Restaurant Week Recon - The Italian Job

I was rather excited to be visiting what was a new place, and at the Trident, no less! Restaurant Week’s array of options seems decidedly Oriental this year – so it was nice to get a confirmation for an Italian ristorante.

I’ve almost always eaten only at wedding functions here so I was pleased to be eating in one of their restaurants finally. We were a little early, so we sat around in the lounge, basking in the gold and white ambience that is typical of Trident hotels, enjoying the soft jazz music and eagerly awaiting the meal.

Botticino, Trident Bandra Kurla Complex

Service, as was expected, was extremely polite and well knit. We weren’t waiting long before we were ushered to our table, served water and menus, and a bread basket, which was the bane of the meal! But more on that later. I’ve heard that Botticino is supposed to be fancy, and boy did it live up to its reputation! It’s so fancy that they have little monogrammed butter paper for the thin slivers of butter they serve. Beat that!

 

My appetizer was a chicken roulade on a lightly toasted bun, accompanied with (a) wine soaked fig. Yes, fig, singular. My companion opted for something a little healthier, the pear and pecorino (we had no idea what this was – turns out it’s cheese) salad with balsamic dressing. Beautifully presented, very artistic.

Chicken roulade with wine soaked fig and caramelized shallots

The pear and pecorino salad was pretty good. But it wasn’t EXCELLENT, as we’d expected. In my opinion, it was a little too dry, though the accompanying balsamic dressing made it a little more interesting. The pears should have been cut a little smaller, we were making a horrendous mess while trying to cut it. I’d give it a 6.5/10.

Pear and pecorino salad with balsamic 

The chicken roulade was not up to the mark. It was prettily packaged – four “stumps” of chicken rolled around a single asparagus stick each, balanced on a grilled bun, with an artistic smattering of sauce and the chopped up wine soaked fig on the side. The sausage tasted like anything you’d get from a Venky’s cold storage, and the bun was slightly too burnt. The only good thing about it was the wine soaked fig, which was over before it started. 4/10.

Unfortunately the appetizers were too small to feel good about. A silly thing the restaurant seems to have done is combine the soup and salad course, giving you the option of choosing only one or the other. That’s not right – they should’ve allowed diners to choose both a soup and a salad! It just made us feel slightly cheated.

Before our mains arrived, we were served a little amuse bouche to whet our appetites– a slinky piece of watermelon with a teeeeensy little ball of feta cheese and a coriander leaf stuck artistically atop it. A good palate cleanser, tasty and refreshing. By this point, we were so hungry though that we were scarfing down the bread like we’d never seen food before. And maybe it’s a good thing we did.

  

Our mains were served to us. Mihir’s chilli encrusted red snapper with orange juice looked wholesome and interesting. My calamarata (seafood pasta) on the other hand, was one of the most disappointing LOOKING dishes I’ve ever seen. The idiot who invented humongous, larger than life plates should be roundhouse kicked in the face. My dish looked like an overturned derby hat, with a huuuuuge rim and a tiny little bowl for the pasta. I don’t know why any restaurant would want to use this- though there might be a decent portion in the bowl, it just looks instantly disappointing. Anyway, since I was slightly full with the bread I’d eaten, I didn’t complain too much.

Calamarata and seafood

The snapper was delicious – very nicely grilled and flavoured, though the orange sauce didn’t seem to complement it too well. Maybe that’s just me. My pasta was great – perfectly al dente and slathered in an extremely tasty red sauce, so what it lacked in quantity, it made up for in quality.

Chilli and fennel encrusted snapper in orange sauce

I thought our dessert was the best part of the meal. Tiramisu and berry sorbet and a selection of ice creams. Simple, yet satisfying. The tiramisu was creamy, rich, and had just the right tinge of coffee not to be overpowering. It was beautifully complemented by the sour-ish berry sorbet; both set the flavours off very nicely. My compliments to the chef.

Tiramisu and berry sorbet

The three little ice cream scoops were tasty too – stracciatella (I don’t speak Italian, but I think this means cookies and cream) is a you-can’t-go-wrong flavor, lemon cheesecake (zingy and refreshing) and sea salt and burnt sugar (salty caramel),  were all very tasty and went well together. Dessert clearly won this meal.

Stracciatella, Lemon Cheesecake and Caramelized Sea Salt ice cream

I’ll be honest here. Overall, it was a decent meal – the starters really killed it for me (in a bad way, for those who think “killer” is a good thing) and the main course, though tasty, would have not filled us had it not been for the bread basket. Dessert was good. Main takeaways for the restaurant:

1.  Soup and appetizers are not one course.
2.  Starter portions should be made decent if you don’t agree to point number 1.
3.  Throw away those giant plates like Frisbees and get normal ones please.

I’ll end here with an Italian proverb, one which Botticino would do well to learn by rote. Non si vive di solo pane. One does not live by bread alone.