New Menu Review: The Tasting Room

Chicken and soba noodles salad.

Last week, The Tasting Room, the Lower Parel restaurant housed inside Good Earth, the furniture and home accessories store, had yet another menu relaunch, its fifth in five years.  The new menu is a collaborative effort between Gresham Fernandes, group executive chef of Impresario Entertainment and Hospitality and chef Kshama Prabhu, who took over the kitchen in April last year and is currently on maternity leave. Prabhu initiated the revamp earlier this year, which is now complete with Fernandes’ embellishments.

TTR continues to serve European comfort fare, but now there’s more choice in each of the courses. We started with the chevre pine nut phyllo bake with spiced guava glaze. It’s impressive that Prabhu (we made a phone call to find out who created this dish) has kept her promise of incorporating more Mediterranean flavours into the menu. The finger-shaped, chevre (a type of goat cheese) stuffed pastry had none of the promised pine nuts, but the flaky phyllo pastry together with the sharp chevre and spicy guava glaze were excellent twists on Greek flavours.

The chicken and soba noodle salad, lightly drizzled with soy balsamic dressing and served cold was perhaps more Asian than Mediterranean. The noodles were al dente (unlike slurpy soba in a broth) and light enough to make for an ideal mid-work lunch. Our grilled herbed pomfret, served with chilli garlic butter sauce, was marred only by the over-salted creamed spinach. The chefs were back on track with the next course of lemon cured chicken breast in white wine and rosemary cream sauce, which was perfectly seasoned and served with a superb side of caramelised baby onions.

TTR is a beautiful restaurant and its ambience has indeed been a big draw for the stream of shoppers passing through Good Earth. The food has been good, if not spectacular since Impresario’s team of chefs took over the kitchen in 2007.  But these two chefs have collectively put out an excellent menu. TTR would do well to stick to and perfect this menu instead of rushing to plan the sixth.

A meal for two costs approximately Rs2,000. All reviews are conducted anonymously.

LocationThe Tasting Room
Good Earth
Raghuvanshi Mills
Senapati Bapat Marg
Lower Parel

Phone6528 5284, 2495 1954

HoursDaily, 9am to 12.30am