#blahvsfood: Sienna and what separates a good restaurant from a great one.

I was on my second dish at Sienna when I requested for pen and paper. Because I realised already that this was going to be no ordinary meal. I was about to embark on an adventure to remember and I needed to take notes, to remember details, to chronicle memories and moments.

I didn’t do a tasting menu at Sienna. Instead I asked Chefs Avi and Koyel to bring me whatever they wanted from the a la carte within the context of a certain brief. I said I didn’t want to just have their most successful or popular dishes. I said I wanted to eat the dishes that best epitomise their philosophy and ambitions. 

What I got was a meal that absolutely blew me away. I know that Naar is the benchmark for an Indian restaurant. But the food at Sienna sits just below that along with extraordinary restaurants like Masque and Farm Lore for me.

I think it’s important to clarify that what I look for in a great restaurant is different from the regular diner. I love an Indian Accent and Avartana and I think the food there is probably tastier than the food I had at Sienna. But deliciousness is just one of the criteria when it comes to how I see a restaurant. The restaurants that blow me away, that inspire me, bring more than flavour to the table. 

Courage. 

Conviction. 

Clarity. 

Cohesion. 

Intellect. 

Imagination. 

Technique. 

Originality. 

These are the eight criteria that separate the good from the truly great. And for me it’s very rare that a restaurant hits all eight criteria while also providing delicious food. And even today I can’t name more than five restaurants in India that do this consistently. 

When I last ate at Sienna in 2023, Auroni Mookerjee was heading the kitchen and it was probably the single best meal I ate anywhere in the world that year. 

I wrote… “what I ate was so audacious in terms of thought and execution that it was one of those meals that force you to change the way you look at an entire cuisine”.

When a chef of Auroni’s brilliance leaves a restaurant it’s fair to wonder if the quality of the food had diminished. But at Sienna, chefs Avi and Koyel have ensured that the food continues to be as excellent. I don’t know how many of the dishes I had are new and how many from Auroni’s time but the food also had a different point of emphasis compared to Auroni’s tasting menu. Auroni’s tasting menu looks at his food through a West Bengal lens. The food at Sienna looks at it through a Kolkata lens. Less terroir and produce. More community and culture. And much looser in terms of their fidelity to Bengali flavours while retaining the philosophical underpinnings of Bengali cuisine. 

They tell the story of Kolkata food in ways that honour the city but challenge it. That take inspiration from it but reimagine it.

Bajaar ceviche, raw mango broth 

I started with a pumpkin ceviche with raw mango broth that was light and fragrant, like a tenga romancing a rasam, rather than anything classically Bengali. 

Chicken liver parfait, jamun jam

Then came a Chicken Liver Parfait with Jamun Jam, served chilled, where the use of temperature and the sweetness of the jam scrubbed the liver of its mineral flavour, making it a liver parfait that a seven year old would love. 

Chilli garlic bheja fry

The Chilli-Garlic Bheja Fry was the first of many courses where the chefs are resolute in their commitment to meat and fish parts that aren’t typically served in Indian restaurants. This was their take on a Tangra chilli chicken, cooked without bell peppers a la Ah Leung rather than the version we usually get in most Indo-Chinese restaurants. Like the liver parfait, the idea is to cook the bheja in a way that doesn’t freak out the non adventurous diner. So they steam the brain (a technique taught to them by Divya Prabhakar of Bengalooru Oota Company) to remove the smell. 

Charu-r Parota, mutton offal

The Chhatu-r Porota with Mutton Offal was inspired by Kolkata’s Bihari community, a community that achieves the unwanted distinction of being both lifeblood and marginalised. 

Chicken and lotus root meatball soup

Golda chingri, bone marrow hollandaise

A comforting Chicken and Lotus Root Meatball was followed by a Golda Chingri, Brain-Marrow Hollandaise. I always eat my prawns with the head because that’s the juiciest, tastiest part. At Sienna, they scrape the prawn head, take out the brain, emulsify it with butter and create a hollandaise that really accentuates the creaminess and complements the prawn. 

Maacher Tel Chocchotu, sesame emulsion 

Then came the most challenging dish of the day, a Maach-r Tel Chocchori, Sesame Emulsion. Fish offal is really not for everyone, not even hardcore meat eaters. But the chefs used a sesame oil emulsion to cut the funkiness, packed it in rice and wrapped it in a Lauki patta (bottle gourd) leaf so that it was like a funky dolma with a sesame oil dip. Still clearly fish offal but in a way that anyone could eat it. 

Fish Roe XO Fried Rice

The Fish Roe XO Fried Rice takes the classic Tangra Chinese egg fried rice and uses the quintessentially Bengali macher deem (fish roe) to give it a salted egg kind of flavour. The South East Asian reference is reinforced by the crispy edges of the fried egg, before you break the yolk and mix it all up to create an unctous, flavour packed rice bomb.

Chawl-r Ruti, Mangsho, Jhol

The Sienna take on a Mangsho jhol is also unique, served with Chaal-r Ruti like a birria taco. The meat texture is also more like a taco than a Bengali curry, with the chefs using goat shoulder that is confited and seared into an almost bacony texture. 

kalojeere pork, pork fat rice 

The final course was a Kalojeere Pork with Pork Fat Rice. While the pork was excellent, I honestly didn’t need it. I could have just inhaled that fragrant rice, fried in pork fat and then boiled. 

For dessert we had versions of a doodh puli and a sondesh. 

The doodh puli was a rice 'dumpling' made of  rice flour with coconut and jaggery inside, poached in milk flavoured with pandan oil. The chefs use rice flour instead of the more traditional gobindobhog flour to give the dish a glutinous texture but used the pandan to recreate the memory of gobindobhog through its smell. 

Doodh puli, pandan oil / Makha sondes, orange kheer

The makha sondesh was a wonderful, layered take on the sandesh. A whipped chenna that was set at a lower temperature till it’s almost like a ricotta. This was mixed with sugar, a pinch of salt and served with nolen gur with orange kheer on top. 

Both these desserts were exactly the kind I like. None of the easy cop outs or chocolate overloads. But subtle, creative, not too sweet and completely at one with the philosophy and storytelling of the savoury courses that came earlier. 

Sienna is the only restaurant I repeated from my last Kolkata trip. I told my friend Lavanya that I needed to go back because Sienna is the most important restaurant in east India. I was wrong. This is one of the top 3 restaurants in India. Its importance is not limited to India but to the global Bengali diaspora and the Indian cuisine story wherever it is told in the world. And as they start their chefs table in a few months, I have the feeling that the world will be talking about Sienna.