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| Dakshin is located where Shanghai Kitchen used to be at the ITC Grand Central |
K & I were at the ITC Maratha during the last week of Dakshin restaurant at the hotel and had a lovely meal there. ITC Hotels’ Dakshin chain of restaurants is helmed by chef Praveen Anand. He has travelled across the length and breadth of south India. He has brought recipes from the homes he visited to Dakshin. He has stayed true to form as far as the food is concerned. He has not ‘reinterpreted’ anything! That has been done at Avartana, the modern South Indian restaurant from the group
Dakshin is the only South Indian restaurant that K likes! I went to Dakshin for dinner last night. This time alone, as K is in Delhi for a shoot. Dakshin is now at its new home, the ITC Grand Central Hotel, which is in Parel in south Mumbau. I had been invited to attend the launch of the Dakshin at the hotel.
Flip past the picture of the tastefully designed restaurant at the start of the article and you will see an increasingly messy plate (I am not going to subject you to too many pics). Arguably the sign of good food well relished. The dishes came from across the five states and one union territory of the south. I want to make a couple of points. The first is that the food was homelike, light on the tummy and nuanced in flavour. The second is that my dietician should be happy with what I ate. I had lots of protein – mainly fish and chicken, with a wee bit of mutton and a single prawn. I had a fair bit of vegetables. Most of the sides were rice bases. Only the paratha was made of maida and I had just a bite of that,
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| Iyer trolley |
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| Chutneys from Appalam basket |
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| Meen varuval and chemeen manga charu |
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| Chemeen manga charu and Telengana kodi roast |
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| Chemeen manga charu and idiappam |
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| appam |
I was at the dinner as a guest and not a critic, but if you were to still ask me to choose my favourites, then it would be:
- The Iyer trolley- for the comfort on offer
- The papde upkadi – because it offered a dose of vegetables in the form of tossed red amaranth leaves and the soporific Patchakari vegetable stew for the same reason
- The chemeen manga charu – for the residual heat of the byadgi chillies in the tangy mango-based prawn curry,
- The ooragai mamsam – for the sharp, pickled tanginess of the mutton gravy. It was the showstopper for me
- The Andhra kodi roti with parchadi had my heart. It reminded me of the tehri of Bangladesh and I could have made a meal of it alone
- I loved the juicy fried betki in the meen varuval, but a bit less salt would be nice.
- Oh, and the appams were nice, soft and crisp at the borders. The idiappama was perfect and not lumpy. The Malabar ok paratha was on point but as I mentioned earlier, I took just a bite as I am on a diet which bans maida.
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| The young chefs of Dakshin who worked behind the scenes to create a lovely meal |
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| That’s the legendary chef Praveen Anand in black |
It’s fair to say that chef Praveen Anand, has done a great job in training the team and I am sure that exec chef Paul Noronha of ITC Grand Central will be there to guide them as will be chef Yogesh who looks after the west for ITC Hotels.
Best wishes to ITC Grand Central and Dakshin. Thank you for your hospitality. Something tells me that I will be back soon. This time with K.
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| Richa Sharma, Arohi Tambe and Dristi Hatimuria from the corp comm team of ITC Hotels (national), ITC Grand Central & ITC Grand Maratha |
