What turns a restaurant into a phenomenon? It’s tempting to answer that everything depends on the food but I can think of scores of successful restaurants in India where I wouldn’t eat dinner even if you paid me to. I guess that it is a complex combination of factors and there is no single successful formula; if there was, then all restaurants would work and nobody would ever lose money. Read more

It is a measure of how much eating out habits in India have changed that whereas when I first wrote about truffles, readers were bemused, these days truffles crop up on menu after menu. It is, I guess, also a measure of how much more we are prepared to spend on restaurant meals compared to the past but that, as we shall see, can be debated. Read more

The Baked Alaska was one of the great show-off desserts of the 1970s (and perhaps the 1980s). Unfortunately, chefs don’t bother with it much these days.

At university, we were divided first, into colleges, and then, within the college, into staircases marking the blocks where we actually lived. Each staircase had about a dozen undergraduates and possibly, a don or two. Read more

In the old days, long before we had speciality restaurants, we had all-purpose restaurants that stayed open all day and served every kind of cuisine. In Bombay, such restaurants lined both sides of Churchgate Street. In Delhi, they were scattered all over Connaught Place. Read more

Kheer is the greatest rice pudding in the world, an international dessert combining three cooking traditions: India, the Middle East and the West. Read more

When it comes to Chinese food, I judge restaurants by their fried rice. If a kitchen can’t turn out a good fried rice, the rest of the food will be pretty lousy too.

Different people have different ways of judging a restaurant. Some Europeans will tell you that the true test of a kitchen is the quality of the stock. If that’s no good, then nothing – the soups, the sauces, the flavours etc. – will taste right. Read more

The samosa is the archetypal Indian snack. You can have hot samosas with your tea or you can have them cold, several hours after they have been made. You can have your samosas filled with spicy keema or you can have totally vegetarian versions filled with potatoes, paneer or even peas and French beans. You can enjoy the hefty Punjabi version or you can have the thinner, more delicate Bohra version from Bombay. You can eat your samosa on the railway platform in Ambala or you can buy it from a bakery in Alleppey. Read more

I wrote last week about how deluxe hotels often ignore the food and beverage needs of their guests. I ended the column with a rant about room service. And this week, that rant continues…

Local Food: I accept that it is not always a good idea for hotels to open restaurants serving the local cuisine. Read more

The last time I wrote about the things that frequent travellers wanted from hotels – and rarely got – I ended with a threat: I would be returning to the subject with further installments.

This week, I am going to focus on hotel food. Because India is still to develop a full-fledged restaurant culture, it is the hotels that have become centres of F&B excellence. Read more

There is nothing more offensive than food that is famed, not for its taste, but for its price. All over the world, chefs try and get into the newspapers by inventing absurdly expensive dishes usually featuring such luxury items as truffles or caviar. Read more