When an Insta reel is not enough to do justice to a restaurant. Masque, Mumbai.

A few things have changed since then. Twitter is not really relevant when it comes to food. Unless you want to troll folks or declare who should be beheaded for eating what. Food is all about Instagram now. Reels at that. Which is why I posted a picture of mine on Instagram a couple of nights back after we finished our dinner at Masque and said that an Instagram post is not enough to do justice to the dinner we had at Masque and that I would write about it at leisure.

This post is to show that I am a man of my word.

What has not changed over the last four and a half years is my preference to be in the corner of David. The truth is that I find roadside food experiences or food from home chefs more memorable in general than an elaborate chef’s tasting menu. The fewer the courses and dishes, more a meal sings to me. Which is why I hardly do restaurant reviews now. Most new restaurants coming up offer very elaborate experiences which I respect and admire but do not relate much to to be honest. And as what Prateek Sadhu, Aditi Dugar and the team at Masque have shown to through their work, is that you really need to focus on what excites you to be able to give it your best.

This formula has worked for Masque. Five years down the line, it is a name that is taken with reverence across the culinary world and it has won over its toughest critics in the process.

My first two visits to Masque were when they were in their ‘world cuisine with locally sourced product’ phase and I was frankly very impressed with the food in absolute terms.

I got to know Prateek over the years as we kept meeting at interesting food meets, but somehow did not end up going to Masque again. Partly because it is not my scene I guess. I did go there once when Prateek moved into what was his ‘Kashmir’ phase. It was a hosted dinner for media and that never gives one a sense of the food and frankly the evening passed away like a blur without my being able to form an opinion on the food. All I will say is that I am glad that that was not my first experience of Masque.

Prateek then moved over to a more pan Indian flavours (versus only Kashmir) inspired menu. Masque kept winning accolades among those who knew their food. And then Vir Sanghvi, who was not very impressed by the earlier avatar of Masque it seems, wrote about how the changes had made him change his mind and that he felt Prateek had finally come into his own. Mr Sanghi seemed visibly happy about this despite his earlier criticism of the chef. Perhaps he was goading Prateek to do better earlier, having realised his potential. Just a hypothesis. I can’t speak for Vir Sanghvi of course and we have never discussed this issue. I swear by his judgement though.

Enough, I thought, when I read what Vir wrote. It is time that I return to Masque!

We had made plans before. When Prateek and I went to Jaipur together, where he was part of an international set of chefs creating dishes for Krug Champagne, and I was the local host. This was in February 2020. The Covid Pandemic hit us a month later. Restaurants shut down. Then opened partially with a changed model. Masque, if I remember right, was selling burgers (!) if you drove in to the campus at one point. The show must go on.

Things ‘improved’ and we made plans to go to Masque. Had to cancel once as Prateek was not there and the second time as K was off colour and she was keen to go back too. On Saturday, my friend Dr Pradeep Rao, said he had been to Masque twice in the last ten days. ‘Best restaurant in India,’ he concluded. ‘

Let’s go tomorrow,’ said K when I told her about what the good doctor ordered, pun intended, and this time the stars fell into place – i.e. – Prateek was in town for a day and we got a booking and we went the next night. By the way, they have a very good kitchen team but now that we are friends, Prateek was keen that he be around when I came to eat. I am so glad we did it this time, what with Covid, Omicron and what not rearing their ugly heads again.

Will you start your review now, you ask?

You ‘cannot’ review a restaurant like Masque and I will tell you why.

There is no menu to start with! The chef decides on what you will eat based on your dietary preferences and this menu keeps changing too. ‘Evolving,’ is how Prateek puts it. He travels a lot across the country now, from his favourite Ladakh to places such as Chhatisgarh now. He travels internationally. Meets chefs, food critics, food lovers. And all these subliminal experiences seep into his latest creations.

A bit different from the ITC Bukhara model (Peshawari in ITC hotels other than the Maurya), where the menu has remained unchanged, with chefs landing each dish year after year with the consistency of a Sunil Gavaskar batting through the fourth and fifth day of a test match to save India. Being a class act, it continues to give delight in the world of T20s. To use another cricketing analogy, Prateek has the DNA of a Gavaskar, that of a thinking maestro, adapted to win in a new era.

What were the dishes that we enjoyed that night?

The strawberry saar. A cold gazpacho-like tantalising take on the Maharashtrian hot soup, tomato saar. It did not remind me of the saar to be honest but was very refreshing. We both loved it.

The zuchhini roll-like battered and seasoned pork rolls. Paired with dal vadis, which they called Vatika apparently because that’s what vadas were called in the Indus valley according to Sonal Ved’s new book, and a yogurt dip. Can I confess that I liked the pork by itself than when paired with the dal vada/ vatika and the yogurt which had a Punjabi gajar achar-like carrot pickle at the bottom? The pork was the stuff of Michael Bolton love ballads. The vada…more Ila Arun.

Next was a Kerala sweet rice cake inspired Vatayappam, crowned with an itsy bitsy portion of bheja, lamb brain with a ‘south Indianish masala’ (my words). This was phenomenal and highlighted my problem with tasting menus. I like to have more of something that I really like, than many portions of many lovely things, but that’s me. A philistine, if you so say.

K and I were enthralled by two seafood dishes.

Smoked mackerel (our humble bangda in a very juicy avatar), placed on a buttery buckwheat toast with Kashmiri chilli (not hot at all) in between. The fish would be at par with that in the the marvellous mackerel soba that I had at Arashiyama near Kyoto in 2018.

The other was the lobster ‘rogan josh.’ The sauce was rogan josh inspired said Prateek and frankly played second fiddle  to the amazing black garlic grilled lobster. Each bite of which had the elegance and memorability of a Beethoven symphony (not that I have heard much of Beethoven but thought this would be a more suitable analogy than ‘ Kishore belting our Salam e Ishq from Muqaddar Ke S’ which is what I really wanted to say but seemed too pleb).

The other revelation in the dish was a Kashmiri bread called katlam (the pronunciation is softer than in ‘kaatlam,’ which means ‘I have cut it in Bengali). It was soft as Baby Loaf and I captioned my picture with it on Instagram as such. It’s a layered bread like a croissant and tasted like a croissant. Prateek had topped it with seeds in memory of the bagels he had while working as a chef in the US. We were offered seconds and gleefully took them. Prateek told me that Kashmir has a fabulous bread culture, with shops run by both Muslims and Pandits, most of which is central Asia influenced unlike the Portuguese influenced western bread that came into vogue in British India. He said that he hopes to do more work around this.

There was more of Kashmir with a morel miso infused rice served with a scandalously juicy roast duck in mulberry sauce (which helped cut its meatiness) and roast duck.

There was a few things that did not excite us as that much. The barramundi in mustard leaf for example (the fish was too meaty) and the desserts overall (but we are very dark chocolate people and are not the best judge). I did like the cashew cake with strawberry jam and its grandma’s kitchen like sweet syrupy love.

A few blips are expected in a tasting menu and does not really matter because honestly I cannot say what you will get if you were to go to Masque. I was very keen to try the rogan josh sausages that I saw Vir post about for example, but it was in the previous menu and we got the latest one. Taught me to act on things quickly.

Update: I thought I’ll add that we didn’t take the alcohol pairing option as neither of us drink now. Yet they made a very refreshing drink from the bar with guava and lime I think with no sugar added.