By Venkatachari Jagannathan
Welcome to the 68-cover Above the Sea Level resto-bar at the Raintree Hotel on St.Mary’s Road where the “Fish Bazaar” seafood festival Jan 24-Feb 3 is being hosted.
The dishes are served with a choice of accompaniments like olive grilled vegetables, spicy potato wedges or garlic mashed potatoes.
And guests can enjoy the starry skies and breeze and speculate on the names of the other tall structures visible on the skyline while eating their food.
Live iraal, lobsters and other fish are kept in a large glass tank for guests to choose from.
Setting the mood to dive into an elaborate fishy dinner is the aroma that wafts through the restaurant and a small fish bowl containing live blue gourami – an ornamental fish.
No, the fish in the bowl is not for the plate. Watching it, guests can relax their minds.
“Last year we had 40 fish varieties and this year it is 51. No imported fish varieties are served during the seafood festival. This is an opportunity for the guests to taste the local catch,” Shankar said.
Surprisingly there is no seafood soup.
“We offer only vegetarian soups,” Shankar said, suggesting the oven-roasted tomato soup.
Shankar passed out of the Institute of Hotel Management here. He joined the Taj Madras Flight Kitchen and worked in other hospitality groups. He also had a brief stint at London’s Coromandeal Restaurant before joining Raintree Hotel a couple of years ago.
By this time, the slender grilled lady fish arrived on the table. The flesh was tender and there were not much of problematic bones spoiling the mission on hand.
The mouthful of succulent prawns go down the throat in a jiffy. The meaty prawns taste better without any accompaniment.
Suddenly the blue gourami gets agitated. Perhaps it turned jittery fearing for life as the plate on the table was empty.
The painful wait for the tandoori pomfret ended with Shankar serving the tantalising reddish masala-coated fish. It tasted great with or without a coat of lime. However, an extra dash of masala would have been in order.
“If you have it with wine it would be great,” suggested assistant restaurant manager R. Anand, who was an executive butler at a beach villa/resort property in the Maldives before joining here.
“Once a guest in the middle of the night wanted to learn using a coffee machine. He did not allow me into his room as his daughter was sound asleep. I brought a coffee machine from another villa and taught him its operation,” Anand mused.
He said butlers are hired by industrialists, movie stars and other high net worth individuals after experiencing the service in a hotel.
“Overseas the pay and the opportunities for a butler are good. An Italian guest who came to stay in the Maldives beach villa hired me as his personal butler and took me to Germany,” Anand said.
Though the pay and the employer were very good, Anand was not able to acclimatise to the cold German climate and he returned here.
The ponni rice with Penang curry tastes great while the other two curries were also good. It is better to avoid basmati rice with these curries.
For the sweet tooth there is gulab jamun and saffron-flavoured rabdi.
A good meal for two would cost between Rs.2,000-3,000 (without alcohol).
Source: IANS