A friend with a teppan but without the knowhow to produce the delicious teppanyaki grills using the iron griddle was planning a house party in which he wanted homemade Japanese food. He thought it would be exciting, a word that has almost gone extinct in pandemic-ravaged 2020.
The evening did turn out to be a memorable one, but not because YouTube tutorials had made a masterchef out of my friend. A chef from a wellknown five-star hotel in south Delhi had taken over the kitchen for the evening. The result was home-made food, restaurant-style.
Covid-19 has made 2020 the year of the house party, and perhaps also the fanciest that terraces, living rooms and courtyards in Delhi-NCR have ever seen as constraints on social gathering have unshackled the appetite to live it up at home. From teppanyaki grills, as my friend discovered, to signature cocktails of certain restaurants, there’s nothing beyond the house party’s reach as hosts get more ambitious and restaurants, hit hard by the pandemic, capitalise on every business opportunity.
The house party has become the happy meeting point for both. Leading hotels and restaurants in Delhi-NCR have started sending their top chefs and mixologists to customers’ homes to make bespoke party fare. Some are also adding the fine dining feel to the house party by using restaurant crockery and linen. Inquiries have been picking up, say restaurant managers, through the Diwali season. They see the trend continuing into the Christmas-New Year week.
Chef Rajesh Wadhwa, executive chef at the Taj Palace, said specialties offered by its restaurants like Orient Express, Spicy Duck, Masala Art and Capital Kitchen could be recreated for special celebrations at home. “With an assurance of adherence to safety, hygiene, disinfection and physical distancing protocols, the magic of your favourite restaurants can be relived in a seamless manner,” he said.
Condiments to cutlery, the chefs bring everything with them. Only the cooking happens at the customer’s home. Julian Ayers, general manager of Hyatt Regency Delhi, said house party queries were limited not just to availability of chefs but also menu planning and décor — curation of the gourmet experience. “The request for catering to house parties has seen an increase. ‘Hyatt at Home’ has been a successful revenue-earning model for the hotel,” Ayers said.
Mixologists too are finding themselves working at bar counters they hadn’t ever factored into their professional space. And even the cocktails they have been making are stretching imagination – certainly in the way they are named (Vicky & Twinkle’s Pina Colada, anyone?)
Sidecar’s Yangdup Lama, one of Delhi’s best-known mixologists, told TOI, “We have received requests where hosts want me to be personally present and prepare drinks named after them for small gatherings. Since celebrations are going to be small, people want their chosen few 10-20 guests to be treated to the best experience.”
Restaurants, not just those at five-star hotels but popular standalone ones, have also seen an uptick in orders for virtual events, where a host orders food to be delivered to guests at various locations. Mukta Kapoor, corporate head (marketing) at Old World Hospitality, said apart from requests for personalised experience of Indian Accent at home, they have virtual celebration events where guests are sent DIY kits to prepare cuisines and people at multiple locations join a live virtual “cooking and plating” experience with their chef.
Abhishek Gupta, the chef of Leela Ambience Gurugram, said the hotel’s ‘Flying Chefs’ programme, which had started as an experiment to reach out to customers during the lockdown, is now catering to requests for brunches or barbeque evenings at farmhouses or specially curated menus for a candlelit dinners. “People not stepping out doesn’t mean they have stopped celebrating. They are looking for exclusive experiences at home that satisfy their hygiene concerns,” Gupta said. Typically, catering charges for a personalised ‘restaurant at home’ experience — with an eight to 12-course menu — start from Rs 5,000, industry sources said.