Horlicks and its competitor Ovaltine, were popular here in the UK when I was a kid in the 50s. I was never keen on either. My recollection is that Ovaltine was marketing towards children, while Horlicks was more an adult bedtime drink.
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quote=“klyeoh, post:60, topic:44958”]
quite a bargain
[/quote]
Not by Indian standards 
It’s almost INR 90 to 1 USD — price of a small coke is INR 40 for 200ml, for purchasing power parity / the coke index. Milk is INR 60 / litre.
Indian accent in Delhi is now 5500 for food, 4900 to 7900 more for wine pairing.
Their nyc menu is $135, wine pairing $65 — about double on the food without factoring in PPP (also note the inversion of food vs alcohol cost).
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What did you think of the whole thing in the end?
Reminds me of a meal at Masque in Mumbai a few years ago, I think it was 7,000pp before tip. The young chef was probably the best part of the whole thing – he gave us a tour of the kitchen at one point during the meal (I think it was part of the shtick and maybe one course was served in there or prepared while we were there). He’s since left to open a similarly high-end tasting menu spot at a hill station hotel in Himachal, focusing on the various cuisines around the Himalayas.)
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Kolkata-born, Bangkok-based Michelin-starred chef Gaggan Anand held a 20-day residency at the Hyatt Regency Delhi in Feb 2023 which offered a 25-course menu priced at ₹50,000 (US$570) with alcohol and ₹40,000 (US$455) without alcohol. It was fully-booked out on most days!
https://www.bwhotelier.com/article/gaggan-anand-is-back-to-take-delhi-by-storm-463057
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Massimo Botura was in Mumbai three years ago, priced similarly, no seats available in the blink of an eye, and again last year in Bengaluru.
It’s a barbelled society, even more so than the US.
But these are local chefs, not foreign-branded Michelin-starred folks, who are trying to focus on local dining.
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Well-heeled Indian clientele really are willing to pay tear-inducing sums for those special meals. And the level of finesse that went into preparing the food is really unparalleled.
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It’s less about the meal and more the bragging rights / brand value, unfortunately.
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At the end of the meal, each diner was gifted a goody bag containing a snack for later and a surprise gift. The snack was a nod to Chinese cuisine (Kolkata used to have a small but thriving Chinatown which is now gone) - a sponge cake made of rice flour and topped with what Chef Koyel described as lap cheong but to me tasted very much like char siu. Sorry, I forgot to take a photo of the unwrapped cake.
The surprise gift turned out to be a beautifully-made tiny ceramic ‘korai’ (Indian wok) and ‘khunti’ (Indian spatula).
The wrapped cake. The flower isn’t a dried flower but handmade out of shola pith (a natural plant product akin to cork).
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Yes, it was gondhoraj. Your friend’s description of it is very apt.
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I do wonder how this tasting menu will fare (sorry for the pun) in a city like Kolkata which isn’t as economically supercharged as Mumbai or Delhi. As a comparison, my husband and son did the AYCE lunch buffet at the ITC Royal Bengal 5-star hotel for rupees 2000 per head, less than half of the cost of this tasting menu. They were able to choose from vast quantities of food of excellent quality served in an ultra-luxe setting. Kolkata has numerous such buffets which would probably appeal more to Bengalis who don’t have deep pockets.
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Gorgeous!
My mom has a sholapith sculpture of Devi (mahishasur mardini) but it’s been packed away through the moves. (I think my sib wanted to take it last trip, but first needed to figure out how to keep it safe from the dogs 
).
When I look at the flowers, my first thought is how beautiful and what a delicate craft, and my second is… dust 
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So funny, I was going to mention the buffets when I replied to @klyeoh
But they are meant for different audiences, I think
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I thought 13 courses was too much for me personally, but I’m a small person who can’t eat much, so it might be fine for most people. I may have made a mistake by getting a cocktail pairing all to myself. 5 drinks in the course of 2 hours, even taking the giant ice cubes into account, left me completely sloshed by the end. A staff member had to accompany me down the steep stairs to make sure I didn’t fall over! In retrospect, I could have just had sips from my husband’s pairing. The food was quite rich so really needed some sort of astringent drinks to cut through. Chef Koyel did offer me more of the gondhoraj gel with the offal course as she saw I was struggling a bit.
There were 8-9 restaurant staff in the space the whole duration of the dinner. I was impressed by how calm and controlled the food prep was. Chef Koyel seemed happy and confident in her team and let them do pretty much all the prepping and plating while she got on with talking through the menu, chatting with guests and personally delivering some aspects like the pouring the jus. Service was excellent, with plates, glasses and cutlery being cleared very efficiently.
Sienna started as a business showcasing Bengal ceramics and they have a workshop in Shantiniketan. All the crockery and decor was made in their workshop. When I admired the gorgeous plates and bowls, Chef Koyel described how she worked with their master potter Bappa-da (‘older brother Bappa’) to create the bespoke crockery used in the tasting menu service. My husband was seriously in love with the ceramic coasters used for the water glasses and kept asking if he could buy some but was told they weren’t for sale.
All in all, I’m very happy to see a young female Bengali chef championing her cuisine and projecting an aura of confidence and calm. She’s clearly very knowledgeable and passionate. I learned several new things from her explanations during the tasting. I know some people might be put off by having a narrative for the whole meal but I felt it was an opportunity to gain insight into the mind of the chef and her team.
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Ya, those long tasting menus with alcohol parings can really do a number on you Great trip report so far!
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Wished I was there! I’d always wanted to know more about what I am eating, and I love background stories - like what inspires the chef, why she does what she’s doing, etc.
Singapore holds the Peranakan Literary Festival each year - next year, I am the moderator for the cookbook panel, and I have 4 (practically legendary) panelists - all famous chefs/cookbook authors - whom I’m dying to talk to. One of them wrote one of the first Peranakan/Straits Chinese/Nyonya cookbooks I’d ever owned - back in 1981. To get to interview him face-to-face is beyond my wildest dreams. Always exciting to delve into the mind of a chef/cookbook author/foodie.
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No beating home-cooking - always the best!
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That’s a lovely wrap-up.
I was familiar with Sienna and the Shantiniketan connection; I hope they succeed in this.
It’s interesting that the chef is India-trained, as many/most of those helming these kinds of menus have worked in western kitchens first, and later return to apply those techniques to Indian ingredients.
I enjoyed a meal at Masque in Mumbai several years ago, where the young Kashmiri-origin chef was a big part of the experience. He now has a place in Himachal at a boutique hotel where he focuses on Himalayan cuisines.
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The Sienna saga continued…my friends from medical school invited us to dinner at the restaurant 2 nights after the tasting menu. The restaurant menu is completely different.
Bar menu:
Restaurant menu:
We started off with cocktails and some snacks from the bar menu. I didn’t get photos of everything.
Tequila, cucumber, pineapple, basil:
Gin, muskmelon, lemongrass, fennel:
Jamun margarita:
Scotch egg made from country chicken egg:
Chicken liver, jam and toast: this was sourdough bread topped with jam made from jamun (Indian plum) and then topped with a liberal snowfall of finely shaved chicken liver. I loved this.
The others has chilli garlic bheja (brain) fry. No photo and I didn’t try it. I’m squeamish when it comes to eating brains.
We also ordered a couple of salads at the beginning: mochar salad (banana blossom) and chichinge (snake gourd), cucumber and charred borbotti (long bean) salad from the specials. These were very good and different.
Then we moved on to a mixture of small and large plates which we all shared.
Golda chingri (giant prawn) with ghilu (prawn brains) hollandaise:
Soft shell crab with crab caramel: I loved this and felt it was perfectly fried. My friend thought it was too heavy.
Chingri (prawn) lace dumplings with Malay curry: an interesting twist on traditional Bengali prawn malay curry with the prawns presented in dumplings under a thin rice flour pancake, with a sauce of malay curry, which paired perfectly with the dumplings.
Mangsho (goat) tonkotsu: the milky looking broth had a lot of depth of flavour.
The stuffed chicken wings and nori-pesto bhetki (a type of fish) were also ordered but I didn’t get photos.
I was too full for dessert. My son got the mishti doi creme brulee. The top cracked very satisfyingly.
I really hope to come back to try the other intriguing sounding items on the menu. I really loved dining at Sienna.
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WOW! That looks like an AMAZING meal. 
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Wow! So. Much. Foooood.
Looks great!
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