Jaipur has developed an appetite for cafes
This is the season of Jaipur, which is all geared up to welcome the world's most fecund minds with the warmth and hospitality that comes naturally to its citizens. It was not the Jaipur Literature Festival that brought me back to the city I have grown to love; it was the Gourmet Getaway, the brainchild of a young restaurateur, Dushyant Singh, who has turned a 350-year-old hunting lodge into a breathtaking venue for a day-long celebration of international gourmet food, accompanied by free-flowing wine and beer.
The Gourmet Getaway signifies the arrival of a new food culture heralded by the millennial generation, which is clearly in no mood to wallow in the admiration of daal-baati-choorma and lal maas. Veering away from clichéd fare, served at such time-worn institutions as Laxmi Mishthan Bhandar and Raawat Kachori on the one hand, and Niros, a copy of Delhi's Kwality restaurant, on the other, these young-at-heart cafes are carrying forward the tradition of the more revered Anokhi Cafe of combining a conversation friendly ambience with a menu loaded with contemporary international fare. You can't beat the lassiwallah on MI Road, opposite Niros, or Rawat's pyaaz kachori, so these new-generation cafes have smartly moved away to new frontiers.
The leader of the pack is Tapri Central, which was launched outside the Jaipur University campus by two MBAs who gave up comfortable jobs to pursue their dream. Better known today for its C-Scheme location, Tapri made Maggi and poha cool, and soon became the preferred hangout of Jaipur's elite. Its model of pocket friendly comfort food has clearly influenced Dushyant Singh's OTH (On The House), which is also located at the well-heeled C-Scheme, where you can spend a most delightful evening digging pita pockets followed by the signature lamb burger, or sharing a pizza and then savouring the seafood thermidor, washed down by iced teas or virgin mojitos.
What these cafes have in common is that they are all run by millennials who are professionals but chose to be in the restaurant business because of their passion. And as Dushyant said to me, "They all have an individual character because the city has not been very hospitable to chain restaurants."
One such restaurant with a personality of its own and looks that will make any photographer fall in love with it is Meraaki Kitchen, the love child of Shivika Kothari, who's from the famous diamond family and has a degree in hospitality management from Boston, and Neha Deepak Shah, an engineer and self-taught chef (poring over cookbooks has been her passion since she was seven years old) who honed her skills on MasterChef India 4. Meraaki Kitchen is a 100 per cent vegetarian pan-Asian restaurant, a bold move in a genre that one associates with seafood and pork, but Neha does a good job with her dim sum and khaosuey. I had the khaosuey at the Gourmet Getaway, the best antidote to a chilly evening, and I was struck by the balance of flavours and the gentle interplay of spices. Of course, my good friends Amin Ali and Nausheen Tareen couldn't stop talking about how chic the restaurant looked, especially in the evening. Meraaki is definitely on my bucket list for my next visit to Jaipur - if only I could visit the city every weekend!
I wouldn't have known about Cafe Quaint had Dushyant not insisted that we go there. Located at the Jawahar Kala Kendra on Tonk Road, in an area that looked very much like a residential colony for government officials, the cafe is the creation of two friends - Twinkle Singh, whom you'd mistake for a school student, but she's a banker by training, and Ayesha Gulraj Kaur, a lawyer. The 20-somethings, armed with a Chemex coffee maker and Blue Tokai blends, and a menu of sandwiches and pastries, have been able to get the cafe off the ground and it's the new go-to destination of the city's chattering classes.
(Courtesy of Mail Today)