I have never felt so lost with food around me! I was invited by Hyatt to test their Oktoberfest before it went live and so my friend and me went with high expectations. This friend of mine specializes in eating crocodiles, kangaroo, camel and octopus among other things and is a contender to succeed Andrew Zimmerman.
We landed there and the wonderful Executive Chef Thomas introduced us to the festival. The setting is nice et all, but when the food was presented, almost everything was pork! There was one roast chicken, but every other wurst was pork. And I don't drink beer, so here I was watching my friend gobble everything and all I could do was eat that one chicken with the fantastic curry sauce that the chef made. He is from Austria and so German cuisine is like the back of his hand! I spent the next hour or so chatting with the chef about wellness and lifestyle and other stuff, while my friend was doing the eating. I had the breads which were outstanding and reminded me of my time in Europe, but even in Germany, I had some choice of beef to eat! The chef offered to make me a pizza cos even he started to feel bad for me, but I had a great time talking to him and learning more about food. (Yes, I did).
So here is what my friend had to write!
Friday evening we had a call for a media preview from Focaccia hyatt, Chennai. We were welcomed with a smile and then taken to a beautiful outdoor dining hall. The ambience was really nice. Executive Chef Mr.Thomas joined us for the dinner and gave us a brief over view of the festival and the dishes to be served.
Out came the breads. Three authentic varieties and it was yum. Sour dough loaf in particular was very tasty. In fact my friend was full by just eating breads. To accompany the breads there were selection of sauces. Extra strong mustard, Honey mustard and Mustard with green pepper corn were good. But the sauce of the day was the German style curry sauce. Perfect balance and goes well with all kinds of bread and sausages served. It was so tasty that we had couple of refills.
Main course was a selection of delicious sausages. Almost all of the sausages had pork in it. This is the first time I had an authentic Bavarian Meat Loaf. It was perfectly cooked and yum. May be a fried egg on top would have made it the dish of the day. However the real winner was Frankfurter sausage. Sausage stuffed with cheese and wrapped with beacon. With the curry sauce this was undoubtedly the dish of the day. Other mains were roasted chicken, Crispy Pork Belly, Käsekrainer, Nurnberg Rosstbratwurst. All of them were delicious. For salads there was, Potato salad(contains sausages) and Wurst salad and cabbage salad all of them were very light and tasty.
After tasting all the dishes there was very little space in us for desserts. Out came the desserts. “Kaiser schmaren with stewed plums and rum raisins ”, it is basically a Pancake topped with raisins soaked in rum. Man it was heavenly. But make sure that you eat them when it is still warm. Apple strudle was the other dessert. It was good, but again we felt it would have been better if served warm.
Priced at 1299, 1499 and 1699 you will experience authentic German street cuisine served with imported beer. It would have been nice if there had been few sausages without pork or couple of chicken dishes. Sorry to say but it is not a place to dine if you are a veggie!!!
But, if you are a “Beer and Pork” lover then it is truly October Fest in Chennai !!!.
Food 8/10
Service 8/10
Ambiance 8/10
Price 8/10
Written by Kumaresh Govindan!
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