A chef displays tandoori lobster during the seafood festival being held at The Great Kebab Factory in Bhubaneswar. Picture by Sanjib Mukherjee

Bhubaneswar, July 18: Who can resist the culinary delights from north India mingled with gifts from the sea? Barbecued seafood has every flavour to satisfy your taste buds.

If you are lover of Mughlai cuisine and yet yearn for fare from the sea, it’s time to stop fretting. Fish and the Mughlai tradition of cooking have gone hand in hand for a long time. It’s time to step out of your kitchens and dining rooms and head for a restaurant that is holding a seafood festival that offers fish preparations that derive their exquisite flavour from Lucknowi, Hyderabadi and Awadhi cuisines.

Sprinkled ajwain on salmon and Lucknowi spices grilled into tikkas make for a great dish for gastronomes. This dish — called Ajwaini mahi tikka — is accompanied with some yoghurt sauce.

The contrasting tastes blend the hot dish that with the spices and simply melt in the mouth. Shrimp olive ke seekh has a contemporary touch to it. Jaituni gives an unusual flavour to the usual shrimp kebab.

Treating the fish with olive oil and then adding spices before grilling the seekh makes the barbecued dish tender. “I add some lemon juice and vinegar and then layer the spice around the kebab balls. This rids the dish of the unwelcome odour of fish while preserving the aroma of the kebab,” says chef Kabir Shah, who has presented a platter of kebabs of prawn, fish, shrimp, lobster and crabs at a seafood festival held at Hotel New Marrion’s kebab outlet — The Great Kebab Factory.

The outlet deals with cuisine from Afghanistan, Pakistan and north India.

The 10-day festival that began on Sunday offers five varieties of seafood barbecue every day. The kebabs are prepared in various ways, like roasting on the tandoor or on a sigri, shallow fried on a mahi tawa or deep fried in a kadhai. A few of the dishes are steamed in pots or even grilled on a stove.

The Awadhi, Lucknowi and Hyderabadi varieties of cuisine have a huge repertoire of seafood preparations. “There’s a huge variety of kebab and grilled dishes prepared from seafood when you include the Awadhi, Lucknowi and Hyderabadi cuisines,” adds Shah. The food fest offers a mix of ancient and contemporary touch to kebabs and tandooris.

The mouth-watering tandoori lobster is one of the most tempting dishes on the platter. Tandoori pomfret, Hariyali jhinga, Tandoori jhinga and Mahi taj are some other scrumptious items from the restaurant’s kitchen. Wasabi mahi tikka, Tandoor trout, Anari lobster, Kuti mirchi ke mahi pasandey are some traditional Mughlai seafood dishes listed on the menu.

The seafood delicacies include fish from Orissa and Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Goa.

The food festival offers four varieties of kebabs for lunch on weekdays at Rs 399 (excluding taxes) with the main course options. For dinner and weekends there are six varieties of kebabs and tandoori at Rs 599 (excluding taxes).