Spice Route Restaurant

Spice Route Restaurant - It is the prettiest restaurant in the city's best-looking hotel, and yet, unlike what happens in most good-looking places, the food is something to keep going back for. Voted one of the world's top ten restaurants by Condfi Nast Traveler, the Spice Route, designed by creative czar Rajeev Sethi, is a journey through the cultures and cuisines that starts from Kerala's Malabar Coast and continues through Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. Spice Route can be viewed essentially as a designer restaurant offering a visual treat (including brilliant recreations of erotic paintings from the temples of Kerala, hand-painted with vegetable dyes by artists from Guruvayoor), but we would recommend it mainly for its no-nonsense menu that matches very well with a carefully selected wine list. Its fans include Hrithik Roshan, Abhishek Bachchan and his sister Shweta Nanda - Spice Route is a good place to go people-watching.

Between mid-October and mid-March, you must dine out in the courtyard, especially on a lazy weekend afternoon, when the sun is balmy, and in the evening, when it shimmers in candlelight. It's a non-smoking restaurant (the woodwork and the paintings - it took seven years to put them in place - are too precious to be allowed to choke in the smoke), but check out the wine list. Remember, the food goes very well with a dry Riesling or an unwounded chardonnay from the New World. Just don't' go for the expensive reds from Bordeaux or Burgundy (a chilled young pinot noir, though is not such a bad idea).

Spice Route Restaurant
Feast for the senses
The Imperial Hotel
Address: Janpath,
New Delhi-110001
Contact: 23341234, 41501234
Timing: 12:30-2:45 pm and 7:30-11:45 pm