Following a childhood passion is one thing. Building an 18-course tasting menu out of it is another.
Chef Ashwin’s wall of memories
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Chef Ashwin Singh, the creative culinary head of Aspect Hospitality, has had stints at Masque in Mumbai and Gaggan in Bangkok, two kitchens that have shaped the way contemporary dining in Asia thinks about experimentation and experience. But long before those kitchens, Ashwin was already obsessing over food. He has a notebook in which he began writing down recipes as a child. Among its entries are recipes he paid an aunt in Meerut, where he grew up, ₹100 apiece for each recipe, in the 2000s. By seven, he was already documenting food on YouTube. The impulse, it seems, was never just to eat. Ashwin wanted to know how food worked, where it came from and, perhaps most importantly, how much more there was to learn.
Chef Ashwin Singh
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Now based in Mumbai, and a graduate of the Institute of Hotel Management (IHM), Bangalore, he has found a particularly elaborate way to indulge that curiosity. His new 14-seater, Fitour, tucked inside House of Akina in Bandra, is a tasting menu built as much around memory as technique. Ashwin calls the courses “verses”, a nod to his fondness for poetry and his belief that food, like a poem, can reveal itself slowly.
The room helps with the illusion. Enter Fitour and you briefly wonder whether you have taken a wrong turn into some extremely well-designed bunker. There is no phone signal, the Wi-Fi password has to be requested, and the interiors are pared back. For now, there are 14 seats, though Ashwin says the space could eventually accommodate 22.
It is almost pitch dark when you enter. Fitour is deliberately dark, almost theatrically so, and Ashwin uses light and music as part of the meal, changing both as the verses progress. The room brightens, dims, and shifts mood. He is clearly having fun with the possibilities.
Pani puri served as amuse-bouche
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The soundtrack is evidence enough. Backstreet Boys can give way to Boney M, which can give way to Dua Lipa and the sort of songs that have acquired a second life as Instagram-Reel soundtracks. It is an unexpected playlist for a tasting menu, and that is precisely the point. Ashwin does not seem particularly interested in the solemnity that can sometimes accompany fine dining.
The food follows the same logic.
You are not handed a menu at the beginning and invited to spend the next two hours anticipating what is coming. At Fitour, Ashwin wants you to eat first and interrogate the plate later. Each verse arrives without an explanation. You taste it, try to identify what you are eating, and only afterwards are you told what was in front of you.
Pahadi crab masala
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It is, in its own way, an omakase-like proposition, except the chef is less interested in the Japanese notion of placing yourself in the hands of the chef than in making you pay closer attention to your own palate. Knowing too much in advance, Ashwin believes, can get in the way.
And there is plenty to listen to. One of the evening’s most successful ideas is the litti chokha, which takes the familiar Bihari combination somewhere considerably less familiar. The sattu arrives as a ginger cookie, accompanied by mint hot sauce, mustard chokha and chutney. It is a playful collision of sweet and savoury, and unlike any litti chokha I have eaten before.
The pahadi crab masala is another dish where Ashwin shows restraint. Crab, bell pepper, pahadi sauce, pickled onions and lemon come together without the dish becoming a festival of competing ideas. There is enough heat and acidity to keep the crab interesting without burying it under the sauce.
Shirvalya and mango mahura rasam
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The strawberry chaat is similarly clever. Strawberries, dehydrated yogurt, pickled onions and jimikand turn what might sound like a dessert into something much more savoury and unexpected.
The thali is perhaps where the menu’s generosity is most apparent. There is butter naan, chaas with snap peas, a jungli sauce that recalls the flavours of a Rajasthani jungli maas, and a dehydrated papad salad made with muskmelon, cucumber and green apple. It is recognisably Indian without being slavish about what an Indian thali is supposed to look like.
Not everything lands with the same precision though. The Awadhi yakhni pilaf has the makings of a lovely dish, but the yakhni custard is so assertive that it overwhelms the pilaf beneath it.
Litti chokha
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The shirvalia and mango mahura rasam suffers from a similar problem. There are plenty of intriguing components — sanchok, shirvalia, peas, coconut chutney and turmeric oil — but the mango mahura rasam is simply too forceful. The idea is interesting; the balance isn’t quite there.
Wash it all down
The cocktails are paired with the food. I sampled three over the course of dinner, and each had its own personality. The first was fruity, refreshing and floral, an easy opener that set the tone.
My favourite was a gin cocktail built around banana and pandan. Banana in a cocktail can be a dangerous proposition — it can very quickly become heavy or dessert-like — but here the pandan gave it a fragrant, almost grassy lift, while the gin kept things clean and bright.
The fifth cocktail, served towards dessert, went in the opposite direction: sweet, rich and creamy. It made sense as the meal’s final flourish, particularly alongside the more indulgent desserts, although by that point the evening had already delivered enough stimulation in the form of food, music, lights and surprises.
Sweet note
When it comes to dessert, the mogra financier will probably divide diners by temperament. The almond financier, mogra chantilly, lychee sorbet and kaffir lime make for an aromatic, floral finish, but it was not quite to my palate.
Mogra dessert
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The mithai shop, however, is difficult not to like. It is a miniature confectionery universe: brown butter atta cake, doodha burfi ice cream, mawa burfi, milk skin, gur caramel and kesar chocolate foam, all brought together in a way that feels indulgent without being gratuitous. And then, because apparently 18 verses are not enough, you leave with a small box of sweets. It is an old-fashioned gesture in a restaurant that otherwise likes to play with the future.
Petit fours
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Tasting menu ₹8,245 per person; cocktail pairing ₹5,495; international wine pairing ₹6,495; Indian wine pairing ₹5,145. All prices are exclusive of taxes.
