R.E.D. Certainly Rare: Last Bite/Ravi V.Chhabra

I was at Rare Eastern Dining or R.E.D in short, housed at the Radisson MBD hotel in Noida. A dash of red color complimented the interiors of this specialty cuisine restaurant

The Mayonnaise Prawns arrived as I took a sip of the tranquilizing Jasmine tea. I was all too keen to taste the authentic Oriental cuisine done with a combination of fruits and Juice Prawns in Singapore mayonnaise-based sauce.

The prawns tingled my taste buds as I savored every luscious bite. The starters promised that the meal to follow would be nothing less than fantastic.

The paintings splashing scarlet spoke a great deal about the oriental aura and its history with red symbolizing the vitality of the East.The logo proudly flaunting vibrant and hi-tech, fashionable new east that is contemporary and chic.
The interior done in rose wood is a creation of P49 - a Thailand based design group. With offices in Australia, China and Singapore, P49 has produced some of Asia’s finest designs that include the Ritz Carlton Bali, Le Meridien Khao Lak and the Ritz Carlton Spa Bali, Marriot Mandarin Spa Shanghai, Sheraton Spas in Pattaya and Krabi.

A whiff of steamed chicken mingled with the perfume of the hall, as I realized the waiter approaching with the second round of starters. Bearing delectably dressed ‘Chicken Dimsums’, he laid the juicy, steamed chicken dumplings on the china and served it with rice vinegar pickled ginger. It tasted simply superb. Engrossed in devouring the ‘Crispy Black Mushroom Dry Red Chili’, a specialty from Singapore, I keenly observed the decor of the restaurant - as if a part of a Singapore cutout!
Pink orchids on slim porcelain vases occupied the center of the dinning tables. The USP being unique made-to-order ‘induction tables’ for a personalized cook & dine foray; with a chimney for each table, facilitating the diners to cook themselves for their guests with the chef’s help. After the last round of appetizers with ‘Pokchoy Dimsums’, a minced vegetable in a Pokchoy flavored wanton sheet, chef Raymond Sim from Singapore blended ‘Sliced Lamb with Ginger and Spring Onions’ at the induction table.

The whole concept of cooking on your own sitting in a five star’s specialty restaurant was an experience I hadn’t fathomed earlier. The chef made sure to use chicken powder instead of MSG to authenticate the lamb preparation. What was his favorite cuisine?, I enquired. “I prefer Chinese because you need to use fresh ingredients to prepare such cuisine”, answered Sim. Trained in Singapore, chef Raymond’s first stint with a kitchen was in 1979. After years of experimentation he has perfected the art of cooking by assorting his signature menu for the restaurant. His customized signature dishes include dramatic reinterpretations of classic eastern cuisine from Japan, China, Thailand, Mongolia, Malaysia and Singapore.
The waiter arrived with a steaming bowl of thick bean curd soup with seafood and placed it on the table, gently. The soup tantalized my taste buds yet again and I congratulated Chef Sim for the excellent preparation.

For main course, he brought stirred Exotic Chinese Greens in Fragrant Sauce. The Fragrant Sauce was brewed with oriental greens in a yellow bean and rose wine flavored sauce.

The second round of main course comprised a classic combine of bean curd and double mushroom in Oyster Sauce, followed by chicken in Chilly Vinegar Sauce. This was a house specialty flavored with Chin Kiang Vinegar. Singaporean Mee Swa noodles and ginger spring onion fried rice flanked with steamed snapper in Hongkong Sauce (whole fish steamed and scented mildly with Hongkong Sauce) totaled an overwhelming lunching experience at the R.E.D.

The title ‘Rare Eastern Dining’ befits this specialty restaurant. The lavish course spread concluded with ice-cream spring rolls and orange sesame cake garnished with fresh cream and laced with farm-fresh cherries for dessert.
I relished everything till the last bite and let the heavenly taste linger on. Warm and hospitable, the staff displayed immaculate restaurant etiquette, making R.E.D an abode for fine food aficionados. An incredible blend of delectable and eclectic delicacies with a ‘feeling special’ factor makes R.E.D truly rare from the word go!

Celebrity Moments

Thursday, July 20th, 2006


Watch Rajdeep Sardesai quietly submit to the culinary designs of Chef Raymond Sim at Radisson MBD

Rajdeep Sardesai is not a celebrity. At least not so by the yardstick you usually measure one with. High airs, big talk, even bigger hobbies, tantrums, name-dropping, flashy car, stylish gizmos, reeking with classy perfume... he fails miserably in exhibiting any of these musts. He is a `name' himself.

But noticing fellow diners' stares at him at Radisson MBD's Oriental restaurant, R.E.D., you still risk asking Rajdeep when he first realised he had become famous. With a shy smile, he puts his humble self forward, "No no... nothing, I am still the same old journalist that I was at INS building. Dal, roti, achaar is still my favourite food."

But we are at R.E.D. (Rare Eastern Dining), one of the finest Oriental restaurants in Noida, and Chef Raymond Sim would blink in disbelief if he were requested to serve Rajdeep's favourite food for lunch instead of the lavish fare he has planned to dish out. Anyway, Rajdeep is not in his office, and the way Chef Sim is going about things, it becomes quite clear who is the boss here. Smilingly, the chef finds out Rajdeep's food preferences... are you a non-vegetarian, should I start with a soup, do you prefer more dim sums as starters... . etc., etc. Being the Editor-in-Chief of not one but two news channels, CNN-IBN and Channel 7, doesn't hold any meaning anymore. So, submitting completely to Chef Sim, Rajdeep gets talking about topics he has a better grip on.

Just before switching over from NDTV 24/7 to start IBN, he had talked about changing the concept of breaking news on television.

And now that IBN is safely on board, and now that his channel is often found not so radically different from others, you want his byte on it.

`TV a buffet'

"Television is a buffet. You have to offer everything for all viewers. There is no loyalty factor here unlike newspapers. You have to keep giving something or the other to keep viewers hooked. But I would still say we are on track. We have done a lot of good investigative stories. In just a short while, IBN has got 10 legal notices. So I should say that is a good track record," defends Rajdeep. As to what should go on air and what not, he feels most English news channels know their bounds. "But in the genre of Hindi, it is much more confusing. They still don't know whether to go live on a juicy love story in a quaint town or to do serious stuff," he says.

The conversation breaks as starters arrive on the table. Chef Sim rolls out an impressive array: crispy chicken in bean sauce, mayonnaise prawns, chun chiao (vegetable dumpling) and prawn sui mai. Over morsels of starters, over compliments about the food, particularly the mayonnaise prawns, the lunchtime banter swerves back on track. Rajdeep this time talks about the power of images in television journalism.

"Take the story of Shiv Sainiks rampaging in Maharashtra the other day. Every channel kept on showing the visual of a burning bus. The image was so powerful in itself that it didn't need words." But yes, he agrees that in such a scenario, the line between order and chaos, between calm and unrest gets thinner. And a television visual can cause a bloodbath if not handled properly. "Surely you can't sensationalise," he assents.

Fish in nonya sauce

Soon a yet bigger spread from Chef Sim's kitchen reaches the table. Fresh fish in nonya sauce (a Chinese wine available at INA market), Thai prawns with basil, chicken with fragrant sauce, mapu tofu, vegetable fried rice and Hong Kong noodles. Raising his eyebrow, Rajdeep almost exclaims, "Oh! no! Starters have already made me full." A small eater, he however calls himself "a lover of food." With a Bengali mother-in-law who is "a great cook", he says he discovered the real taste of Bengali cuisine through her. Though his love of fish stems from his mother's Goan genes. "In Mumbai, you get great fish. I love fried clams," he says.

Appears Chef Sim, this time to stir-fry some vegetables with almonds at the induction table meant for those diners interested in cooking their own meal. He wants Rajdeep to wear an apron, don a chef's hat and try his hand at cooking. Rajdeep looks at him with disbelief! Cooking... he has never done it! Anyway, he ends up as a viewer for a change. Soon, the dish finds its way onto the table.

Blaming his high cholesterol, Rajdeep skips the dessert but takes a bite of the chocolate that arrives from the hotel's The Chocolate Box. Already late for a meeting, he soon takes leave, in a ramshackle Indica with CNN-IBN pasted on it. See, you knew it, he is not quite the textbook celebrity!

SANGEETA BAROOAH PISHAROTY

Food - India;Chefs in front,please!

Nov 11, 2008
Anoothi Vishal

Dining at a posh seafood restaurant in France, I realised that service can be terrible at even the most sophisticated of places. “Arre bhaiyya”, my dining companions, all Indians, had to finally yell —driven to almost climbing up the table to catch the waiter’s attention, before he put down two bottles of water on our table, one sparkling, one still, with an uncomprehending look still in place as to why indeed a) were we not ordering wine instead and b) couldn’t the whole world speak French? Thankfully, the dulcet tones that come in handy at Rajinder ka Dhaba or Giani’s or wherever in India worked in that alternate universe too. But that’s not the point I want to make here.

While good service is an integral part of any decent dining experience, exceptional service is not merely a function of competent waiters, sommeliers and maitre’ds. In fact, the one person who is of vital importance, both back of the house and in front, is the chef. But that’s one thing that most Indian restaurants tend to forget.

Sit back and think: How many times when you eat out do you meet the chef, even at tony restaurants? Does he come out and greet you, ask for your preferences, make suggestions, offer to do you a special? Above all, infuse a degree of warmth into the proceedings? If you are a regular at a suitably enlightened place or a suitably important person (or a food writer, for that matter), the chef may thus indulge you. But a majority of Indians never really get to meet the chefs.

Globally, on the other hand, it is not just the best restaurants that thrive on the personalities of their chefs, but also small mom-and-pop cafes and diners that you will regularly come across in Europe and America and elsewhere, infused with the personalities of their chef-owners.

In India, we do have our handful of celebrity chefs — as well as those who are both celebs and talented — but the growth of our restaurant biz, in all segments, upmarket and mid-market, is headed in quite another direction. Instead of personality-driven restaurants, where you can perhaps hope to be engaged in conversation by a flamboyant chef, most restaurants in India these days tend to be part of larger chains. In fact, even the more snobbish places revolving around particular individuals, eccentricities, edges, genius all in place, have distinctly gone out of fashion with the thought being that “professionally-run” restaurants (read those operated by faceless, colourless retail professionals) are more financially feasible — which they perhaps are.

In fact, even restaurants seeking to play up “brand names” by way of individual, well-known chefs or foodies (think Sanjeev Kapoor’s pan-Indian brand Yellow Chilli, and lately, Jiggs/Zorawar Kalra’s Punjab Grill) are essentially formatted as large chain operations and the experience of eating out in these is an indistinct one.

But while chain restaurants may earn better money for their owners as well as possibly provide better value for money to consumers, there is something lost by way of colour and individuality that can enhance any dining experience if suitably deployed. An obvious comparison would be with assembly-line products vs handcrafted ones. Would you necessarily opt for the former, even if they were cheaper?

There are some exceptions, though; examples that I hope more of our restaurants will follow: One of NCR’s most underrated Chinese restaurants, for instance, is a place called RED (for Rare Eastern Dining) at the MBD Radisson hotel in Noida. Chef Sim, a Singaporean, with fluent English-language skills and infectious enthusiasm, who heads the kitchen here, may not be a household name but word-of-mouth publicity has meant that he has quite a few fans!

Those who meet him always come back — even though there are plenty of other choices available for Asian dining —because they can’t help but be charmed by his manner, his understanding of the Indian palate and the concern he shows to even a small child in his restaurant. It helps that he knows how to cook too!

Is it too much to expect that we get more such colourful restaurants that run as much on personal charisma as on good food?

Fruits of the sea

Thursday, March 20th, 2008


He renders the menu redundant. Chef Sim Poh Geok at R.E.D. at Radisson MBD takes a personal interest in every client. He cooks according to individual demands and specific requirements. It is no wonder that he is a favourite of clients, and that “Sim’s Seafood Studio” is returning to the restaurant for the third time.

Hailing from Singapore but a Delhiite for five years now, Sim brings his special seafood selection to the table. The menu consists of a wide variety of prawn, crab and fish appetisers, soups and main courses. Yes, the seafood menu offers no options for vegetarians. But Sim will willingly stir up a delicious vegetable and sauté a rice of choice. Or you can just pick from the usual menu. He reveals that it was only after coming to India that he discovered the existence of “vegetarian” cuisine.

Basic spices

Sim’s seafood succeeds in being different yet not exotic. The soft shell crab with salt and pepper is really very good. Sim says that these crabs are tough to find as the crabs have to be caught shortly after they moult their hard shell.

The shell is so tender that it doesn’t need to be removed and instead it provides a subtle crunch. Cooked in basic spices, the flavour of crab remains pristine. The crispy bean curd skin and prawn roll is like a spring roll in a rain coat. The texture is very different from conventional spring rolls. Even the prawn is in a twist as it comes wrapped in a small bit of fish.

This bean curd skin is not available in India and the chef brings it straight from Singapore.

The Thai soup is sharp and wilful. Sim says he likes to experiment with different Asian flavours and this is one such example. The soup brims with ginger and lemongrass shavings. These are for flavour and not meant to be eaten!

For the main course you can plunge into lobsters, oysters or prawns. The seafood clay pot usually contains sea cucumber. But since it’s not popular in India it is replaced with baby corn. The fish and prawn are first fried, and then tossed with sauce. It is cooked in a clay pot till “the flavours run,” explains the chef. A clay pot is used as it best retains the flavours. Sim will cook up fruits or ice cream for dessert. The honey noodles are very good, as they are crunchy without being hard.

NANDINI NAIR
Festival: Sim’s Seafood Studio

RARE EASTERN DINING R.E.D.

The Radisson MBD Hotel is owned by the MBD Group, India’s largest publishing house. This remarkable property is a franchise venture of Radisson Hotels and Resorts, a group company owned by Carlson Hotels Worldwide.

A true trendsetter, the Radisson MBD is a hotel of the next wave – designed for modern people that crave something original, fresh and magical. The hotel’s restaurants and bars are an extension of this philosophy.

Rated as one of the Best 5 Oriental Restaurants in Delhi, and with a Top World Cuisine Recommendation, R.E.D. is the Radisson MBD’s radical eastern restaurant, which was launched on February 5th, 2004.

R.E.D stands for Rare Eastern Dining. The colour red is also a strong symbol of oriental culture & history, as illustrated by the flags of Red China & Japan. Red also stands for the sheer energy & vitality of the East. The logo represents the vibrant, hi-tech & fashionable New East – crisp, contemporary & chic.

R.E.D. reflects a brand new cultural phenomenon – the New East. This is a cosmopolitan, hi-tech world, where ancient, historical boundaries are being re-drawn by business jets and broadband. As this cultural & economic revolution continues to gather momentum, its spectacular culinary spin-offs are being served up at R.E.D.

R.E.D. serves dramatic reinterpretations of classic eastern cuisine from Japan, China, Thailand, Mongolia, Malaysia & Singapore. The menu also offers a selection of customized Signature dishes designed by the reputed Singaporean Chef Raymond Sim.

R.E.D. is intensely interactive. It features the uniquely designed concept of induction tables – where diners can personally cook for their guests with skilled support from a ‘Chen’. Less adventurous guests can simply select their ingredients and catch all the action at the show kitchens.

R.E.D. looks ravishing. That’s because every single element is eastern, including the impeccable interiors designed by P49, the Thailand-based design group. P49’s offices in Australia, China & Singapore have produced some of the Asian region’s most cutting-edge work, including the Ritz Carlton Bali, Le Meridien Khao Lak and the Ritz Carlton Spa, Bali, Marriot Mandarin Spa Shanghai, Sheraton Spas in Pattaya and Krabi.

R.E.D. also hosts a sea food festival every year titled as Sim’s Seafood Studio. So far three successful edition of Sims seafood studio have been launched .This year’s Sim’s Seafood Studio starred the delectable soft shell crabs, Steamed Oysters with Black bean sauce; the Black Pepper Crab, Wok Tossed Lobster. Star Chef Sim was back with exotic creations that added to his repertoire this year. At R.E.D., each of the dishes has been crafted with care and has been paired with some of the finest wines. The restaurant caters to the diverse international clientele with its menu and comprehensive wine list offering a wide selection of wines from around the world, with an emphasis on wines from the New World regions.

R.E.D. at the Radisson MBD. Look no further for the Far East.

Phone : 0120- 430 0000
Address : L-2 Sector-18 Noida U. P. India
Website : http://www.radisson.com/noidain

Food Review - Business Standard

Me & my humble food