Get Five-Star Meals For A Steal at Restaurant Week

Koh at the InterContinental Marine Drive.

The third edition of Restaurant Week, which provides food lovers a chance to eat at fine-dining restaurants for a fraction of their usual prices, will be held from Monday, September 19 to Sunday, September 25. For this edition, the good folks at Desi Restaurant Week Events (the company that has been organising Restaurant Week in India since September 2010) have managed to rope in 15 upscale restaurants (up from seven restaurants in January) where customers can get three-course prix fixe meals for just Rs1,000 per meal (exclusive of taxes). The establishments at which you can get a meal for a steal are: Hakkasan in Bandra, West View at the ITC Maratha hotel, Saffron at the J. W. Marriott, Ziya and Vetro at The Oberoi, India Jones at the Trident, Nariman Point, The Table and Indigo in Colaba, Neel at Tote on the Turf in Mahalaxmi, Olive Bar & Kitchen in Bandra and Mahalaxmi, The Great Wall at The Leela Kempinski, Koh and Kebab Corner at the InterContinental Marine Drive and San-Qi at the Four Seasons Hotel. The same restaurants will also offer wine-paired meals priced at Rs2,000 per person (excluding taxes).

In addition to Restaurant Week, the company has also organised a Chef’s Table Week, that will run from Monday, September 12 to Sunday, September 18. In this spin-off from Restaurant Week, 11 restaurants will provide a seven-course chef’s tasting menu plus a glass of champagne or Prosecco at Rs3,000 for vegetarians and Rs3,500 for non-vegetarians (the prices are exclusive of taxes). During the Chef’s Table meals, guests will also get a chance to interact with the chef and ask him questions about the food. The restaurants where you can quiz the cooks while you eat are Pan Asian and Dakshin at the ITC Maratha hotel, Mezzo Mezzo and Spices at the J. W. Marriott hotel, Ziya and Vetro at The Oberoi, Indigo in Colaba, Olive Bar & Kitchen in Bandra, Stella at The Leela Kempinski, Corleone at the InterContinental Marine Drive and Prato at the Four Seasons Hotel. For an alcohol-paired Chef’s Table menu, guests will have to pay an additional Rs2,000 (excluding taxes).

There’s more. The organisers have added a new event called Kitchen Party, which will allow 150 guests access to the kitchen at Olive Bar & Kitchen in Mahalaxmi on the evening of Wednesday, September 21. At the event, guests will get a chance to explore Olive’s kitchen and meet Olive Mumbai’s head chef Manu Chandra, Le15 Patisserie’s Pooja Dhingra and Busaba’s Nikhil Chib. “The idea is to give people interested in the city’s food scene a chance to interact with chefs and restaurateurs from Mumbai,” said Mangal Dalal, who co-founded Restaurant Week India along with East chef Nachiket Shetye and former finance professional Azeem Zainulbhai. Tickets for the Kitchen Party are priced at Rs1,500 per person and include the cost of food, which will be hors d’oeuvres and desserts. A small portion of the fee will be donated to Step Up, a non-profit organisation that raises funds for a number of charities.

Starting Saturday, September 3, reservations for Chef’s Table Week can be made on restaurantweekindia.com. Reservations for Restaurant Week Mumbai will begin on Saturday, September 10. Tickets for the Kitchen Party at Olive Bar & Kitchen in Mahalaxmi will be available from Saturday, September 10 at the venue (Tel: 4085 9595) as well at the restaurant’s outpost in Bandra (Tel: 2605 8228).