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The Straits Times (Singapore)

Teasing the palate with a S'pore twist

More Indian restaurants experimenting with different kinds of cuisine

ON THE lawn of the five-star ITC Maurya hotel in Delhi, chef Rajkamal Chopra cooks up an Indian-style pulao (or pilaf, a rice dish) with traditional spices like turmeric but then adds something unusual - laksa leaves.

Next, he puts the pulao in a bowl and garnishes it with golden fried onions, chopped laksa leaves and slit green chillies. Finally, with a drizzle of curd, the laksa pulao, a Singapore-inspired dish is complete.

Waiters then carry steaming bowls of the pulao to several tables where a select group - from industrialists to chefs, politicians and journalists - has been invited for a taste of Singapore.

The dish is soon followed by Nyonya prawn curry with roti jalal (lacy pancakes), a crispy vegetarian popiah goreng with a filling of cabbage and carrots, hun kwee jagong or a coconut jelly filled with corn and wrapped in banana leaves, and laksa chicken tikka, which is grilled chicken marinated with laksa paste.

The dishes, prepared by chef Benjamin Seck of True Blue Cuisine, an award-winning Peranakan restaurant in Singapore, and ITC Maurya's chefs Manisha Bhasin and Rajkamal Chopra, combined some of the most loved Singaporean and Indian items and had the guests at this cookout smacking their lips.

'When I think about Singapore, I think about food. I thoroughly enjoyed the laksa pulao,' said Mr S.K. Jindal, director of Jindal Exports, one of the guests at the Delhi edition of Singapore Takeout, an event organised by the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) last week.

Five-star hotels such as The Park and the Taj Gateway have also introduced Singaporean dishes like chicken satay and char kway teow to cater to a growing number of Indians keen to try South-east Asian cuisine.

At The Metropolitan, a five-star hotel in the heart of Delhi, chef Tarun Kapoor last year put kopitiam laksa, Hokkien mee and nasi goreng on the menu.

'Indians earlier used to order predetermined dishes like butter chicken (a buttery curry preparation) or paneer (cottage cheese) preparations,' he said. 'Now the trend is changing. People want something new or presented in a different way because of which these dishes are moving fast. And they also have fewer calories.'

Although Indians are known to have conservative tastes in food, a growing number of middle class Indians are travelling, have more disposable income and are more willing to experiment with what they eat.

Singapore Takeout, a mobile kitchen event which also went to cities such as London, Paris, Moscow, New York, Hong Kong and Shanghai, is trying to tap this new hunger and take it a step further.

'We have had a good response. The traditional version of laksa is already available but we have given it a twist and come up with the laksa pulao,' said Mr Randall Tan Chin Boon, regional director (South Asia, Middle East and Africa) of STB. 'We want to customise the food to the Indian palate.'

The laksa pulao, which is available at Baywatch, the multi-cuisine restaurant at the ITC WelcomHotel Sheraton, is a hit, said its creator.

'People are very curious about it. They keep guessing what ingredients go into it,' said chef Chopra who, along with chef Bhasin, visited Singapore last year on a chef exchange programme.

'So many times I have been called to the table of a guest asking about the laksa leaf, which is not known in India. It makes the pulao flavourful,' he said.

'Indians are travelling far and wide, they have more money and are experimenting with different types of foods. As a result, there are even a lot of foreign chefs in India in five-star hotels and more restaurants. So people are tasting authentic flavours.'

Delhi, the only Indian city that Singapore Takeout visited, is a particularly hot hub for foreign cuisine, along with other metros like Mumbai and Bangalore. More than two dozen restaurants have popped up here in the last five years serving South-east Asian cuisine alone.

At Blue Ginger, a Vietnamese restaurant at the Taj Palace Hotel, three tables of Indians eat hot soupy noodles on a working day in the peak of summer. The restaurant serves food for Indians used to heavy spices and strong flavours, but no one is complaining.

In an upscale mall in Delhi, a small counter sells sushi in small boxes, while in another part of the city, Korean restaurant Gung The Palace serves kimchi.

At The Kitchen, the noodle dish khao suey from Myanmar has become so popular that the staff keep a daily count of how many bowls have been served since the restaurant opened in 2006. The number - 268,245 - is written with chalk on a blackboard hanging high on the wall.

A 2009 Food Franchising Report by industry body Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and the Confederation of Indian Food Trade and Industry shows that Indians were, on average, eating out six times a month in 2009 against twice a month in 2003.

Eating out in five-star hotel restaurants would cost a couple of thousand rupees for meal for two, while a takeout or standalone restaurant meal would cost around 1,000 rupees (S$25).

STB's Mr Tan believes the growing popularity of South-east Asian cuisine is also partly a result of a move towards healthy eating.

'Right now there is a South-east Asian influence... on eating healthy and fresh. I think there are great changes taking place in India. Indian traditional vegetables are cooked through and through but people want to taste crispiness in vegetables,' said Mr Tan.

The Mitra household goes out for Japanese and Thai food regularly.

'Five years ago, when I came back from Thailand, I was hankering after good Thai food but there was just one such restaurant,' said journalist Devirupa Mitra, who worked in Thailand briefly.

'Now, there is a lot of choice and it's not just fine dining, there is also takeout. Also, in most restaurants, multi-cuisine once meant only Chinese, Indian and continental. Now there is Thai, Myanmar and Singaporean. I remember going to this fusion restaurant in Delhi and seeing laksa on the menu. I was thrilled.

'But of course what you get in India is different from what you get in Bangkok.'

She has also pushed her parents, who have traditional Bengali tastebuds, to start eating sushi.

As Indians take to foreign cuisine, some restaurants are trying to bring in authentic flavours while others are bringing in Indian variations of foreign cuisine.

In fact, Chinese food, which is very popular in India, has become so Indianised that dishes like vegetarian Manchurian, a vegetable ball drenched in sweet and sour sauce, and chilli chicken are more Indian than Chinese.

Which is why Mr Tan hopes that the plan to produce Singapore-inspired dishes for the Indian palate will go down well.

Nirmala Ganapathy, India Correspondent