As Pep Kumar articulates.”Vivanta caters to younger, spirited people on the go so everything from service, design to staff uniforms is edgier.”
**
A visit to this hotel, as is the case with most Vivanta properties makes you realise that hospitality is no longer one thing but many. It is personal attention, yes, as always but also the expansion of culinary experience, an inclusion of international sensibilities in design and food. So yes, the core stays timeless but the dimensions change, grow broader.
**
This piece is an overview of all of this and of how the guests at Taj are no longer just recipients of an experience but co-creators so they are invited to not just sample but to muddle and shake the subtle and sharp keynotes of Oliveto, water melon and basil bramble and Rosemary Delight behind the bar counter.
At the four acre Yeshwantpur property, guests can find almost everything for a productive or leisurely day ranging from State-of-the-Art conference spaces to evolved Indian cuisine at Paranda, to coffee shop chatter, adventurous cocktails in the fashion inspired Shimmer, to the celebration of Mediterranean and fusion food at Azure, the hotel’s show-piece restaurant. You will be right at home in this elegant, 106- cover restaurant (with a semi-private dining room and alfresco seating) if you are familiar with Spanish, Italian, Moroccan, Greek. Syrian, Lebanese flavours. There is a wine cellar (with a quirky wine wall )serving the finest wines to go with the hand-picked recipes bursting with freshness. The five -course menu was conceived and designed by master chef Rimoun Imad Obaid and later nourished by Chef Uddipan Chakravarthy. In a show kitchen, diners can see the clock-work precision with which dishes are prepped, cooked and given the final touches. The design aesthetics are impeccable, right from the larger-than-life blue mosaic on the wall to the suspended lights to the blue and white accents to the crockery by Marie Therasay.
**
The food is more of a journey rather than a destination with soups ranging from a lamb and leek bouillon with minty mascarpone to a consommé of chicken with vermicelli and tomato citrus to a seafood broth. On the day we visited Azure, we were served lemony horse gram and Spanish potato soup, a mildly flavoured offering, followed by a course of salads and hummus that on any given day can ladle out anything from plum tomato confit with artichoke and cured buffalo mozzarella to Greek salad, Shawarma, soft shell crab with spiked molasses, falafel with Tahina molasses dip, pan seared scallops with pumpkin coulis and sweet potato crisp. From carpaccio to cured salmon dishes, to Kibbe –a traditional Middle Eastern dish made with lamb and Maqaali– deep fried marrow squash, aubergine, florets with pita and onion chilly salad, it is all here.
The Main Course teems with picks like red mullet enveloped with vine leaf, the dramatic Tagine with slow cooked vegetables and couscous, tortellini, sea asparagus and tamarind relish, sea food paella, homemade pork sausage and red wine risotto with pan seared broccoli, confit of chicken with cured fig, red wine and mocha glaze, warm burrata with asparagus and vegetable mousseline, Empinadas- baked layers of vegetable and puff pastry with tomato cream.
And much more!
The Dessert Menu serves the luscious warm chocolate fallen cake with organic vanilla ice-cream, rose, chocolate damask and gelatos and the sensational Baklwa.
**
Service is attentive, well-informed but unobtrusive. And each moment is an exploration of luxuriously detailed and yet simple and honest-to-goodness food.
For reservations and enquiries please contact:
Vivanta by Taj-Yeshwantpur
Telephone: +91 80 6690 0111
