India on your plate

Rust steel rods rising towards a high roof overflow Art Deco-style grids in an irritable designation that greets us as we step into Masque. Created by acclaimed sculptor Rathin Barman, a work replicates a soon-to-open farm-to-fork restaurant’s neighbourhood. The rods paint a high-rises that are eating into a aged mills, one of them being a Laxmi Mills Compound where a grill stands.

Prateek Sadhu and Aditi Dugar during Masque. Pic/Atul Kamble

A outrageous velvet curtain, sketch from a restaurant’s pretension of an elegant theatre, separates a passageway turn from a belligerent one featuring wooden tables, sofas and an open bar embellished in fiery bullion — designed by Ashiesh Shah.

“He was desirous by a Japanese character of wabi-sabi, that is anticipating soundness in imperfection,” says mom-to-be Aditi Dugar, who bought a space to enhance her bespoke catering company, Sage And Saffron, though finished adult birthing a new try with prepare Prateek Sadhu, and touted it as botanical bistronomy. “We share a faith that it’s critical to know a tie between food and soil. That’s how a thought of farm-to-table came up,” says a 33-year-old, whose CV facilities stints with Michel Roux Jr’s Le Gavroche and Zuma in a UK.

Himalayan Rye Sourdough Bread

Ingredient is a star
The grill will offer usually tasting menus — three, 6 and 10 courses (known as a Masque experience) — featuring influences of French, American and Japanese flavours. “But a mixture will be a star of any dish,” asserts 30-year-old Sadhu, who has formerly worked during a acclaimed French Laundry and Noma. “At Noma, we learnt how to strap flavours from your possess region. That’s what we are doing here. Today, each guest wants to know where a food on his/her image comes from. We’ve trafficked opposite India to source mixture because, for us, internal extends to a whole country.”

For instance, a fiddlehead fern preserved in Fiddlehead Fern Ravioli, served with a saffron sauce, comes from a plantation in Himachal Pradesh. The saffron is sourced from Kashmir. A chocolate-buckwheat dessert is a matrimony of Pondicherry’s chocolate to Himachal’s buckwheat. “And we haven’t systematic them over a phone. We went foraging to several farms and sourced usually from those who rehearse tolerable methods,” informs Dugar.

Rhododendron And Champagne

Cooking adult a glow storm
Sadhu will use a brew of cooking techniques, including sous vide, dehydrating and regulating a glow pit. “It’s a on-going kitchen though no molecular gastronomy. For a potato dish, we prepare a whole potato in ash, that helps keep a flavour, though also adds a charred aftertaste. It will be presented in a box, while a potato is still charring,” he says. Dugar chips in, “We attempted it during a farm, where it was baked in an gritty pit.”

Meanwhile, a bar will offer an Ayurveda-based cocktail menu. “The cocktail syrups are done in-house. The infusions embody herbs, rhododendron (from Himachal), turmeric and roots of aquaponic basil (grown in water). We also have a judgment of make-your-own cocktail where a mixologist creates a cocktail formed on your preferences, that is purebred in your name with a series for we to sequence a subsequent time,” informs Dugar, adding, “It’s not a high-energy bar where we down 10 shots. The thought is to relax, bond with a food and suffer a dining experience.”

Opens ON Sep 20 (closed on Mondays)
Timings 12 noon to 3.30 pm; 7 pm to 12.30 am
At Unit G3 Laxmi Mills Compound, off Dr E Moses Lane, Mahalaxmi.
For respervations,
Call 24991010 (bookings open from Sep 10)
Email bookings@masquerestaurant.com
Cost Rs 2,200 and taxes (three-course dinner), Rs 3,200 and taxes (six-course dinner), Rs 4,500 and taxes (10-course dinner)

Where does it come from?

Apricots, apples, sea buckthorn berries, morels and saffron from Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Ladakh £Meats including steep and duck from a ornithology plantation on a Delhi-Jaipur Highway

Sheep beef from Rajasthan

Pink snapper, halibut and langoustines from Andaman Islands

Cheese from Andhra Pradesh and Pondicherry, goat divert from a plantation in Mysore

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