I have know Chef Tushar for over 9 years now and have long followed his career. From his shelf stable product line to food truck, and now this, his first restaurant. This is Kavita and we were here tonight for his unique omakase.
Kavita translates to poetry, which refers to his goal of showing his story through food. This also happens to be his mother’s name, so how poetic that this is the name of his restaurant.
Located in the commissary space of Skript Kitchen, you may pass it walking by. Especially as “Skript” is signed bold on the awning, with “Kavita” written more discreetly on the door and on a gold plaque beside it.
Here, you have two different menu options. Either dishes a la carte or as a part of their set menu, and both don’t overlap. The latter they named Ammakase, as a play on the popular Japanese term for “I’ll leave it up to you”. This is used to represent the highly interactive, intimate, and creative experience where the chef curates each bite, course by course, eaten at your own pace. “Amma” means “mother” in various Indian languages, so it hits doubly considering the restaurant’s name origin.
Each Ammakase is different dependant on season, month, and the availability of ingredients by the week. Lot of the latter is foraged locally by the chef himself. Ingredients like maple blossoms and Mongolia, harvested from the North Shore, Cypress, and Wreck Beach. Coincidentally what they can find there is also available in Northern India, as we share the same altitude. Although every province of India is different and varies in cuisine and food. Chef Tushar’s goal is to highlight this breath and depth in his cooking. He does through his background in Mumbai cuisine and through his family’s history.
There is no printed menu to reference, so what you see here, will most likely not be what you will get if/when you visit.
Worth mentioning is that all the chefs working in the kitchen today have worked at Michelin restaurants, so come with great experience. They all work together as a team to craft the following menu, where everyone has a say and they brainstorm as a unit, pooling like expertise.
Today we would trust our Chef and take in 12 smaller bites spread out between snacks, appetizers, entrees, palate cleansers, and dessert for $125 per person. This is basically a blind tasting, you only offer up your dietary restrictions and the kitchen accommodates your needs, often creating on the spot.
We enjoyed this at the bar, for the traditional Chef’s table’s experience, to be able to interact with Chef Tushar and allow him to tell his story through food. Done in a way he called “experiential”.
But first we were welcomed with a glass of Bottega sparkling wine to sip on, as we peruse their drink menu. There are only 8 signature cocktails to choose from, but each one so unique in their ingredient listing and so imaginative when being described by Kavita’s Bar Manager, Kabir.
I was honestly so impressed by the listing and couldn’t decide, so left it to Kabir to recommend what to order throughout our meal, much like the direction of our food to come. The cocktails were also inspired by the season and from all corners of India.
Kabir playfully described his menu as “purposefully confusing”, that there is no way to imagine it, so you just have to try it. Each cocktail an homage to an ingredient, where the flavours are romanced and contextualized. The following are what we had in the order we had them, spread across our 12 courses.
The Jaipuri Laal Maas was my first cocktail, I was sold upon reading “spiced lamb fat”, anticipating a more savoury drink. Spiced lamb fat, Canadian club 12yo, toasted cumin, yellow chartreuse, benedictine, charcoal honey, bell pepper, and rice crisp. Having the bell peppers reminded me of an autumn soup, with roasted vegetables and fragrant garden herbs. It drank like a gazpacho with warm velvety notes, that I thought it paralleled the food menu well.
The Konkan was Solmano mezcal, toasted coconut, cocci rossa, kokum cordial, acid, and oxidized rose. This was a tropical, complex, and bubbly; carbonated in house. We were advised to take a bite of the sour jelly that garnished the drink, to have it take off some of the edge from the bold and smokey mezcal.
Podi is Canadian club 15yo, ghee, podi, saffron, liqueur, orange blossom, honey, and fried kale. This was like a vintage Manhattan with an antique shoppe characteristic. I especially liked being able to smell the fragrance of the kale before taking a sip. It reminded me of seaweed and sesame, which changed the bouquet of the cocktail. This was yet again, another transformative and unexpected mix.
The Aam Panna is their signature cocktail and best selling. Patron reposado, mint, solmano mezcal, toasted almond, coconut, green mango, chilli, lime, and clarified buttermilk. It comes topped with a collection citrus gel dollops on a rice cracker. The tartness of the orange changes the taste and the acid cut into the fish and curry course well.
Pushpaa is Suntory toki, cacao butter, vetiver, bitter bianco, sandalwood, banana, and tamarind acid. This was like a woodsy old fashioned, offering up a richness in the mouth.
My favourite was the Banarsi Pan for the house made pan alone. I know paan to be a pungent and minty, after dinner aperitif of sorts. It is meant to cleanse the palate, so to have it here as a slightly sweet white chocolate nugget was a delight. Kabir makes these in-house himself. And like all his other edible garnishes, the intention is to take a bite, followed by a sip in order to transform the experience that follows. Canadian club 12yo, cardamom, rose jam, solmano mezcal, betel, spiced vermouth, fennel, and menthol. This is best described as minty with an ice tea base. Refreshing and a good one to transition into dessert territory with.
Overall, I thought the cocktails were incredibly complimentary to the food. Both halves of a whole speaking with one another to create something truly harmonious. Whereas I have encountered many disjoined food and drink pairings. Normally I would typically order wine to go with my Indian food, but I don’t think a normal bottle of grapes could keep up here. All the cocktails do. They stand on their own, while simultaneously balancing out one another. Each glass was so well conceived, I would come back just for a lounge drink.
Here, it is also worth noting that all the staff were so attentive. They absolutely put an importance on the service and the experience. Napkins were folded when you walk away from your seat. No empty glass remained at your table for more than a minute. And great conversation come from all directions.
As for our food, we started with four snacks served as our first course, with specific eating order. Each bite represented one of the four corners of India. From the North we started with the rose shaped cookie called “Achappam”, topped with a curried chicken liver mousse with Himalayan mustard from Central Northern India. The latter was actually sourced from one of the chef’s family farms, adding a bit of crunch to the pate, without being pungent. This was my favourite bite of the night and it felt like a strong start. I love a savoury liver mousse and this was incredibly sumptuous.
The second bite was from Bombay. A spiced potato fritter, topped with crispy curry leaf and chutney. This was so unsuspecting, it tasted a lot more exiting than it looked. It reminded me of a dumpling with ground beef filling, like zestier bites of Shepard’s pie with the dollop of chutney crowning it in brightness. This fritter also would have made an excellent patty for a veggie burger.
From North West India we had the Swiss chard patra with a coconut and curry leaf topping. I normally don’t like leafy greens, but here each leaf was dehydrated thin and made incredibly light and crispy. Then individual leaves are pressed together with chickpea and steamed to form a vegetarian mille-feuille, that ate like an airy potato pave. This was surprisingly tasty and I liked it a lot more than I thought I would.
To finish this course we had a broth from Southern India. This is Shorba, a soup you shoot, made from tomato and black pepper. This was yet another winning bite, and we were only on the first course. The soup was delicious, it has the same warmth and umami as miso soup, but prepared with Indian spices.
Where the flavours impressed with their uniqueness and variety on the first course, I was impressed visually by the second.
Hokkaido scallops with Sindhi kadhi and Himalayan mustard, chilli, and curry leaf oil. Kadhi is a yogurt-based sauce made with chickpea flour, this is how they do it and is popular in Sindhi. This is a piece of edible art. The scallops were sous vided at a low temp too firm. This gave it more of its own flavour, than just leaving it bobbing raw in the tang of the slight sour and sweet sauce. Once again the mustard seeds provided a lovely roasted crunch and some much needed varying texture.
The next course was mushroom on mushroom. Vegetarian Momo (dumpling) stuffed with mushrooms that our chef foraged the day before. Then pour over table side with a Mushroom jhol, which is like a buttery jus made with kaffir lime. The purple magnolia leaves were such a lovely and striking visually contrasting garnish. Flavour-wise their petals added a little bitterness, cutting into the bold umami of all the mushroom.
The Icelandic cod in fish curry, I found on the salty side with Amti sauce, mustard flower, and salted pea tips. The curry was sweeter thanks to its coconut milk base, but there was too much that I found myself scraping it off of the fish. I have never had fish like this before. It was interesting to have the chunks of flaky white fish wrapped in prawn mousse and then slow cooked on a char broiler. This gave it a spongy fish cake-like texture, served like a cake with filling. The surprise was when you got a change of texture from the bits of fish hidden throughout. We did give feedback as to the level of saltiness we had experienced, and as a result, our subsequent dish was less salted, but still remained on the salty side for our tastes.
Aubergine with Salan sunflowers and pumpkin seeds is from Hyderabad, a region in Southern India. The sauce is a blend of watermelon seed, poppy seed, onion, and gram masala. I didn’t know that you could eat the former most seed, let alone treat it to make it as silky as this. The feature is confit eggplant, slow cooked on a char broiler for maximum juiciness. The result is that the egg plant stayed firm without becoming slimy or losing much of its natural colouring. It looked like a chocolate ba. Topping it is a salad of crispy curry leaf, sunflower seed, and chilli oil. This was roasted and nutty, with a highlight of orange and chilli to flavour, and crispy leaves for a change in texture.
This was a warming dish that ate like stew. Although as was with the case above; there was so much excess sauce, with more than enough to flavour the main component, that you are left wondering what to do with what remains. And sadly it was too bold and salty to drink like soup. These two courses could have done with a table basket of breads or some rice to act as a base and help carry some of that flavour load.
The Lamb sirloin was a heavy dish, and at this point we were overly full from the richness of everything that we had before. The lamb was aged for 20 days, then dipped in whey before being cooked over charcoal, low and slow. Served with a brown butter celeriac purée, charred broccolini, and pickled celery stems. All brought together around an all burnt coconut, onion, ginger, and garlic sauce. This so done using an old technique, where they were void of charcoal grills, so burnt all their desired ingredients and ground them together to make a paste. The lamb was a little tough, infused with a roasted quality that reminded us of tea. The one slice was more than enough. Overall this was decently done with the need of the sides to offer breaks between bites. This was a well balanced dish with the pickles and greens being especially helpful.
Like all the other sauces before, this too was unique on to itself. At Kavita, there is no mother sauce that they build off of to make all the others. Each dish has its own and is built on its own. Therefore no two dishes taste alike, which solves the issue I commonly have with Indian restaurants. Where I accidentally order curries and stews identical to one another and finding everything tastes the same, thus getting bored of eating too soon.
The palate cleanser was a house made Kokum Sorbet topped with Cumin powder. Kokum is a citrus fruit that is part of the mangosteen family. It grows wild in Goa, where Chef Tushar is from, in India. It is often used to add zest to fish curries and as a version of lemonade in summer. Here it was tart and jammy, reminding me of tamarind.
For dessert we had Black carrot halwa with Khoa and Pistachio. This was like a carrot pudding, served as half a bite of cake. It is a popular winter time dessert, when black/purple carrots are in season. It is usually cooked in milk, ghee, and milk solids; but instead, at Kavita they have made a white chocolate and milk solid mousse for a lighter mouth feel. Topped with a pistachio crumble for crunch. It wasn’t sweet. This is like something I would want in the morning: a breakfast time pudding, eating hearty like oatmeal. Its flavour was more cardamon than carrot, with the flavours of chai and condense milk.
And our parting morsel was a block of Whey peda. This is made from the leftover whey that they have after making their own paneer every Friday. This is such a resourceful “whey” (excuse the pun) to eliminate waste. The whey is caramelized then milk solid is added to it, along with coconut and raspberry to make it into an Indian sweet.
It reminded me of a salty fudge, and was overwhelming taken as a solid, in one bite. I recommend nibbling at it and pairing it with a drink. Here, chai would have been a nice way to end the meal, as I got bits of coffee and toffee mixed into freeze-dried chicken broth from this. All of which I didn’t mind as I prefer my desserts savoury and meaty, rather than sweety. Although this is a weird end and not necessarily the flavour you want to walk away with on your lips.
Overall, this was such an impressive showcase. There was so much going on and we were never not entertained; be it from the visuals and the pageantry at the table, to the stories behind the flavours. The only thing I would have liked was some rest. There was no pause and no breather. Nothing that had us slowing down before taking us to the next show stopping dish. I needed some negative space to appreciate how much raw energy each dish provided.
Restaurant Kavita
250 W 3rd Ave, Vancouver, BC V5Y 1G1
(604) 200-6626
restaurantkavita.com
