The Lodhi

The booking was for 6:45 and I had about thirty minutes.

Indian Accent also requires long sleeves and long trousers, so I changed.

Then I had a slow look around the hotel.

It had so many facilities and was so upmarket that I thought if I ever earn a lot I would come to India and stay here.

The staff were very kind even though I was not a guest.

And here too there was a toilet attendant who opened and closed the door for you and handed you a towel.

Indian Accent

Just inside the hotel entrance there was a separate entrance for Indian Accent, and further in the entrance to The Lodhi.

I came out of the hotel and went round to the Indian Accent entrance.

The entrance was very dim and carried an upmarket atmosphere.

I went in about ten minutes early and waited.

Some of the staff looked Chinese or Japanese.

It seems people come and work in places like this to build a career.

At Bukhara and here alike there were groups in on business.

They looked like a business group from Japan, probably stopping in here while doing business with Indian counterparts.

Coming to a high-end restaurant like this for business looked rather impressive.

I was shown to a relatively tucked-away seat, with a window beside me through which I could see a kind of artificial pond laid with gravel, which was nice.

The Chef's Tasting

For the order, naturally, the chef's tasting menu, non-veg.

And ordering drinks, I had to spend the rest of my cash and there was plenty left, so I decided to splash out a little.

Setting aside enough for a shower at the airport, I decided to spend some here and looked at the cocktail menu.

As it happened there was a Valentine's Day menu.

I ordered Cupid's Calling, which looked safe.

The Appetiser With No Name

The appetiser came out before the cocktail.

It had no name on the menu.

Two pieces of round, naan-like bread the size of finger food came out, with a sauce in a tall thin glass alongside.

The bread had the texture of naan, with goat cheese inside.

It tasted like blue cheese, that pungent and that concentrated.

The flavour was enormously deep, and enormously salty too.

The sauce was for pouring over.

It was a mushroom sauce, and without even being truffle it had a huge depth of mushroom to it.

That neutralised the salt somewhat.

It was a shame how salty it was, but as an appetiser the cheese and the mushroom were unmistakable.

Three Things

Next was a dish called burrata papdi chaat, benaras tamatari quinoa doi bora, berries fig and goat cheese samosa.

Three items came out at once, and this seemed to be an appetiser too.

The left one looked like yogurt you spoon up, and the middle like soft cheese or whipped cream set on a crisp base.

The right was like a very small samosa.

I tried the middle one first.

The freshness of the goat cheese came through strongly.

Biting into the very centre, there was a strong smell of cumin.

Not really my style, but it tasted good.

There was a little of that smell I had been calling body odour, and these smells all seem to be cumin.

The temperature was on the cold side, which I did not care for.

Next I ate the small samosa on the right.

The inside was an ordinary samosa and the taste was ordinary, but being unremarkable it was honestly the most my style.

And this was the only one served warm, which was good.

The one on the far left had a cold-textured meatball inside.

The sourness of the sour cream swallowed the whole flavour.

And heat comes at the end, with a bit of an olive note too.

This was not my style either; if I had to put it plainly, it tasted exactly like the kind of Indian food I dislike.

The cumin was too strong.

And overall, everything being cold was a letdown.

Chicken Tikka Chaat

Chicken tikka chaat and khakhra mille feuille, shimla mirch mayo came out, and since it looked like butter chicken curry on a cracker I had hopes for it.

The cracker had a crisp texture with a little sogginess to it.

What sat on top was just ordinary chicken tikka masala.

Chicken tikka masala is absolutely good, so this dish did win some points from me.

Saffron went on top, and never having eaten it I did not know what it smelled like, so I could not tell what it contributed here either.

But the chicken being a bit cold here too was not to my liking.

There was a white sauce beside it for dipping, which just tasted of egg mayonnaise.

Cupid's Calling

The cocktail arrived, pink, decorated with a firm jelly skewered on a cocktail stick.

The jelly tasted like those rolled-up American sweets.

The cocktail kept the softness of egg yolk, and tasted like lemon mixed with orange juice.

I had thought working out hard had raised my tolerance, but even a small amount left me a bit light-headed.

I felt pleasantly, moderately buzzed.

I asked the server for a photo and got that slightly buzzed version of myself on camera too.

Tandoori Salmon

Tandoori salmon, dill leaves, greek style yoghurt came as salmon grilled to the colour of tteokgalbi, with slices of cucumber beside it.

Since the menu said Greek style yoghurt on the cucumber, I expected something like tzatziki on top.

I tried the salmon first and was startled when it simply dissolved in my mouth.

No exaggeration, it melted like ice cream.

The best salmon I have ever eaten.

And the softest.

Eaten with my eyes shut it tasted like beef.

The outside being grilled like beef was remarkable in itself.

The cucumber was fresh, and what was on it tasted closer to onion cream than to tzatziki or yogurt.

The salmon was seasoned slightly salty, so eating it with the sour-cream-topped cucumber paired very well.

Without question this was the best thing I had eaten so far.

But a lot still seemed to be left to come.

Pork Ribs

Meetha achaar pork ribs, sun dried mango, sour green apple looked thoroughly artistic.

This seemed to be the main dish.

At the Michelin restaurants I have been to the meat has mostly come plain, like a well-grilled steak, but this came casually coated in sauce.

The cut was rib, and not beef but pork rib.

Thin mango was laid on top like jelly, with apple cut fine as radish strips over it.

I took a bite of the meat and it was extremely tender.

The sauce was very sweet, like strawberry jam, and the mango jelly added to that sweetness.

But the mango flavour coming from the jelly added something slightly unusual.

The rib itself was cooked perfectly.

So this is what a main course is.

At the end it was crisp, like a crust.

'Crisp outside, moist inside' suited it exactly.

On the apple there was a red powder, which seemed to smell of cumin.

Not the smell I had been calling body odour all along; probably this was cumin.

So what was the other one, then?

I have no idea, but at any rate certain dishes had a spice in them with that body-odour-like smell, and this was a different spice from that.

The whole of the meat carried this smell faintly, and it was a smell I had no objection to.

It was good, but the salmon had been so astonishing that this was not the best.

The source of that body-odour-like smell lies on the spice side.

Asafoetida, the spice called hing in India, smells of sweat or rotten eggs when raw, because of its sulphur compounds.

Meet heat and those compounds burn off, turning into a savouriness like garlic and onion.

The sotolon in fenugreek, once in the body, is excreted straight through the sweat glands.

Cumin likewise produces sulphur compounds as it is digested, changing the smell of sweat.

In the end, the source of that smell is not people but spice.

Kulfi Sorbet

The indian accent kulfi sorbet was meant as a palate cleanser.

The kulfi came in a small pot, and lifting it by the stick there was charcoal powder on the end like cigarette ash.

The shape of the kulfi was the spinning-top shape my mother used to buy and freeze.

That powder smelled very strongly of the body-odour-like spice.

The kulfi had the texture of sorbet rather than the chewy kind, and it was very good until, toward the end, a strong peppery smell came up here too.

It was that awful drink from the Italian restaurant the day before.

At any rate, my palate was cleansed.

I had drunk only half the cocktail and by now felt quite buzzed.

The server changed to a Chinese server who came to look after me, and from the accent that remained he seemed to have come from China.

He looked like someone working at this restaurant with some dream in mind, and he worked so hard that I warmed to him.

Lamb

Braised lamb shank, punjabi kadhi, smoked papad came as minced lamb with an orange sauce, together with a naan the size of a palm.

Black dairy dal anar avocado raita indian accent kulcha also came with two kinds of sauce in separate bowls.

There was so much of it that you could take this as the main.

The lamb tasted exactly like chilli tuna.

Both the texture and the taste.

But a rather spicier chilli tuna.

The sauce under the lamb is butter chicken curry.

But a curry with no tomato taste at all and on the spicy side.

It was good, but not a favourite.

The naan was really, really good.

The salmon and this dish were the best of it.

The butter chicken curry is actually inside the naan.

The cheese flavour was superb too, and rich, and the butter chicken curry was not strong on spice.

The vegetable served with the lamb I took for a shishito pepper, but it was just a very crisp vegetable.

One sauce seemed to be a lentil sauce, slightly fermented, tasting similar to doenjang.

The other sauce was sour cream, light and easy to take.

With no onion note to it, it was not onion cream but plain sour cream.

It tasted close to yogurt, and you could think of it as a sweet yogurt.

Easy to take and good.

There was pomegranate in it too.

Eating all of this filled me up.

Everything I had eaten so far was heavily seasoned overall, with very strong spice.

Not one thing so far had been perfectly seasoned.

The salmon was slightly salty too, but it was the closest to perfect.

Dessert

Masala peanut soft serve, lonavala chikki came as a small tree stump with four holes bored in it, with a small ice cream cone set into one of them.

It is, quite literally, peanut butter ice cream that tastes of peanut butter.

It is good.

The cone had a very soft, crisp texture.

I was thirsty so I ordered lime soda twice, and it was the best thing for thirst.

Kinnaur apple, shakarpara crumble, homemade vanilla bean ice cream coconut and jaggery brûlée, ruby grapefruit pops were the other two desserts.

First, cold vanilla ice cream set inside a very thin, oily crust.

Beneath the ice cream was a warm cinnamon crumble that gave it crispness.

The other was a crème brûlée with a deep egg flavour under a crisp, sweet shell.

The first mouthful is very soft, but halfway through it was very rich.

On top they served grapefruit skewered on a cocktail stick, which was good as a cleanser.

The Bill

I finished eating at exactly 8:23 and got ready to pay.

I took it very slowly and ate for more than an hour, and the biggest strength was how many kinds of dish there were and how much of it.

I was very full.

Buzzed, I thought I would sleep well on the plane.

With the drink in me, the place where the skin had torn away suddenly began to sting.

I asked for the wifi password and booked an Uber.

My data plan had run out.

The total came to 8,662 rupees.

I paid 6,000 rupees in cash and 2,662 by card.

To the Airport

In the Uber I thought I was going to die, I needed the toilet so badly.

We left at 8:45 and arrived at 9:20.

With twenty minutes to go my stomach hurt terribly.

The moment I reached the airport I needed the toilet; the fare was 410 rupees and, in too much of a hurry for change and holding only 500-rupee notes, I just took 50 back and gave him 450.

I ran in, and they checked bags even to get into the airport, which annoyed me.

A very inconvenient, annoying airport.

I got in and the toilet was being cleaned, so I went all the way across to find another.

After a whole sitcom like that I expected huge relief when I finally went, but it was agony.

A Shower and a Thums Up

Inside the airport I took a shower at a place called Elkam Spa, with thirty minutes allotted.

I spent 1,416 rupees on it, and the shower room was clean and upmarket, which satisfied me.

I paid 100 rupees for a Thums Up from a vending machine and drank it.

And at Starbucks I bought water and a strawberry milkshake for 657 rupees.

Boarding the plane, a man with a very strong body odour was walking ahead of me and I prayed not to be seated near him.

Fortunately I was not.

Via Hong Kong

The flight was more comfortable than I expected and I arrived at Hong Kong airport.

I had looked up in advance that Hong Kong had showers and went to find them.

You could buy a towel from a vending machine, so I paid by card, and the machine ate my money.

Assuming everyone in Hong Kong speaks English, I grabbed any member of staff to ask, but the older people working at the airport could not speak English at all.

A young man spoke fluent English so I asked him, but he came out with unhelpful nonsense, so I walked all the way to the information desk.

There I was told you can call for help on an airport phone, so I went to find one.

And I called and had a technician sent.

He came, confirmed from the receipt that the machine had taken my money, and got the towel out of it for me.

Thanks to him I had a good shower.

And then I bought ramen.

I had expected it to be expensive and bad, but it was extremely good, quality ramen.

Everything from the broth to the chashu was good.

I also paid a lot for yogurt at a place called Slowood, and with varied toppings and a very generous portion I enjoyed it.

Arriving in Korea late at night, my mother and father were there to meet me.

It was so easy, and I was so grateful.