Splash - the Sky Lounge at Swissôtel is just the place for a quiet al fresco dinner

Here’s something your astrologer didn’t tell you — 2011 is the Year of the Parties. With a whole new bunch of nightclubs, lounge bars and fine dining restaurants opening over the last few months, Calcuttans can expect a rocking year ahead. Cutting-edge modern European cuisine to innovative Indian fare, classy ‘all-day-experience’ lounges to a live music haunt, there was never a better time to hit the road for a night about town.

Take a look at what’s exactly in store for you. Fancy a quiet al fresco meal with a gorgeous view and the soft gurgle of a waterfall? Head for Splash - the Sky Lounge on the Swissôtel rooftop. Opened in December, Splash is a stunner with white-linen draped cabanas ‘floating’ on lily ponds, wooden sidewalks (mind your stilettos on those ridges though) and water cascades.

The 8,000sqft restaurant-cum-bar can seat about 170. Each cabana accommodates 20 to 25 people. Says architect Kapil Bhalla, who designed Swissôtel: “We wanted a place where you could look at the sky for hours.” That’s Splash. And the inspiration is Bengal, with the water bodies, lotuses, grey walls (inspired by the clay-ey soil of the region) and tropical plants. “In fact, the beauty of Splash is magic made by Nature,” he smiles.

The Taster’s Menu in Saffron is paired with top wines from around the world

Meanwhile, the magic in the Splash kitchen is conjured up by executive chef Deepak Mishra. The Indian-born Australian chef, who’s worked with the likes of Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay, dishes out ‘lifestyle cuisine’. So, apart from grills and barbeques, expect exquisite ingredients like foie gras, Norwegian salmon and truffles along with cutting-edge culinary methods used across Europe.

“I’ll be using a thermo-regulator for slow cooking and pacojet for instant ice-creams, mousse and sorbets from fresh fruits, and also a lot of molecular gastronomy,” says Mishra. What does it translate to on your plate? Delicacies like slow-cooked chicken breast with Kashmiri morel and homemade tagliatelle of black truffle for main course and steamed soft centre Swiss chocolate pudding, Darjeeling tea brulee served with amaretto biscotti and fruit compote or a Swiss cheese selection for dessert. A meal for two at Splash would cost around Rs 3,000.

Talking about innovation, another restaurant that’s staged a coup of sorts is Saffron, the pan-Indian restaurant at The Park, re-launched in November. Sharad Dewan, executive chef of the hotel and director, food production, says: “Indian food is a challenge as not only are there innumerable restaurants serving it, that’s what you eat at home too.”

Live music is the USP at House of Kommons

So, apart from the regular fare, Dewan’s spread at Saffron is ‘Indian food with surprises’ — earthy yes, but with experimental elements. Think ravioli of khumb keema with truffled makhani or (vegetarians rejoice) unusual kebabs like gourd kebabs with liquid cheese or aravi (colocasia) kebabs. For dessert, there’s mishti doi cheesecake with aam papad chutney, semolina fritters with water melon rabri and gold leaf and chandan ice cream.

The décor of the 50-seater restaurant is “a conceptual interpretation of saffron, the spice, within a jute or hessian sack,” says Simon Kincaid of UK-based architecture and design studio Conran & Partners, designers of The Park. The lobby is done in orange glass and lit by glass oil lamps. Inside, the walls and ceiling are clad in jute panels. But the show-stealers are the strings of orange hand-blown glass balls cascading from the roof.

Hushh, inaugurated by Sushmita Sen in November, is one of the biggest crowd-pullers in South City Mall

The show-stealer on the table though is the Taster’s Menu. At Rs 1,800 for vegetarian fare and Rs 2,000 for non-vegetarian, this selection consists of taster’s portions of one cold starter, three hot starters, a main course, three sides, and three desserts paired with three glasses of wine.

The newest fine-dining addition to the city, however, is Zodiac, the 24-hour coffee shop at Fortune Select Loudon on Loudon Street by Welcomgroup Kolkata. While the 48-cover restaurant is obviously a boon for late-night club hoppers, the buffets for breakfast, lunch and dinner are among its USPs. Clean and uncluttered in design, the décor is in harmony with the rest of the hotel, with daylight flooding the place through glass walls. The menu is a mix of north Indian fare along with Oriental stir-fries, pastas and Bengali favourites. The lunch and dinner buffets are priced at Rs 800 and an a la carte meal for two is around Rs 1,500 (all inclusive).

Has this just got you craving for more? There’s ‘News’ for you — the restaurant at Hometown Mall in Rajarhat opened in November courtesy Amitabh Rai, former general manager of The Oberoi Grand. News stands for North, East, West, South. And sure enough the menu is culled from across the globe — Mediterranean, Indian, Oriental, American — inspired by Rai’s travels abroad. So there’s cheesy baked eggs, which Rai had in France and baked fish with herbed crust that he tasted in Italy and Korean beef with cucumber which he had on one of his Asian sojourns. A meal for two here would cost around Rs 1000.

The cheesy baked eggs on theNews menu were inspired by Amitabh Rai’s culinary experiences in France

According to Rai, one of the USPs of the place is that it’s the only one of its kind to cater to the Salt Lake, Laketown, and Rajarhat areas. The décor is simple. It draws on the bright open space around the restaurant. In fact, Rai plans to start al fresco dining from next winter. At night, the glass-panelled bar inside becomes the focus.

If you live in south Calcutta though and would rather do a chilled-out Sunday with a movie and lunch closer home, Hushh, the Resto Lounge and Bar, is the place to go. Buoyed by the success of Hushh at City Centre, Salt Lake, Rajat and Pinky Dalmia opened this 66-seater in South City Mall in Nov-ember. “The mall crowd — shoppers and movie-goers — are a major part of the clientele,” say the Dalmias. It’s keeping them in mind that the restaurant has quick bites like sandwiches, burgers and pizzas.

The main menu offers sizzlers, Continental and Italian dishes. The hotsellers? The seafood grill, the Hokkaido chicken, which is chicken leg and breast flavoured with garlic and lime juice served with hot garlic or Schezwan sauce, and the vegetable pancake layers. A meal for two at Hushh would cost around Rs 1,000.

Done with dinner. Next is what? Shake a leg at a club, head for a live gig or chill at a lounge? Well, you don’t have to pick any one. The newest hangouts in town are offering a mix of experiences.

Nocturne is a cool combination of a lounge and a club

So while Nocturne is a “lounge with a club feel”, Hops is a resto-lounge which on weekends gets into the club mood and while Nostradamus is a lounge that gives you a dining experience, House of Kommons offers both live music and DJs.

Nocturne, which opened in December on Theatre Road, is the hottest entrant on the clubbing scene. Designed by architect Ajay Shilpi, who gave Mumbai its first lounge bar, Athena, and more recently Zenzi, Aura and Café Basilico, Nocturne’s interiors are all walnut wood right down to the 40ft bar. The sound system, the only one of its kind in the city, is from the internationally renowned Martin Audio. “Our bar ceiling is designed to absorb sound so the bartender can hear the orders,” says Sovan Mukherjee of Nocturne.

The music is an eclectic mix of Indian, Arabic and Spanish Lounge, rock & roll, hip-hop, House and Bollywood. Guests can dig in to more than just finger food with pizzas, pastas, kebabs and also tapas. An Indian beer costs around Rs 105 while cocktails cost between Rs 250 and Rs 550. And, that’s not all. There’s a little surprise — Nocturne Haze, a smoking lounge in the basement, which serves hookahs and coffee and is open till midnight. Hookahs are also served in the smoking room in the club.

Hops Slounge Bar has given the south Calcutta crowd a place to shake a leg

The newest-kid-on-the-party-block, of course, is Zodiac, the ‘ultra-lounge’ at the Fortune Select Loudon. USPs? “Me,” laughs mixologist Irfan Ahmed, beverage consultant and entertainment manager of Fortune Select Loudon. “Actually lots — award-winning resident DJ Sammy, limited 40-seater space (we don’t want it cramped), a variety of cocktails and most importantly, soup-to-dessert dinner option,” he adds. The 800sqft place is done in neat white, black and red and allows natural light to stream in. Zodiac is open from 12 noon.

The House of Kommons (HoK) in Salt Lake, Sector V — the IT hub of the city — is also an early starter: 11am. A boon for IT professionals, who now have a place to unwind close to their workplace, HoK was inspired by the live music culture of the city.

Says Kakoli Das, one of the managing directors: “My partners, Rajiv Bhattacharya and Indraneel Dutta, like me, have been regulars at Someplace Else, the live music pub at The Park. And we’re glad that we’ve been able to give Salt Lake something similar.” HoK, in fact, has gone a step further by throwing the floor open to all kinds of music like Sufi, ethno-electronica and Bengali rock too. Every night at HoK is special — Tantalising Tuesdays is for new bands, Fabulous Fridays is for well-known acts, Scintillating Saturdays are DJ nights, and so on.

The décor of the place is a mix of a rock and lounge feel with framed pictures of rock and pop legends and low seating, textured walls and hookahs.

But music is not the only crowd-puller at HoK, which opened in October. Its menu includes combo meals —ideal for the IT crowd taking a break from work. A sandwich, French fries and a soft drink come for Rs 99 and a combo of two sandwiches, two portions of French fries, one veg shaslik, four beers and one hookah is priced at Rs 599.

At the other end of the city, Hops The Slounge Bar in South City Mall straddles both the restaurant and lounge bar/club space with ease. The 7,500sqft property, which opened in September, can seat 170. Weekdays see the place in resto-lounge-bar mode but come Saturday, Hops is a rocking nightclub — perhaps the only one in south Calcutta with resident DJ Carlotta at the turntable. Says Neha Kapoor of Hops: “Being in a mall helps. Security’s taken care of. So is parking space.”

A beer at Hops costs between Rs 110 and Rs 250 and a meal for two would work out to roughly Rs 600. The cuisine is a mix of Mediterranean, Continental and Oriental. And party-goers, watch out for karaoke nights coming up soon.

Now that you’re armed with the lowdown on the hottest places in the city, get your friends together and go paint the town red. Remember — Tick tock on the clock and the party don’t stop ...  

Photographs by Rashbehari Das