He brought us India’s first tasting menu format. Now, he’s bringing us home.
Prateek Sadhu, a name synonymous with championing India’s culinary outlook, re-enters the conversation by presenting a concept so off the wall, or the mountain in this case, that diners have no choice but to plot their way to join his newest adventure - Naar. To call it a sixteen seat restaurant is a discredit to the ecosystem. A multivenue operation, featuring both a sexy salon for pre-meal libations and a quaint but courageous in-kitchen dining room that sits on a cliff, a reservation to Naar is best introduced as an itinerary.
The passage to Naar is a culinary commitment. Situated within the property of the coveted Amaya resort, the concept demands you to take planes or trains and certainly automobiles for a seat at the table. But once you arrive the voyage does not end, as a meal at Naar is a journey in itself. A journey through The Himalayan Belt, as told by Prateek.
But the chef will tell you that he is not alone on this quest to bring Himalayan home recipes to the forefront for as he says, it takes a village. Describing his twenty one person team of nomads, who both work and live the concept, Prateek and his crew maintain a culinary program that is so intentionally cyclical that we could easily call it sustainable.
He would ask us to say otherwise. “Sustainability, what does it mean? It’s a buzz word. Everyone is saying it but do they know what it means? For us, it’s about being as conscious as we can,” he explains, while standing amidst rows of sprouting spring alliums with Himalayan winter citrus hanging in his immediate view.
A tagline for many, the notion of farm to table is inherent to the Naar concept with their living, working farm that is as much a part of the restaurant as the food it produces. Ashes from Prateek’s full flame grill are mixed into the soil as a natural antiseptic while the what-could-be-waste rinds from the zippy gal gal, one of the many varieties of hill citrus, are used as a beautiful vessel for their mid-meal course.
An ode to the Himachaly people’s winter salad: nimbu sahnd, a pungent mash of the segments and house bhang, or hemp seed is topped with a demure foamed yogurt and finished with chilli salt. Talk about a complex set of flavours that come together in a harmonious few but very fine bites. Just as visually appealing, the rind is surrounded by a bouquet of winter flora, the dish is stunning but not as bloomful, apparently, as what comes next season.
“I’ll be serving a dish that will literally be a bouquet,” Prateek describes with a smile to his eyes in what we can only imagine will be the most beautiful of arrangements. The beverage program plays an equally aware approach, with jars of regenerated bits of charred potato and winter pomelos fermenting away to make their triumphant presence of winter ingredients in what will soon be spring menu cocktails. In a single sip of the house made amaro, whose hue can be best described as that blood orange setting sun, one knows that their specific spot in the Himachal Belt fully informs their menu that changes seasonally with two additions to the formative four.
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Words Gauri Sarin
Date 08.06.2024