Dinner on a weekday is a deeply relaxing affair at The Residency at WelcomHotel Devee Grand Bay. When I walk in for the ongoing Southeast Asian feast at the restaurant, I’m immediately drawn to the warmth of the interiors after a hectic day at work.
Here’s a feast that celebrates the Year of the Tiger featuring exotic flavours from the Far East. The menu is a variety of rich dishes representative of the intricate connection between heritage and food. It is a combination of familiar and exotic flavours.
I take a table with chef Lok Thapa, who from his experience of working at ITC Grand Chola’s Pan Asian restaurant in Chennai, is now armed with a sound knowledge of cuisines from East Asia. I begin the culinary journey with a neatly laid out sushi dish — prawn tempura kamikaze roll. Conditioned by the notion that Japanese food was about raw meat, relished largely by those more experimental, I had been cautious about trying out sushi. But here, sushi attains a flavour that appeals to a global palate. “I have tried to experiment with the flavours to tweak it in a way that people who are trying out sushi for the first time will get to relish the dish,” says the chef. Prawn tempura kamikaze roll is crunchy and has the sweetness of fresh tempura prawn, creaminess of crab surumi, combined with mayonnaise. The flavour was refreshingly subtle and yet inviting. For the experimental lot, there is the spicy salmon uramaki, one of the authentic traditional Japanese sushi rolls.
