Claridges Garden: Feast on a garden full of soul

Brunch on the greens is a unique food therapy and the Claridges Garden is the place to be on a sunny Sunday afternoon with family and friends, says MEENAKSHI RAO

As luxuries go, the ultimate ones at that, brunching in a lush green garden in the heart of Lutyens’ Delhi under private white umbrellas, lovely live music on the side and a lavish spread of continents on your platter, not to mention the bubbly perking up your spirits, is what you would call a really well-heeled food soiree.

And if it is winters, it is time for brunches under the sun warming your cockles and the wide spread of comfort food putting you on a slow leisurely march to the tastefully done up salad, grill, sushi, soup and Indian counters being all there without crowding your vicinity.

With the concept of Sunday brunch catching up with upper class urban metropolitan India, many eateries have started dressing themselves up to cash in on this 11:30 am to 3:30 pm mega meal trend which gets into a rage every season. But it is places like the graceful and quiet Claridges Gardens that score as the man among the boys when it comes to extended Sunday feasts in the open.

Standing just off a roundabout, this languid space created with taste and acumen by the erstwhile owners of this fairytale Lutyen’s white bungalow encased in a well manicured green garden area fenced by tall palm trees, is the best place in Delhi to enjoy a languorous meal with friends and family on a Sunday. The ambience that the Claridges Garden brunch accords guests is unmatched. The warmth of the serving staff is reason enough to spend a pound on this unique food relaxation therapy.

The best thing about the menu here is that it is a shifting one, to suit the numerous occasions and the guest-profile that come visiting. For Christmas, there was a well roasted American turkey paying obeisance to the grand Christmas tree adorning the centre of the garden. Though the Indian palate is yet to warm up to this extra expensive bird, corporate chef S Tarun Dacha has found the perfect blend to Indianise this traditional fare. Done well and flavoured with delicate spices, the turkey cuts make for a good roast on the table, what with “home-made” cranberry sauce for accompaniment and colour.

Chef Dasha, who has seen the rough and tumble of the industry through the years, says the food rule is simple: It needs to be liked by the consumer and only after that the exoticism comes in. So, he plans most brunches seeing what the crowd is like and “experience has shown me that whatever the guest may experiment with, he largely goes back to the good old Indian food in the end,” he tells you.

Hence, the Indianese at Claridges has worked, some of it delightfully tweaked, like the rose flavoured sakarkandi (sweet potato) cuts which are out of the world both in taste and flavour. The succulent kebabs, both vegetarian and non-vegetarian, may be regular but have been cooked with love as is the rather conspicuous moong dal that sits plainly to make a ghar ka statement amid all the continental razmataaz on the counters around it.

Not that the sushis and the salads are any less but it’s the warming soups that add to the winter do with their light on the tummy veneers as also the herby flavours they emanate sitting next to a mimosa or just the bubbly making a winter statement with all the storm it creates in its slender tall glass.

Delhi being mostly under the fog, polluted and starkish cold when it wants to be, makes you crave for places like the Claridges Garden as it does for the sun and shine. So basking in the mellowed warmth of a sunny winter afternoon with live counters of gourmet classics from Europe, the Orient and India serving everything from morning bakeries, fresh juices, cold cuts, cheese platters and salads to grills, sausages, pasta, tawa paranthas, dim sums and Indian curries alongside an interactive bar where you can mix your own drink is as celestial as it can get.

Indeed, it is time to be a Clarke Gable who would take time out for brunch breaks not in trendy New York or California but in sinewy Chicago’s Pump Room at the Ambassador to cut his winter blues after trans-continental flights.

The brunch may have started as a decadent food activity among English wives and husbands clinking glasses and rolling their tongues over the hot roast after a good hunting day, but it was in Chicago that it started getting trendy, thanks to the star power of Gable.

Had Gable got the ambience of the Claridges Garden in that covered Pump Room, he would not have famously minded paying the bills! Neither would you, for the grand and elegant ambience that Claridges lays out its spread in.