On our mission to uncover different types of food, we came across the ‘Diabetic Trail’ hosted by Park Hyatt, Chennai. As we were contemplating trying out this food, we got an opportunity to be a part of the tasting session. Park Hyatt is a new experience to us as we were targeting restaurants and hotels just did not feature in our radar for food review unless they have something interesting to offer from our viewpoint. As a resident of Chennai, we hardly get to experiment with hotels and their restaurants and look at them only when we get people talking about it. Curious to know what this restaurant, Flying Elephant, has to offer us, we joined Park Hyatt for a tasting session.

Chennai Focus is all about being a normal resident of Chennai and being proud of our identity. We strive to establish our identity wherever we are and feel proud in saying that we are accepted as we are and are respected for being what we are. This statement is for readers who have inhibitions in projecting themselves and try hard to be what they are not to feel comfortable in high funda places. There is absolutely nothing wrong dressed in kurti salwars or sarees or whatever you feel at home anywhere. It is your identity and do carry yourself to be what you are. Here is our experience in being what we are at Park Hyatt.

We arrived in an auto and walked in through the Exit gate onto the entrance. We were received at the entrance as we were wondering how to go further. We heard a guidance to go inside and up the lobby and trust me, it was in Tamil. Not sure if it is a common occurrence but as per our knowledge and experience, this is our first encounter. We reveled in those beautiful moments before proceeding to Flying Elephant.

Due to the rains and unavailability and cancellations by the cabs, we were a bit late and we joined in as the session was on. We were introduced to Chef Greg and Chef Vamsi introducing the Diabetic Trail, food designed for diabetics with inputs from Dr.Wasim. We were the only blogger among the group looking to explore the diabetic options for vegetarians. The undercurrent of this food as explained by Dr.Wasim, is combining the majority portion with cereals and fibre rich food and additional protein in moderation.

Coming to the food, our vegetarian options were lentil soup, Pizza, charcoaled vegetables, and brown conjee. Lentil soup was thick in consistency and could fill up a hungry stomach. No complaints on the taste though we expected something of soup consistency. Pizza was super thin, crunchy with green and red apple. Though it was not having the appetising look of a Pizza, it was really good.

Charcoaled vegetables had that yummy smoky flavour and the pick of the whole lot was the Brown Conjee with broccoli, greens and garlic. When we heard the name Conjee, honestly, we were not too interested. When we tried it, we just could not resist ourselves for multiple servings and the greens with garlic proved that it has the potential to make an interesting main course.

Mocktails without sugar were served, we had carrot ginger (we loved it), pineapple, cucumber, papaya and more. We had to remind ourselves that we were there to try out the Diabetic Trail and so restraints should be expected in the preparation of every dish.

Vegetarian options are very less but non-vegetarians had lot more options with different proteins. We want to commend the efforts of Chef Vamsi in going that extra mile to ensure we had roti and mixed veg curry (no diabetic trail) to complete our dinner.

Further we were served with desserts, lemoncheese cake with peanut butter ice-cream. Lemon cheese cake was a different experience. It had the rush of tanginess well balanced with salt. It was creamy and presented us with a savoury dessert experience. Peanut ice-cream was good and showed us the capability of presenting our own peanut as a sweet dessert.

Thanks to the Organizer, we came to know that there is another restaurant in Park Hyatt called Beyond Madras taking us to experience food from Grandma’s kitchen. It is aimed at exploring the authentic cuisine of different regions prepared with the inputs of research by the chefs with people from the respective regions. We will cover that too shortly.

The hero of the whole experience is the homeliness of Park Hyatt and their Outreach Team in helping us to understand and enjoy the experience though our options were less.