Four Seasons Gourmet Diaries at ITC Gardenia

Last week, I was invited for the Four Seasons Gourmet Diaries with Swiss chef Peter Wyss from Gstaad Palace. The event was held at ITC Gardenia and it was a small gathering of people that included bloggers, journalists and other members from the media industry.

Four Seasons Wines are famous for chronicling gourmet food pairings with the award winning Four Seasons varietals and French oak cask matured Reserve range. Chef Peter Wyss has created culinary delights at the Gstaad Palace for the last forty years, balancing contemporary influences with the rich freshness of traditional ingredients and recipes. His food draws subtle inspirations from Swiss, German and French, amongst the most revered international gourmet capitals of the world.

Our evening kicked off with a round of delicious breads with Bouvet Brut Rose Excellence (which, by the end of the night, was deemed the best wine unanimously). The lightly salmon pink sparkling wine with a flavours of ripe strawberries and floral notes from the Loire region of France had everyone at the table giving it the nod of approval. It was light, fresh and perfect to kickstart the evening.

The delectable journey of the evening unfolded with our first course, thyme’s light fragrance adding a nostalgic aroma to Champignons Paris, the Cappuccino soup with local mushrooms. I'm usually not a big fan of mushrooms in soup as I think it's a waste of perfectly good mushrooms, but this soup made me change my mind. Firstly, the mushrooms weren't finely chopped, so it wasn't those floating bits that you get but slices of chunky mushrooms, which added double the flavour to the soup.  The foam also blended in quite well.

Champignon Paris Soup

Following this, we had a quick appetizer of Potato Timbale topped with Smoked Salmon. It was a cold appetizer, something that I relished, and the chef said it served as a small serving of a salad. The potato bits were nice and moist and the smoked salmon added a very refreshing touch.

Potato Timbale with Smoked Salmon

For our next course, we had the Simmered local Sea Bass medallion with asparagus crust and tomato marmalade paired with the zesty, fresh and herbaceous Four Seasons Sauvignon Blanc. While I found the sea bass  to be perfectly cooked, I felt it was a tad too bland for my taste and felt it needed more seasoning. The mashed potatoes were of a lovely, silky consistency, but again a bland pairing with the fish.The fruity acidity of the Sauvignon Blanc made up for my fish, so I wasn't complaining.

Sea Bass with Asparagus Crust & Tomato Marmalade

For the main course, we tried the Roasted Lamb rack with Espelette pepper jelly, Barolo sauce with shallots, Spätzli with wild garlic, served with Seasonal vegetables. The lamb was done a perfect pink, just the way I like it, and the pepper jelly added a whole new dimension of flavour. The Barolo sauce wasn't overpowering and the Spätzli was a little too dry for my liking. The lamb was served with French Oak Cask matured Four Seasons Barrique Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. The complex aromas of this wine with blackcurrant and spices heightened the senses with lamb, yet, not too spicy to dominate the flavour of the jelly and Barolo sauce.

Roasted Lamb Rack with Espelette Pepper Jelly

The pièce de résistance of the night was the dessert, that we couldn't wait to try. Chef Wyss
presented a magnificent dessert prepared with Lindt bitter chocolate sweet with lemon mousse and raspberries and raspberry ice-cream and natural yoghurt. While I was a bit skeptical about there being a bit too many flavour profiles, one bite of this dessert made me change my mind. The bitterness of the chocolate, sourness of the lemon mousse and sweetness from raspberries all worked well in harmony. The ice-cream had an intriguing, yet a pleasant taste. The dessert was paired with Four Seasons Blush that beautifully accentuated the contrasting flavours of the dessert. I ended up going for seconds for dessert and one (maybe two) more glass(es) of wine.

Lindt bitter chocolate sweet with lemon mousse and raspberries

Petit Fours

Post dessert, we concluded with a delightful batch of Petit Fours that we couldn't stay away from. 5 minutes down, all the plates were clean. Overall, we had an amazing night with good food and good wine. The food and wine pairings were excellent, and the chef and the management took exceptional care of us, especially to those of us who were firing questions by the minute. Also, The Four Seasons Bouvet Rose is now officially in my wine collection. I would love to experiment with it for different kinds of food pairings. Can't wait! :)

Shiro

As part of the Citibank Restaurant Week India, my sister decided to book a table at Shiro, one of Bangalore's favourite pan Asian restaurants. Restaurant Week was started in 2010, and the concept revolves around offering a 3 or 4-course meal for Rs.999 or less (excluding taxes) at each city's top fine dining restaurants. The idea is to reach a larger customer base who could enjoy a restaurant's signature delicacies at insider pricing.

We went as a group of 4 and booked a table for a Sunday night dinner. We chose the fine dining area instead of the outdoor area as the weather in Bangalore is currently very torrid and humidity is the last thing we wanted to deal with. The first thing that will strike you about Shiro when you enter is the massive Buddha sculpture that is suspended majestically which lends the restaurant an eery omnipresence. Also present were other equally large sculptures and some carvings, that make you marvel at the architecture and interiors.

The Restaurant Week menu was limited for us to choose any one dish from each course of the 4-course menu provided. Since there were 4 of us, we had an advantage of ordering a unique dish each and sampling each one of the highlighted dishes. We started off our meal by ordering the Chili Lemon Soup with Chicken, Thai Kwai Soup with seafood and an Apple Tomato Cinnamon Soup. The Thai Kwai soup was lovely, and fully loaded with prawns and crab meat. The Chili Lemon Soup with chicken tasted like a pot of comforting spicy, chicken tea, if I'm making any sense. It was delicious and the flavour was beautifully strong. The Apple soup disappointed me largely. It was sweet, which was expected, but it had a thick consistency of that of a curry and tasted like those typical ketchupy water soups.

The appetizer menu was extensive and we ordered the Fish in Chili Mustard Sauce, Thai Grilled Prawns with Wasabi Mayo, New York Maki Rolls and Tuna Mayo Sushi. The fish was cooked perfectly, was tender and the flavours of chilli and mustard were nailed with this appetizer. The prawns lacked a bit of seasoning for me, but that delicious Wasabi Mayo more than made up for it (we used it for dipping everything after that).

Fish in Chili Mustard Sauce

Thai Grilled Prawns with Wasabi Mayo

I have one word for the New York Maki. Orgasmic. Really. I can't describe the party in my mouth that I experienced when I popped that sushi in. I would probably go back to Shiro just to try this again. The Tuna Mayo Sushi was equally good, and it was wrapped with a thin sheet of cucumber. With the mayo and cucumber, this was very fresh, but not as good as the Maki for me.

New York Maki

Tuna Mayo Sushi

For the mains, options were pretty limited. We ordered the Chicken Laksa and Fish Laksa accompanied with Japanese steamed rice, and the Indonesian Grilled Chicken with Avocado Salsa and Grilled Chicken with Citrus Tamarind Glaze, accompanied with Hibachi Rice and Yaki Udon Noodles. The Fish Laksa was yum and paired beautifully with the steamed rice. The Chicken Laksa didn't fare that as well as the Fish Laksa for me. We found the  Indonesian Grilled Chicken a little too dry and lacking in terms of zing and flavour. The avocado salsa seemed to have been added as an afterthought and we didn't find much of avocado in it anyway.

Indonesian Grilled Chicken with Avocado Salsa

The Grilled Chicken with Citrus Tamarind Glaze was nice and tender and the tanginess of the tamarind with the acidity of the citrus made for a wonderful marriage of flavours. The meat was also moist and was served with charred corn kernels that had a nutty sweetness along with that 'burnt' flavour riding through them.

Grilled Chicken with Citrus Tamarind Glaze

By the time we reached our final course, we were pretty stuffed, but we always have room for a little dessert ;) Their dessert menu is strangely only full of chocolate based desserts, which doesn't leave much for the non-chocolate lovers (yes, they do exist). Strange. There were only two options for us in our set menu and we ordered one of each - the Velvet Chocolate Cake and the Coconut Pecan Tart with chocolate chips.

Coconut Pecan Tart

The Velvet Chocolate Cake was just as described - soft and velvety. It had a nice consistency and a texture that simply dissolved in your mouth. And once that velvety softness melted, crunchy butterscoth bits are a mouthy surprise, and added great texture to this dish. Everyone loved this. The Coconut Pecan Tart was not too sweet and had that nice dessicated coconut taste running through. The chocolate chips and pecan nuts brought out a new dimension, but I would have liked more textures - I would have liked the filling more soft and molten on a crunchy tart. Flavour wise, I liked the tart more. Consistency wise, the cake fared better.

Velvet Chocolate Cake

This 4-course meal with the Restaurant Week offer, costed us Rs. 980 per head (inclusive of taxes) and was totally worth it.

Food - 9/10
Service - 8/10
Ambience - 11/10
Verdict - Sushi it up!

I would definitely go back to Shiro's for a Sushi overload, and possibly when the next Restaurant Week happens :)