not to suggest that Nischan's recipes are overloaded with whole grains, tofu, and legumes. He cooks all of these foods, naturally, but he also cooks delicious seafood, exciting meats, and yummy chocolate desserts as I was to discover two years later when I met him this time. And his repertoire is as vast and varied as his years in cooking. The menu of the dinner he planned for me at Pure, for instance, included seafood like shark, red snapper, salmon, oysters, shrimp and lobster, and chicken, duck, lamb chops and quail's eggs. Plus there was a sinful dessert of the eight different flavours of chocolate. And another one, an unusual mango ravioli made with the King Alphonso from Ratnagiri that also had a tapioca brulee, roasted honey bread and a passion fruit sorbet.

�My method of cooking is to allow the base ingredient to shine in its full glory,� Nischan explained. �Corn is all about corn, sweet peas are all about sweet peas, I use healthful techniques such as steaming and poaching in my cooking. I adjust less healthful methods, like saut�ing for example, by varying pan temperature and choosing oils that can withstand high heat without breaking down.�

But first, let me describe the restaurant. The Taj Lands End ought to be complimented for taking up a bold initiative such as Pure. The restaurant is already popular with Bombay's health conscious and curious. The night I was there, Salman Khan with all his rippling muscles, who is among the country's most health-conscious people, was waiting for my table so that he could have a late dinner with girlfriend Katrina Kaif and a group of friends. I was most impressed. The split level restaurant has 54 seats. It also has a warm and intimate private dining room with a long, communal stainless steel table that seats 10, and which features wall recesses stocked with select wines and canisters of exotic loose-leaf teas. The wines are organic, Bianco di Custoza, Valpolicella, Scopaca doc Bianco, though I have not tried them. The dining room is the ideal setting for a private gathering and I was surprised that Salman Khan had not chosen it. Maybe the creative artiste in him preferred the subliminal tranquility of the regular dining area with its off-white walls with mother-of-pearl accents, tones of beige, olive green and wood. Meanwhile, the Bollywood macho man was happy to sit at the bar which is furnished with white wicker chairs and bar stools with white leather upholstery, listening to new age and world music until I finished.

The restaurant has been designed by the American interior design firm George Yabu & Glenn Pushelberg, who are apparently leaders in the industry, and whose touch is elegant, astute, original and sophisticated. Nischan wanted the design to be culturally sensitive. �I didn't want them to do something overtly Indian,� he told me, �but yet, I wanted them to catch the perspective in a similar way I do with my food. My food is not bold, striking, and attacking in its flavour profile, and that is the way I wanted the restaurant's design to be. When people sometimes say the food is bland, I tell them it's not bland, but subtle. That's the expression I wanted for the designers.� It is also the expression renowned fashion designer Narendra Kumar has followed when creating the uniforms for the staff that are of natural fabrics and in earth tones.

The story goes that Ratan Tata was traveling in New York extensively around 2001 and 2002 and getting weary of the indifferent kind of food he was eating there. That's when he got introduced to the cuisine at Nischan's restaurant Heatbeat in midtown Manhattan, which had broken new ground when it opened by serving substantial, indulgent food that did not include butter, heavy cream or any saturated fat. Impressed, Tata got his corporate chefs and food and beverage experts from Bombay to visit Heartbeat and sample the food too. And soon, the Taj was inviting Nischan to come to India to see if he would work with the hotel group on a new, revolutionary restaurant on organic food in Bombay. Nischan visited India and promptly fell in love with the country. �There was such a palpable excitement about the place,� he said. He came back again in 2004 to do the Taj's Chefs on Tour programme and seriously gave thought to the restaurant. The Taj thinktank felt that what was happening in the organic food movement in the US and Europe was significant and would soon start to take place in India.

Executive Chef Hemant Oberoi arranged trips for Nischan to various parts of the country where the American chef was to discover the depth of Indian food by understanding our culture. This he did by visiting people's homes in villages, the small restaurants, and spice markets in Pune, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Chennai, Coimbatore, Calicut, Cochin. And after sampling all these regional foods, Nischan could only say, �It was remarkable! Just watching the way simple people addressed their cooking, the tender way in which they looked at the food, held and touched it, made me aware I was dealing with people in touch with their ingredients. I was ready to start Pure.�

The rest was easy. Nischan and Mooney, with Chef Oberoi, started visiting Indian farms for organic produce. They shortlisted Vishwas Organics in Bangalore, Gayatri Poultry in Delhi, Trikaya Farms in Pune, they turned to Australia for organic meat, France for the duck. �It was interesting, we located several small farmers who were raising things on family plots for themselves, and they were excited to be making money by sharing their organic farming with us. Nischan developed the concept of Pure. �The menu,� he said, �is a direct philosophical descendent of Heartbeat in Manhattan. Which is where Nischan created his cuisine of well-being by respecting pure,local, organic ingredients and their intense flavours an not using highly processed and overly indulgent ingredients.

�The inspiration to explore this alternative form of cooking came in 1994 from my son Chris, who at 5, was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes,� said Nischan. After years of concentrating on healthy, sustainable and culturally significant cooking causes, Nischan put his methods down on paper and produced two well-received cookbooks, Homegrown Pure and Simple: Great Healthy Food from Garden to Table and Taste Pure and Simple: Irresistible Recipes for Good Food and Good Health. I have the latter book in which Nischan inscribed in 2004 when giving it to me, �Eat well and live well!� And that is what dining at Pure is all about. The experience created by Nischan and Mooney by using steaming broths, citrus zests and versatile oils allows you to discover a whole new way of enjoying food that's bursting with naturally balanced flavours.

It is early days still at Pure, but Nischan and Mooney have no doubt that India is getting into the organic food movement, so the restaurant will be a big success. �It feels here like it felt 15, 20 years ago in US,� said Nischan. �People are realizing that food is more than just fuel, and seeking the flavours they want, filling themselves, eating has come to become a more intimate and direct relationship with Earth. Indians are now into putting something in their bodies to rejuvenate themselves. This has come about sometimes through awareness, sometimes because of vanity, because people want to look and feel better.

And while gyms and health clubs looks after the physical aspect, a greater awareness of what you eat takes care of the spiritual side.� His menu at Pure, therefore, is a little difficult to categorise or describe, and I will not even attempt to begin. It is not typical Continental food, because Michel Nischan is American, and American food is culturally influenced by French, Italian and German. But he's found new and creative ways to use vegetable juices, olive oil and healthful alternatives to diary products, in addition to the freshest seasonal fruits and vegetables, lean meats and fish to create the right balance and appeal to the vegetarian and non-vegetarian palate. Who knew that sweet potatoes make a richly flavoured sauce that's fabulous drizzled over coriander-seasoned duck? Or that smooth and creamy white bean dip spread on chunks of crispy bread could make you forget about butter. And when you eat this well for dinner at Pure, you're guilt-free to indulge in a little dessert. I recommend the 8 Pure Textures of Chocolate! I'm sure Salman Khan had the same.

Pure at Taj Lands End, Mumbai
Bandstand, Bandra (West),
Bombay 400 050.
Tel: (91-22) 6668 1234

Assembling:
Make 2 irregular shapes of sweet paste flats. Place one in the base and place the custard on top of this flat. Top it up with another flat. Put a dollop of meringue. Burn with a torch and sprinkle icing sugar on the top.