Vir...Nom De Epicure

Vir Sanghvi manages his girth better than the other foodie at The Hindustan Times. I bumped into him the other day when Mani Shankar Aiyer had a party to celebrate his cabinet post. (No, Amar Singh was not invited and he did not gatecrash.) Vir seemed to have actually lost weight. Admittedly, it was a bit dark in the garden and it could have been an optical illusion. I chided him for ignoring the glorious Tamil food on Serangoon Road in his recent piece on restaurant eating in Singapore. You eat better there than anywhere in Chennai.

I have been an avid reader of Vir’s weekly Rude Food column in HT since its inception. That is, until now. Two Sundays ago, to my dismay, I woke up to find that Rude Food had become Rude Fashion. Now Vir advises us on where to buy striped shirts on Jermyn Street. I hope this detour is temporary and he will return to his true passion. Could it be that Rude Food has run out of steam? Heaven forbid. No one else in India writes on food as well as Vir does. No one else comes even close second.

A.D. Singh, who owns the two Olive restaurants in Mumbai and Delhi, once told me in an off-guarded moment that Delhi has more knowledgeable food critics. This is surprising since Mumbai has better restaurants. But of course he is right. Besides Vir, Delhi has Dileep Padgaonkar (great on French cuisine), Sabina Sehgal and Sourish Bhattacharya. Mumbai has Meher Moos.

Culinary folklore has it that when Vir lived in Calcutta years ago, as editor of Sunday, now defunct, he would fly out to Bangkok on weekends just to pick up cooking ingredients. This man is serious about food. I share his enthusiasm for truffles, Thai food and all things fattening. I draw a line at whisky with coke! He wrote a fine piece recently on dining out in London, too late for this edition of the book. It is not his fault that I will never be able to afford to eat in Tom Aiken’s restaurant.

Vir’s columns have let me down only twice. First time was when I tried out his risotto recipe. I rushed out and bought the Italian rice (Arborio), cheese (parmesan) and the mushrooms. Extra virgin oil and white wine I already had. The trouble started when I started cooking. If I had added those two bottles of water that Vir had recommended, I would have ended up with rice soup instead of risotto.

Second time, I took his suggestion and went to the Taj Mansingh in Delhi to try out the Sunday brunch. All you can eat, he said. The waiters limited me to one glass of free champagne. Vir is a celebrity and so I guess he gets it free by the bottle. The caviar that had enticed me there in the first place was the cheapest available in the market, the black stuff you find on canapes at hotel cocktail parties for free-loading journalists. I was hoping for Beluga, I would have settled for Sevruga. The oysters from Kerala were tasteless. I had assumed that at least the vodka next to the caviar was on the house but that put me back by Rs 300 a shot. The meal cost me a small fortune. I would have been better off heading for the Maurya Sheraton where they have a superb South Indian vegetarian brunch on Sundays. Remember, you first read about it here.

Vir wrote these columns anonymously under the byline Grand Fromage but the identity of the author was Delhi’s worst-kept secret, unless you count the sleeping arrangements of our politicians. Sometimes Vir can be forgetful. Someone at HT should have yelled, "Come on Vir, you have already written that about the Copper Chimney in Bangkok. " He is willing to admit his mistake. He got it wrong on the origins of tandoori chicken but corrected himself in a subsequent column, probably on the advice of an alert reader.

This book is a good read. Better still, it has some excellent recipes. As soon as I finish writing this I am going to try out that Texas chilli recipe on page 319. No water needed. But where the hell in this bania city will I find that bloody beef?