Showing posts with label
Grand GEM at Grand BlueWave Hotel.
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Showing posts with label
Grand GEM at Grand BlueWave Hotel.
Show all posts
Johor Kaki was invited to a preview of The Grand GEM's special buffet in conjunction with Ramadan.
The Grand GEM is located at the ground floor of The Grand BlueWave Hotel. This is my third visit to Grand GEM; read about my first and second visits.
The Grand GEM's special buffet consists of three different menus which will be rotated so that diners can experience different dishes at each visit.
We sampled just a small selection of Grand GEM's classic Indian dishes from the three menus during tasting session.
Our starter of "chicken vada". Be warned that this vada is "booby trapped" with bits of fiery chili padi that will literally set the mouths of the uninitiated afire. As for me, I like the hot spicy spikes when I bite into a chili padi :D
Popular starter "onion pakoda" or crispy onion fritters are fried in a spiced batter.
The "Mixed Grill Platter" of grilled chicken marinated in yogurt blended with different herbs and spices.
The tandoori grilled chicken were tender and rich with mild sensuous flavours and aroma.
The fiery looking "Bhuna Gosht" is a classic lamb curry. The pan fried mutton smothered in a thick blend of spices and herbs was tender and loaded with rich flavours and aromas.
I like this richly flavoured and mildly spicy "mutton dalcha" which went very well with the breads.
This was so good, I was drinking it up on it's own.
Our basket of various types of freshly made roti naan.
Nasi goreng made with basmati rice.
Baryani rice
There was a sampling of vegetarian dishes such as this "broccoli with mushroom" topped with cashew and cheese.
The vegetarian burgers came towards the end of the tasting session and we were already full.
But, this turned out to be the surprise crowd favourite.
As we were full by now, we all just took a nibble at this ordinary looking burger. Wow, we were impressed by the juicy flavourful, sweet, savoury and slightly tangy salsa spread, and the fluffy and crispy buns.
Somehow, we suddenly found space in our stomachs to finish all the vege burgers.
For the special buffet, The Grand GEM set up a "rumali roti" station.
The "rumali roti" action was very exciting to watch!
The flat dough is thrown upwards and forwards and it flies back to the chef like a boomerang!
The thin dough spread open is draped and cooked over a hot sea salt crusted upturned wok. The cooked dough is then folded just like the way one folds a handkerchief.
Made of wheat "rumali roti" is eaten like chapati or roti prata with curries.
For desserts, we had “gulab jamun” which is a very sweet deep fried milk ball served with rose and cardamom scented syrup.
We also had “kesari” which is a sweet semolina pudding flavoured with ghee and cardamom.
I rounded up the session with a nice masala chai.
The Grand GEM has three different menus for the special buffet which will be rotated.
Normal price is RM70 per person. Special rates of RM70 nett for two persons. And, 30% discount off RM70 nett per person for corporate accounts.
If you are looking for a chance to sample many types of authentic Indian cuisine in a fine dining restaurant at a very reasonable price, this is the best opportunity that I know of.
Restaurant name: The Grand GEM (at Grand BlueWave Hotel)
Address: Jalan Bukit Meldrum, Johor Bahru
Map: http://goo.gl/maps/oAc8E
GPS: 1.460626,103.768948
Hours: Dinner only (and only during Ramadan).
Telephone: 607-2210-7171
No pork, no lard, no Halal cert
Date visited: 24 Jun 2014
Return to Johor Kaki homepage.
Seelz, Director at The Grand Gem Indian restaurant invited me to taste their special Valentine Day set.
This was my second visit to The Grand Gem in JB. I had a great first visit soon after their opening in Johor Bahru last year. The Grand Gem has five outlets in Malaysia and this one in Johor Bahru is their biggest and finest.
The jewel in the Grand Gem Indian fine dining chain.
The Grand Gem is an Indian fine dining restaurant specialising in Indian cuisine from all over India. It is located at the lobby of Grand Bluewave Hotel along Jalan Meldrum in Johor Bahru.
The Grand Gem is offering two Valentine Day sets - "Temptations" at RM123 per couple and "Love Potion" at RM143 per couple.
I tasted a mix of items from both sets.
The Shahi Paneer which is a North Indian dish of cottage cheese in rich cashew gravy.
I love the creamy sweet cashew gravy smothering thin wedges of savoury soft spongy cottage cheese (paneer). I also enjoyed the aroma from the fragrant spices in the gravy. I ate lots of this paneer and thick gravy with the breads.
The Mutton Rogan Josh is one of The Grand Gem's signature dishes - a mainstay of Kashmiri cuisine. The gravy, grainy with spices was dense with aromatic spice perfume. It was also oily from the rich mutton.
Underneath the intensely flavoured gravy were cubes of tender chewy lamb saturated with spices.
I love this Honey Gobi which is battered cauliflower deep fried and drenched in a sweet, savoury sauce with spicy hints.
I love the crunchy and succulent but bland cauliflower spiced up with the flavoursome fried batter.
Broccoli and mushrooms - healthful and crunchy.
Love this Chicken Sheekh Kebab or marinated chicken grilled on skewers.
The saffron coloured chunks of white chicken meat had charred bits outside, and inside, it was sweet and juicy. The tender fragrant spice perfumed meat felt smoky and creamy. Lovely.
A rose for your date.
The garlic naan thin, crackly, crispy with bits of pungent garlic.
Roomali roti soft and fluffy like a white cotton handkerchief
Rounding off the Valentine Day set on a sweet note - Kulfi or traditional Indian milk ice cream flavoured with bits of nuts and cardamom from Kolkata.
Asst Manager Shivakumar
The Valentine Day set includes a glass of wine for each person to celebrate and toast the special day.
If you or your date loves Indian cuisine, Grand Gem Indian fine dining would be a good option for your Valentine Day celebration.
To make your reservation, call +607-2210717
Restaurant name: The Grand GEM (at Grand BlueWave Hotel)
Address: Jalan Bukit Meldrum, Johor Bahru
Map: http://goo.gl/maps/oAc8E
GPS: 1.460626,103.768948
Hours: 11:00am to 11:00pm
No pork, no lard
Date visited: 8 Jul 2013, 6 Feb 2013
My friend Gwen invited me together with Peggy Loh to the newly opened Grand GEM at Grand BlueWave Hotel. It was a great evening of scrumptious Indian cuisine and very fine company. Gwen who is a fan of Indian cuisine shares with us her experience of the evening in this guest post. Thank you Gwen! for a wonderful evening and this delicious guest post.
It was a cold and wet Monday evening. I was so looking forward to dinner. Not because I was that hungry. Not because I was so “tam chiak” either. It was because I was going to have dinner with two local celebrities. One is Ms Peggy Loh, whose stories I have followed since NST’s Travel Times and now Johor Streets. She has also entered the blogosphere and so I can reread her Johor stories at leisure. I have long admired her warm writing style and her topics are close to my home and heart. The other is Tony Johor Kaki, an award-winning blogger with an appetite bigger than mine and a thirst for adventure and discovery beyond my sofa surfing. And Tony is Singaporean – so must give due respect to him for crossing the Causeway to eat (no more makan place in the little red dot for him to discover meh?).
Dinner was at a pretty new name in Johor Bahru. The Grand GEM at the lobby of the Grand BlueWave Hotel Johor Bahru was officially open 2 months ago today (I’m writing this on 11th July – you do the math). The restaurant manager, Mr. Thiaga, described it as an Indian fine dining restaurant. The GEM Group has 4 Indian restaurants in Kuala Lumpur and this one in Johor Bahru, is their flagship outlet.
The décor is opulent. There are golden statues at the entrance, a trompe l’oeil on the wall, flowing fountains for fengshui, sparkly vases and peacock and elephants sitting on countertops. Yup, sure looks good … now what about the food?
Tony and I started with hot masala chai. It’s tea leaves and spices simmered in cow’s milk (we were told that it was indeed fresh cow’s milk).
They also served papadums with bright green mint chutney to whet our appetites.
Peggy and company came soon after and had cold mango lassi and hot spiced milk (like masala chai but without the tea).
For appetizers, we were introduced to the sizzling tandoori platter. It was seekh kebab (minced lamb), fish tikka, murgh badami (chicken) and a tandoori chicken thigh served on a naan that was smoking from the heat of the hotplate. The naan served to protect the meats from getting further cooked and burnt while keeping the meats warm. Everything was well marinated but we agreed that the murgh badami was the tastiest of all. The tender chicken breast was marinated in an almond paste, spices and yogurt and roasted in the tandoor. Delishhhh!
Oh, before I describe the main course, let me tell you how these food gurus operate!
Every time the waiters came to the table with a new dish, both Peggy and Tony would whip their cameras out and hog the food. They whisked the food away to a well-lit table and set on photographing it from multiple angles … “spoons pointing in the same direction …. Don’t get in the way of my light …” Obsessive’lah these people. By the time I got to eat, all the food was cold.
They also photographed the chefs (cajoling them out of the kitchen) and grilled them with questions. We found out that the chefs were from Delhi, Orissa and Tamilnadu, each in charge of different types of food preparations. The nervous chefs were unused to the spotlight and I could see how shy they were to have cameras pointed at them.
Our main course consisted of biryani rice, naans (butter and plain) and mint paratha with chicken tikka masala, mutton rogan josh, fish moilee, bhindi pitley and sizzling prawns. It represented food from different Indian states.
The fiery mutton rogan josh is a famous Kashmiri dish.
Chicken tikka masala is a popular dish in Delhi (and north India).
Fish moilee and the sizzling prawns are from Kerala, and bhindi pitley is a Tamil dish.
There are Bengali, Chettinad and Punjabi dishes on the menu as well – but that will have to wait for another day.
I enjoyed the chicken tikka masala most. The tandoori roasted chicken was tender and the gravy was mildly spicy and creamy.
The sizzling prawns came with an omelette on the hotplate, reminding me of Chinese hotplate tofu. The fish moilee and sizzling prawns were cooked in a coconut gravy, which gave away their Kerala origins. These dishes would have been better with steamed white rice because the flavours were so rich that they battled with the fragrant biryani rice for our palate’s attention.
I found the bhindi pitley to be an unusual dish. Bhindi is ladyfingers or okra (similar to the Malay pronunciation “bendi”). Thinly sliced ladyfinger is lightly battered, deep fried and tossed in curry leaves and chopped groundnuts. I have never eaten this in any Indian restaurant.
After all that food, Peggy decided that we should have rasam. Rasam is a peppery, sharp and tart soup. It is made with tamarind and spices and aids digestion. Yup, sure sounds good. For comparison, she ordered the original rasam and then, their Nandu Rasam which has crab. Crabby rasam wins hands down. The meaty savoury sweetness (umami) of the crab mellows the sharpness and tartness of the soup - still peppery, but now more rounded and robust.
Finally we have dessert - sweet, sweet Indian sweets to put out the fire of all that spicy food in our bellies. We had a frozen creamy dessert called “kulfi” (I was told not to think of it as ice cream, but it’s hard not to when I love ice cream so much – so, this falls short on my list).
We had “kesari” which is a sweet semolina pudding flavoured with ghee and cardamom.
We also indulged in the super-sweet “gulab jamun” which are deep fried milk balls immersed in a rose and cardamom scented syrup. Gulab means rose in Hindi, hence the name. The sweetness clung heavily to our palates.
I was disappointed that they did not have their signature dessert which is the Gajjar Halwa (carrot halwa). I was told later, that the chef was not satisfied with the quality and taste of his carrot halwa that day and decided not to serve it at all. So I must come back again. I would have anyway. There’s so much more to try.
A big thank you, to Tony and Peggy with her food tasters, for the lovely dinner company. May we have more breakfasts, brunches, lunches, dinners, suppers and in-betweens to come! Cheers!
Restaurant name: The Grand GEM (at Grand BlueWave Hotel)
Address: Jalan Bukit Meldrum, Johor Bahru
Map: http://goo.gl/maps/oAc8E
GPS: 1.460626,103.768948
Hours: 11:00am to 11:00pm
No pork, no lard
Date visited: 8 Jul 2013
