Chef’s Tasting Menu at Bay Leaf Restaurant, Bamboo Saa Resort & Spa, Udaipur
Chef’s Tasting Menu at Bay Leaf Restaurant, Bamboo Saa Resort & Spa, Udaipur
Remember that beautiful restaurant on the foothill of Sajjangarh, Bay Leaf, yes it is now back into the service in the same location inside a newly launched boutique resort with twenty five uniquely designed villas, Bamboo Saa Resort & Spa by a dear friend and an extremely talented Chef and Foodpreneur Mr Shaunak Verdia.
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| Bay Leaf Restaurant at Bamboo Saa Resort & Spa, Udaipur (picture from Official FB page of Bay Leaf) |
Recently we were invited to a Chef Tasting Menu, one of a kind in the city's food scene.
It was a full five-course menu and prepared by their all-new magnificent team of Chefs under the patronage of the owner of Bamboosa Resort & Spa, Mr Shaunak Verdia himself.
One thing I like to state at the very beginning that when you enter a restaurant that is owned and managed by a talented & professionally trained Chef, one thing is sure that you'll find most of the dishes are in some sense unique and bear the signature of a motivated Kitchen team. And no exception here, though Shaunak now becomes a Hotelier and a Foodpreneur with multiple activities to manage, he still commands the Kitchen with his supreme leadership style and a true sense of flavour and its perfect pairing. Whenever I ate food prepared with his signature recipes, I got a feeling of extreme satisfaction and pleasure registered through my taste buds.
Coming back to the Tasting Menu session, the first course was a choice of vegetarian and non-vegetarian Appetizers. On the vegetarian platter, we had Cheese Seekh kabab, Baingan Bhaja and a Veggie Pizza.
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| Vegetarian Appetizers |
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| Non Vegetarian Appetizers |
Now Baingan Bhaja is a specialty dish from Bengal as the Head Chef hails from there and it is deep fried Brinjal slices served piping hot with some fried crispy julienned potato. Definitely, something that is very new to the city. The Pizza and the Seekh were pretty good too.
Most of the places who serve Chef Shaunak's recipes, they have these irresistible thin crust Pizzas which were made with fresh dough and an excellent mix of different kind of Cheeses, not the regular processed one. And here also everyone on the table loved the Pizza slices which were delicious in every sense.
On the non-vegetarian platter, we had Tawa Fish, Chicken Talli Kabab and Adreki Gosht ka Seekh.
The fish was fresh and fried on tawa with light spice coating. Tender and flaky bites melted in the mouth.
The Adreki Gosht Ka Seekh was a minced mutton preparation. The flavour mixing was perfect, and so does the blend of spices.
Chicken Talli Kabab was something very interesting as some amount of liquor was used in the marination and thus the name derived, Talli (Drunk) kabab. Marination was perfect and helped the chicken to become spicy yet flavourful when put in a tandoor.
Next was the Soups.
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| Tom Kha Chicken Soup |
Vegetarian and Chicken Tom Kha Soup. Trust me, I can visit this place again and again just to taste there Tom Kha Soup. Everything was being made from scratch which is very unlikely these days in the professional kitchens with the advent of readymade paste of tom kha and other exotic soup mixes. But again when you make a soup fresh from scratch with right ingredients and especially a Thai soup with those flavourful Thai Basil, Galangal (Thai Ginger) it just gave you a completely different kind of flavour. I would say the soup was one of the stars in the multi-course tasting session.
Salads were served next in some pretty interesting way. Duce Mellon with Feta and a Ceaser Salad with Grilled Chicken. Fresh, juicy ingredients and the right amount of dressings were used. The entire table loved both the variants.
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| Ceaser Salad with Grilled Chicken |
For the Mains, there were two parts. First, the International section where a Lasagne was served for vegetarian and Spicy Grilled Chicken with Chimichurri Sauce was served for the non-vegetarian.
Lasagne is one of the signature dishes of Chef Shaunak as he loves doing some improvisation. We were served a regular version with spinach and ricotta and it was delicious.
The Grilled Chicken was juicy and tender, and the Chimichurri Sauce that was again prepared fresh served as a perfect companion to the dish. Mashed potato and grilled veggies were served along with to balance the dish perfectly in terms of flavour and protein-carb pairing.
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| Grilled Chicken with steamed veggies and Chimichurri Sauce |
Now the second part of the Mains was Indian dishes where Kumbh Makai Palak, Suran ki Sabji, Hariyali Kofta in Red Gravy, Dal Makhani, Vegetable Biryani were served for the vegetarian section and for those who were fine with non-vegetarian two more dishes, a home-style Mutton curry and Chicken Biryani were served.
The Kumbh Makai Palak was an assortment of pumpkin, sweet corn and spinach and the Hariyali Kofta in Red Gravy was corn spinach balls served in tomato based curry. Both were nice and flavourful. Suran ki Sabji is a traditional dish, the main ingredient of the dish is a root vegetable called Suran found in this part of Rajasthan. And the recipe they followed to prepare the dish is one of the Family Legacy of Chef Shaunak that was handed over to him by his father and developed a few generation back by his forefathers. A unique dish to taste and we had the delicacy with some Tandoori Roti. Dal Makhani was delicious too.
The homestyle Mutton Curry was on a bit spicier side and made using a simple home-style recipe that we normally find in Rajput Gharanas of Rajasthan.
The biryani was okayish and can be improved.
As a special gesture we were served a very special dish by the Head Chef during the meal and it was a Lamb's Whole Roasted Leg aka Roasted Raang.
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| Roasted Raang, Lamb's Roasted Whole Leg |
Oh, My My! The non-vegetarian lovers on the table went gaga over it including me. The tender and juicy meat roasted medium to well done, and a garlic butter sauce with lemon and fresh herbs was poured all over it along with grilled veggies.
We loved it to its core and a highly recommended dish to try at Bay Leaf if you have a group of three to four people together.
The dessert section was pretty interesting.
First, we were served some delicious Chocolate Mousse and then ABC Halwa, that is Apple, Banana and Carrot Halwa. A very interesting twist to the traditional winter speciality Carrot Halwa with two of the delicious and different fruits like Apple and Banana. But the flavours were perfectly matched, and we could register all three fruits separately but in a perfect union.
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| Chocolate Mousse Icecream |
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| ABC Halwa |
Overall a great dinner and the tasting session was a memorable event with the finest of the dishes that Bay Leaf Restaurant is going to serve along with plenty of choices in their all-new menu.
We had a wonderful company of the Owner Mr Shaunak Verdia, his wife and a passionate Edupreneur Mrs Ishani Verdia, one of the most dynamic Chef and a dear friend, Owner of Mafia Chef, Mr Devansh Jhaveri and his wife, Mrs Umang Gandhi Jhaveri.
I was accompanied by my lovely wife Mrs Oindrilla Paul along with some of my Food Critics, Food Photographer, Blogger and food enthusiast friends Mr Rajat Mogra of Spoon n Snap, Ms Roma Srivastava and Mr Kashish Seth in the evening.
We wish Bay Leaf Restaurant as well as Bamboo Saa Resort & Spa a great future ahead and all the very best to Mr Shauna Verdia for his all-new venture.
Bamboo Saa Resort & Spa is located near Sajjangarh and the contact information are as follows -
Contact Us
(picture courtesy - Mr Rajat Mogra of Spoon n Snap, https://www.facebook.com/spoonnsnap/)
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