The Gourmet House serves a wide range of pan-Asian cuisine
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The multi-speciality restaurant in Thiruvananthapuram leaves one spoilt for choice
Foodies in the city have never had it so good. With the dining scene undergoing a rapid transformation over the years, gourmands now have a number of options to choose from as the city slowly turns home to an immensely diverse range of restaurants that will take you around the world, one bite at a time. From wood-oven pizzas to hand-made ice creams, diners are spoilt for choice.
A new kid on the block is The Gourmet House. A three-month-old joint, the brainchild of Mauzzam M. Nathani, Amreen Shoaib, Joe John Thomas and Jeeth Mathew, the restaurant serves a “bit of something from across the globe”, right from Japanese to Thai and Mexican to the Mediterranean.
And while Continental food is now commonly available in most restaurants as people dig into lasagnas, pastas, steaks and what not, what I found interesting on their menu however is the wide range of Pan Asian cuisine. “Except in perhaps restaurants of five star hotels in the city, there are hardly any regular food joints that has authentic Pan Asian food. We hope to fill that space. We also hope to introduce the concept of having a five-course meal amongst our customers,” says Mauzzam.
While most ingredients are easily available in the city, some of the sauces used for the marinade of certain recipes are sourced from Bangalore, Mumbai or Delhi.
Joe says that the restaurant strives to make the food as authentic as possible. “I think, we have been successful as diners who have travelled the world, and have feasted on various cuisines, have commented on how similar the flavours of our dishes are to the ones they have had during their trip abroad. In fact, we have quite a few repeat customers. One of diners is so fond of our Nasi goreng, an Indonesian version of fried rice, that she insists on having it each time she visits; she refuses to try anything new,” he says.
Amreen, however, adds that they have had to take down a notch the use of certain ingredients such as fish sauce and shrimp paste for certain recipes. “Some customers found these ingredients overpowering and so we have reduced the level that is generally used in the recipe, whilst ensuring the flavours remain the same. We want to offer our customers who haven’t tried a particular cuisine, the real deal,” says Amreen, as a waitress serves me some Vietnamese summer rolls. Perfect for warm weathers, it is like biting into summer, with fresh crunchy vegetables, aromatic herbs and plump, juicy prawns rolled in rice paper wrappers. A stark contrast is the Veg katsu, which is perfect for those cool evenings curled up with a book. Sliced aubergines, onions and even spinach leaves are dipped in a mildly spiced batter and fried. While similar to a veg pakoda, the difference is in the coating, the veg katsu’s is wafer thin.
Hokaido Yakitori has slices of meat or vegetables grilled on a skewer. Mine is beef. The savoury sweet marinade that coats the thin slices of beef is to sum it in one word, yum, and reminds one of teriyaki sauce.
As I have a cold, Amreen insists I have a piping hot bowl of soup. While the Pho Gha (a Vietnamese chicken noodle soup) and the Minestrone verdure (vegetables, pesto and pasta in a tomato based concoction), sound appetising, I give them a pass as I fear that they may be too filling and may ruin the rest of my meal. I finally decide on Mushroom Chai. As the chai is served in a tiny pot, I wonder if I have ordered a tea by mistake. I give a sigh of relief when the waitress pours the chai into a soup bowl. The aroma from the bowl whets my appetite. The soup has dried mushrooms in clear, full-bodied beef broth. One can taste a touch of coriander in the soup. The use of basil not only lends the soup its fragrance, but enhances its flavour.
Mushroom pot rice has long grain basmati rice cooked in stock and oodles of mushroom. Lightly spiced, it is a perfect comfort food, just like our Indian dal kichadi. While the dish is best had on its own, if you really need gravy to pair the dish with, try it with Chicken in bean sauce.
What better way to top off the meal than with hand-churned ice creams. “These are handmade at our production unit in Mumbai,” says Mauzzam, who insists I try their crowd favourites – paan and mixed berries. While the former had the distinctive flavour of meetha paan, the latter is a light, refreshing treat for the palette. Blissful end to a gourmet meal.
The Gourmet House is open in the evenings for dinner from 7 pm till 11 pm. While the eatery offers Sunday brunch, they plan to introduce daily lunch shortly.
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