The Taj Mahal Hotel's coffee shop, Machan, is hosting a 10-day Konkan food festival.

For this, they have flown their chef from the Konkan Cafe at the President Hotel in Mumbai, Mr S Ramamurthy, and a very amiable Mrs Vasanthi Naik from a little fishing village on the Konkan coast in Maharastra. The duo is churning out some delectable fair, especially in a city like Delhi which has dearth of good sea food and cuisine from this part of the country.

The Konkan food will be available in buffet style for lunch and dinner, though the restaurant has done away with its regulation buffet after its recent rejig. The food has a lot of coconut in it and masalas that have mainly red chillies and coriander. Of course, the food is similar to south Indian cuisine but yet has very different flavours. Konkan food uses kokum and raw mango as souring agents along with tamarind and lime. The chef says that they also have a version of garam masala called bottle masal, which has about 20-25 ingredients powdered together. Konkan food also plays on textures. Many dishes use coarsely ground masala that you can feel with your tongue to give the food a different feeling. For the appetiser, there was tomato rasam, which was very good (being from the southern part of the country, I can vouch that it was as good as the stuff made at home).

For starters, I tried a lentil cake (dal vada) that is a very popular street food in Maharashtra. It was served with a coconut and red chilly chutney that was hand ground by Mrs Naik. Most of the chutneys and masalas are being hand ground by the lady as she does not believe that machines can give the same quality as using the grinding stone. The other starter, deep fried kane (lady fish) was very spicy with the fish being stuffed with red chilli paste. Konkan cuisine also uses a lot of charcoal grilled onions. These onions are either used chopped or ground along with masalas after being grilled. This gives the food a very interesting smoky flavour. Of course, coconut is also liberally used is various forms: raw grated, fried grated, coconut paste and coconut milk.

The buffet is available till March 25 and costs Rs 450, plus taxes.

Vidya Deshpande