Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Hyderabad
MANGO MANIA
|
The mango festival at this rooftop restaurant at the Capitol Hotel captures the last precious days of this much-awaited season
|
ANY SELF-respecting south Indian will tell you the best way to savour a mango is to separate the pulp from the skin with your teeth, and lick the sticky juices as they trickle from your palm down to your elbow. The mango is generally partaken of post-lunch, and followed by a spot of milk. If, however, you've screwed up your face in disgust at these primitive practices and claim to actually enjoy a mango when approached with a fork — napkin carefully in place to capture stray juices — Metro Plus recommends you head out to Trivoli.
The mango festival at this rooftop restaurant at the Capitol Hotel captures the last precious days of this much-awaited season. On the menu are desserts, cocktails, and main dishes — like shrikhand and puries — mostly innovations by the restaurant, using high quality Alphonso mango.
Mango is a difficult fruit to innovate with; its thickness and characteristic taste tend to overshadow other flavours it is clubbed with, and so the festival at the Trivoli is a brave attempt to try daring combinations. Where else would you get beer and mango cheesecake, for instance? Or a cocktail containing mango juice and red wine?
Most innovations have worked, besides which the view of the Vidhana Soudha and surrounding areas is itself well worth a dekko. - Photos: Sampath Kumar G.P.
Some items work from the word go. The `creamy mangoes with date sauce' is incredibly good: the flavour of the date sauce sets off the mango taste, doing justice to both the rich date sauce as well as the mangoes. The mango mousse is also perfect — it's not as light and fluffy as some chocolate and strawberry mousses can be... but mango is thick and rich, and Chef Eshwar Rao has done a great job with consistency. Also great is the humble mango juice... , which can go wrong so easily, becoming too rich or too sweet. Instead the mango juice at Trivoli maintains a fine balance between thickness and sweetness.
The restaurant projects the beer and mango cheesecake and the mango chaat as their best dishes, but at the risk of sounding like a purist, I venture that mango is best left out of chaat, and the beer cheesecake is too many things crammed into one dessert.
The mocktails and cocktails on the mango menu are novel attempts at innovating with a fruit that is usually considered best savoured as a straightforward juice.
Trivoli tries to draw out the mango by mixing it with red wine in a cocktail called Yellow River Turns Red, but this turns out as sacrilegious as it sounds. Red wine and mango don't physically blend together — the mango sinks to the bottom and the red wine floats undecidedly on top, lending its taste randomly to the drink. Metro Plus recommends you try Snake On The Snow. This is a real cocktail, the components do work together and you can even savour the mango through it all — quite a bonus!
The festival at Trivoli restaurant is on at the Capitol till June 16th and it's definitely worth a visit — most desserts are priced between Rs. 65 and Rs. 100 and the cocktails are the usual rate, a little this side and that of the Rs. 160 mark.
Most innovations have worked, besides which the view of the Vidhana Soudha and surrounding areas is itself well worth a dekho.
Ambience: Great view
Wallet Factor: Slightly high, but worth it
Service: Good
Speciality: Snake on the Snow cocktail
HEMANGINI GUPTA
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Hyderabad
|
