Eating Out - Bawri
Bawri, It's Crazy Good!
If you're casing the joint for a superlative Indian restaurant, doling out rich, contemporary Indian food, in Bombay, Chef Amninder Sandhu's Bawri it is!
Text: Javed Gaya
Iam often asked by friends visiting Bombay from abroad about the best Indian restaurant to go to. This is always a very difficult question, as I try to explain to them that there is no such thing as a generic Indian restaurant. The best Indian food, in my opinion, is to be found in the ITC Hotels which offer a variety of different restaurants from frontier food such as Bukhara to Awadhi cuisine as in Dum Pukht and South Indian in Dakshin. But these are in different restaurants, not under one roof. Indian Accent is too experimental and overly influenced by the West in terms of the emphasis on tasting menus, etc. However, today I can say with some confidence that with the entry of Bawri on the Bombay food scene last December, that we finally have a superlative Indian restaurant which showcases the best regional cuisines India has to offer in charming surroundings, but is far from being pretentious and snobbish. I will come to this point later.
The restaurant is situated in BKC and is run by Chef Amninder Sandhu. I first encountered her culinary magic at a very underrated restaurant, Arth, in Khar West, and was impressed not only by the quality of the food, but the inventiveness of the cooking. Then I heard about her setting up Bawri in Assagaon in Goa which, by all accounts has been a raging success. Given the fact that Assagaon has several very good Indian restaurants, such as Jamun and Gunpowder, the instant popularity of Bawri has been remarkable.
So her opening in Bombay was to be expected and Bawri does not disappoint. It is a 4,500 sq. ft. space and is cleverly sub divided into separate areas, the central bar which acts as the fulcrum of the restaurant with seating, personalised two-person seating, private areas with exquisitely designed cane canopies which embellish the aesthetics of the restaurant. As there is much emphasis on kebabs and tandoori items, guests have the opportunity of seeing the chefs in action in an open-fire kitchen. There is also a Koi pond which introduces water to the restaurant. Bawri is festooned with exquisitely woven crocheted ceilings and the wall lighting is subtle, taking one back in time to India before the advent of electricity, aligning very much with the notion of nostalgia. The welcome, which involves the greeting with a shower of rose petals sets the tone, the idea of being special and being invited into a space which is unique and singular. On being seated, the staff would offer a traditional suraimade to look like a vintage piece being made in copper, an invitation to use your hands. These are some of the traditional elements which hark back to a kinder and more leisurely age.
The theme of the restaurant is the exploration of nostalgia; it seeks to recreate home-style cooking, using quality ingredients, and is the very antithesis of what North Indian restaurant cuisine has degenerated to, oily and masalafied. This I attribute to a combination of Punjabi and what passes for Mughlai cuisine, which gives restaurateurs the liberty to present almost industrial style cooking, using poor ingredients, cheap oils and excessive garam masala to camouflage the quality of the ingredients. In the case of Bawri as it was with Arth, Chef Sandhu is very particular as to the quality of the ingredients and the cooking medium. The oils she uses are either olive oil or avocado oil, but her default medium of cooking is natural ghee of a high quality. Her emphasis is on simplicity and flavour, I experienced that in a dish which is otherwise taken for granted, the Lasooni Palak which was extraordinarily tasty and was paired well with kebabs.
Needless to say, her basics are superlative. If the Lasooni Palak was delicious, her black Maaki Dal is also exceptional, and given her Punjabi antecedents, to be expected. So are her breads, such as the stuffed kulchas, particularly the Green Pea Kulcha was a wondrous thing.
Bawri is an attempt and, in my view, a successful one for the chef to transcend her traditional comfort zone which has been North Indian Punjabi and Kashmiri cuisine, and present a number of regional dishes. She introduces the Awadhi Kakori and Galouti Kebabs which are as authentic as I have had, she goes South of the Vindhyas and introduces the Hyderabadi Pathar ka Gosht as part of the kebab selection. The latter is a very difficult dish to do properly. It involves the flattened pieces of marinated meat to be cooked on a granite slab heated on burning coal. The heat makes the granite slab sweat, releasing its minerals and juices giving it an unique taste. There are few restaurants that are able to replicate this uniquely smoky flavour and Bawri is one of them. The Lamb Chops which she does in the Dungar style, smoking it, was for me a standout dish. For the vegetarians, there is the Charred Paneer, this dish showcases the exposure of paneer to intense heat which leaves a uniquely soft and creamy texture served with a fennel and dry mango chutney as a superb contrast to the gooey richness of the paneer. Her notion of taste, balance, the concern for textures all stand out as they would in a chef of her exceptional brilliance.
Even more daring is the introduction of the Manipuri Black Rice Dosa, a dish you rarely see in any Indian restaurant. She also showcases the cuisine of Bihar in the form of litti which is a wheat flour dough dumpling and generally stuffed with a mixture of sattu. In her case, she pairs it with smoked aubergine, known as the choka, a very traditional combination. She also introduces particularly Bombay dishes such as the Bombil Fry and, in the desserts, the Malai Kulfi Sandwich, a tribute to her childhood fascination with the uniquely flat Parsi Dairy Farm Kulfi and a playful variation on the kulfi theme.
As a chef, Amninder has the rare ability of presenting and plating dishes which look extraordinary. The dish in that regard which truly stands out is her Gucchi Stuffed. I adore the Kashmiri morel, one normally has it in pulaos, but what she does is to place it on what appears to be faux soil which is actually a mix of nachni and walnut to convey the impression that you are dining on a morel found foraging in one of the forests of Pahalgam. This creation takes a feat of imagination and for many people who are not familiar with the pungency and richness of the flavour, a degree of courage. In this regard, there is more than a touch of Indian Nouvelle Cuisine, in that she addresses one of the standard criticisms of traditional Indian cuisine, that there is an irritating absence of aesthetics in presentation, something which the French and the Japanese are known to excel at.
I hope that this restaurant thrives and prospers. Certainly on the several occasions I visited it, it was heaving with people and it was not easy to get a table. But I am sure that given the quality and range of the menu, the ambience of the restaurant as well as its location in BKC, it will do well. It is important that it does because it is a chef-centric restaurant, one that is identified with Chef Amninder Sandhu. This again is a rarity in many restaurants as there are, perhaps, a handful in which the chef can be identified by name. There is added reason as she is female, and as such, for a woman to have several restaurants under her stewardship, acclaimed ones, is rare in India and is something which should be encouraged.
Bawri
Shop No. 5, Ground Floor, Ins Tower, G Block BKC, Bandra Kurla Complex, Bandra East, Mumbai 400051
Mob: 0 92051 00992