The first thing you notice when you enter Amreli is how charming it is. With its chessboard floor, cane chairs and leather booths, colourful and quirky portraiture and a gorgeously verdant al fresco dining area, the restaurant embraces you more than seats you. Considering it’s stepping in to the rather large shoes left behind by Olive Beach at the Hotel Diplomat, the menu is as attractive as the space it’s in. It eschews loyalties to any one particular cuisine and dishes out soul food from around the world. You can swim both in the Mediterranean and off the Malabar coast, or take a stroll through streets starting in Delhi and ending up in Milan; a bistro menu offering everything from a Spanish omelette and homemade granola to egg appam. The bar menu is equally well curated, licentious without being too long and comprising spirits, wines and beer, apart from the du jour signature cocktails. Forgoing any kind of itinerary we go a-wandering, starting off with Sizzling Gambas, Melting Malai Tikka and the Filo Pastry Raan, all of which we figure should kill the chill; they do, deliciously. The Gambas make a dramatic early entrance with prawns, roasted whole garlic cloves and baby onions doused in olive oil and herbs, crackling and spitting in an iron saucepan. The entire restaurant turns to watch it come to our table (and turns away just as quickly at our immediate devouring of it, never a pretty sight). The malai tikka, if not as attention-seeking, also lives up to its adverb, tender, well-marinated morsels of chicken, accompanied by the traditional zingy coriander chutney and an irreverently tangy tamarind one, which we anyway prefer to the former. But it’s the raan that steals the show, the entire evening even. Imagine pulverized raan, redolent in chilli and spices, piping hot and cushioned between crisp browned pastry sheets, a medley of so many textures and flavours that it’s hard to imagine all of it in one mouthful. Several mouthfuls later and faced with a plate free of even a crumb, we’re still lost in a reverie. Snapping out of it very reluctantly, we turn our attention to our mains, a simple Chicken Alfredo pasta and Kerala Mutton Stew. We’re rewarded for our perseverance (no, not with more raan unfortunately) with dishes devoid of any complexity but bursting with beguiling flavours. Equally creamy, the alfredo comes with a surfeit of cheese and al dente pasta tossed with herbs, while the stew laps around almost dreamily in its bowl with tender chunks of mutton in a sea of delicately spiced coconut stew. A devastatingly decadent Death by Chocolate dessert with all manner of chocolate lashings completes the illusion of having died and gone to heaven. Meal for two: Rs 2, 500 (including taxes, excluding alcohol) Address: Hotel Diplomat, Sardar Patel Marg, Chanakyapuri. Contact: 46050200
