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What will Tashan's food look like?
We've been talking about Tashan for more than a year now, and it looks like the project is finally close enough for the team to begin trickling out a handful of details about the menu.
What will Tashan's food look like?
We've been talking about Tashan, Tiffin owner Munish Narula's long-planned upscale Indian restaurant at 777 S. Broad, for more than a year now, and it looks like the project is finally close enough for the team to begin trickling out a handful of details about the menu. Exec chef Sylva Senat, who helped us out for our recent Meal Ticket Magazine piece on mise en place, had us over to Tiffin's flagship Girard Avenue location late last week to taste a handful of proposed Tashan dishes. (The restaurant hopes to open in early September.)
Senat, who's got a serious kitchen pedigree with stints under the likes of Andy D'Amico, Marcus Samuelsson and Jean-Georges Vongerichten, has taken on a new tack with Tashan, placing his fine-dining gaze on the flavors of India — which just so happens to be master chef Sanjay Shende's area of expertise. Shende comes to Philly from the UK, where he opened up a number of Indian restaurants over the past decade, particularly in Ireland. He knows his stuff, as indicated by the meticulous regional and historical insights he provided for every dish we tried. (The goat cheese garnishing the puffy, pineapple-dressed taftaan bread, for example, was chosen to mimic the yak cheese sherpas carry with them in the hilly northwestern regions of India, bordering Afghanistan.) Senat and Shende's collaboration has resulted in a number of potential dishes for Tashan, in photo order:
- Aloo Tikki: Potato patty, lentil center, sweet and spicy tamarind chutney, mushy yellow peas
- Goan masala-dusted Maine lobster: White corn, curry leaves, black cardamom lobster butter
- Bombay Bhel: Puffed rice potato salad, mango, chickpeas, red onion, mixed microgreens
- Kashmiri Lamb Shank: Braised bone-in, cashew-based Kashmiri sauce, seedless dates
- Goat cheese taftaan: Montchevre, flaky onion seed bread, Tripura pineapple raisin preserve, crystalized ginger
- Indian ice cream: Mango, saffron-pistachio and rose (not pictured)
Though Narula and the chefs acknowledge that Indian cooking on a global level has taken gigantic steps forward in the past 15 or so years, that doesn't necessarily mean the logical progression of the cuisine will translate to higher check averages — with mostly small and mid-size dishes on the menu (plus a few large-plate entrées; see that shank), Narula believes the typical Tashan diner will be able to eat heartily for $75 a head, including tax, tip and alcohol. Senat's on-the-line finesse combined with Shende's Desi cred will ideally translate into an approach that'll combat ghee-soaked, curry-spiced Indian-food stereotypes.
Narula is particularly eager to have fans of Tiffin's food sit down at Tashan. "This is so not Tiffin," says th restaurateur, "and the strategy is to let people find that out."
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