In what promises to be a memorable culinary showcase, Four Seasons Hotel Bengaluru’s Asian restaurant Far & East will be hosting the Colombo-based Ministry of Crab, number 35 on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants. At the two day pop-up, Bengaluru diners will have a taste of a four-course menu curated by Chef Darshan Munidasa, who spearheads Ministry of Crab.
At Far & East, the menu will include recognisable favourites like avocado and crab salad: steamed and chilled crab meat spiked with wasabi mayonnaise, and jumbo garlic chilli prawns served with a traditional Sri Lankan kade bread. In the main course, diners can tuck in to a spiced pepper crab served with Japanese rice.
Zeroing in on these particular dishes was a no-brainer for the team. After all, “people will expect to try out our signature dishes, the ones we are most famous for,” says Munidasa, over a phone call from Colombo. He adds, “We want the diners in Bengaluru to have the same experience that they would normally have at our restaurant in Colombo, or in Mumbai.”
To that end, the chef already has teams stationed in Mumbai (where Ministry of Crab launched in 2019) and in Chennai, aiding the Far & East team.
Why Chennai, you ask? “It is where our crab comes from. Even on a usual day at the Mumbai restaurant, our crabs are flown in from Chennai,” replies the cChef.
The reason for this is fairly straightforward. “Fresh crab of good quality, in the large quantities that Ministry of Crab requires, can be regularly sourced only in Chennai. We are a no-freeze restaurant, so good fresh crabs are very important to our operations; and we want the Bengaluru pop-up to have the same,” says the chef, adding on a hopeful note, “It is so much easier to organise something like this now, since we have teams in both those cities. We are trying to bring our food to different parts of India.”
Ministry of Crab is currently present in Colombo, Shanghai, Manila, Mumbai, Maldives and Bangkok.
The pop-up will be held at Four Seasons Bengaluru, Embassy ONE, on May 11 and 12. For reservations, call 080 45222233, or +91 9739906230
