A contemporary take on southern flavours

Following a global trend, progressive south Indian has emerged as an interesting subset within the genre of modern Indian cuisine

- Avantika Bhuyan

It is early hours on Wednesday evening and yet Avartana's latest outpost at ITC Maurya, New Delhi, is buzzing with guests. Even as the activity picks up, the team of chefs, visible through the glass partition, go about their work calmly, with a meditative stance. And that energy seems to thrum through the five degustation menus available at the progressive south Indian restaurant—the seven-course Maya, the nine-course Bela, and J iaa featuring 11 courses. Then there is the 13-course Anika, and the seafood special Tara.

This is the fifth outpost of Avartana, after Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai and Colombo (Sri Lanka), and at ITC Maurya, it offers a dinner-only service as of now. We choose the Bela tasting menu, with umpteen servings of the signature French Press rasam, interspersed with dishes such as the tomato and millet salad with a rice crisp, pork cracker with banana and chilli, and seafood fritter rice with sesame and palm nectar.

Each course features small mouthfuls in artistic servingware, be it the pristine white spherical bowls or rustic asymmetrical earthenware. The portion size makes it feel like an imaginative journey through the flavours of south India, without leaving you cloyingly full. The combinations carry whiffs of familiar flavours and newer ways of looking at ingredients. Evidence of this is in the Coorg coffee espresso cocktail, Salem chilli picante or buttermilk served as a mousse in a dish of stir-fried chicken and curry leaf tempura, spaghetti-like strands fashioned out of bottle gourd, and gongura fermented and transformed into an emulsion for a steamed sea bass and sticky rice dish.