On a hot summer afternoon, driving to a “sit down lunch” prepared by Cordon Bleu Chef Nikhil Kanwar at Kylin. Quiet honestly, I was in two minds of going there, it is 43 degrees and on top of it Thai food. Just imagine hot spicy Thai curries on a hot summer Delhi afternoon!! Doesn’t that sound like a big turn off?!!!! But I am sooo glad that I didn’t miss this sit down.
Chef Nikhil Kanwar has done an absolutely fabulous job of curating a Thai menu which works in this Delhi heat. What really worked for me was the fact that he curated the menu keeping us vegetarians in mind (yay). I tasted a lot of dishes but I am just going to list down my absolute favorites on the menu and which are not supposed to be missed.
Things to eat:-
1. Som Tum Thai i.e. Papaya Salad– Yum yum yummm!! This salad is made specially keeping Delhi Summers in mind. The raw papaya with cherry tomatoes and beans, topped with tangy pungent chili lime dressing. Peanuts adding the perfect crunch to the dish. This salad was my favorite dish of the day and it absolutely won my heart. In our chat with Chef Nikhil Kanwar, we asked him, “If he had the opportunity of serving only one dish to his guests to impress them, which one would it be?” and he picked this salad. So you can easily guess how good it would be!
Som Tum Thai i.e. Papaya Salad
2. Yum sum O i.e. Pomelo Salad– This salad actually tastes like a fancier version of “Bhel Puri”. Quiet honestly I hadn’t tried pomelo before, so I looked up on net to know more about this fruit and apparently it has a lot of health benefits. So pomelo is the largest citrus fruits, with a thick yellow skin and bitter pulp that tastes like a grapefruit and it aids in weight loss (wohooo…. go pomelo!! Make me lose some weight :p). Coming back to Chef Nikhil Kanwar’s Pomelo Salad, it was quiet a winner on table. I could see other foodies going in for seconds and this doesn’t usually happen on a foodie meetup (until and unless the dish is fabulous :p).
Yum sum O i.e. Pomelo Salad
3. Phad Fak Thong i.e. Stir fried Pumpkin with the Thai Basil– Not a big pumpkin fan but this dish is absolutely deeeeee-licioussss. The dish has so many different complex flavors, that I absolutely loved it and would recommend everyone to definitely give it a try.
Phad Fak Thong
Things to drink:-
So I absolutely loved the cocktails. Hats off to the bartender for two prime reasons- 1. Not making my cocktails sweet (I am tired of arguing with bartenders that cocktails aren’t supposed to taste like “candy”, so when I got an array of cocktails which weren’t sweet and were perfectly balanced- I was on cloud nine) and 2. all the cocktails tasted so unique, not one was similar to the other yet were perfectly in sync with Chef Nikhil Kanwar’s food. I am going to list down my absolute favorites of the afternoon:-
1. Curry Cocktail– This drink is soooo good, you could actually marry it! (:p) Yum yum yummm, absolutely my type of a cocktail!! This drink is so refreshing on a hot summer afternoon, gin is perfectly balanced with the Thai herbs and it went so well with my food. I absolutely loved it. (p.s:- this is even a house special, so do order it, it is absolutely fabulous!!)
2. Koh Chang– I am a bit partial to this drink as I am a big big biggg “coconut” fan. You put coconut in a drink and 99% of the time, I am going to love it (unless you serve me over-sweetened-candied-coconut cocktail). This drink looks so beautiful, absolutely love the garnishing and the whole presentation. Flavor-vice works really well and compliment the spicy thai food beautifully.
3. Phayu Yen– Lemon grass, ginger ale and galangal topped with Bacardi. The ingredients are only so exciting and refreshing, that you would not want to miss this drink!
In short, absolutely loved my visit here. A big congratulations to Chef Nikhil Kanwar and the whole team of Kylin for pulling out such a fabulous edition of Thai food. Now I am actually waiting for August where Chef has promised us a menu in which vegetarian dishes would overpower the no. of non-vegetarian dishes and it would be a vegetarians nirvana!
