We should do this more often, a bunch of “media people” sitting around a table groaning with food, fairy lights twinkling in the bushes, Blackberrys beeping with emailed notes on chevre and chocolate, pork and Prosecco. We should order wine instead of  lackluster cocktails next time and ask Rahul Akerkar more questions about his grandmum’s recipes. We should bring better cameras and wear looser pants, stock up on business cards. We should do this more often and even if you can’t join us, you should still stop by Indigo to try the new menu, just like we were invited to last evening.

Smells Fishy?

Disclaimer: This review comes out of a media event, where the good chefs at Indigo knew we were there and our meal was on the house. However, the opinions offered here are wholly unbiased, an amalgamation of our verdicts as well as those of our dining companions who included journalists from In.com, Mumbai Mirror, Verve and Society.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s start with the good stuff: an entirely overhauled Indigo menu with a distinctly Asian bent (only four dishes from the old menu remain including lobster bisque, lobster risotto, jalepeno and chocolate fondant and crème brulee). Brace yourself, there’s a lot of food talk coming up.

Soup to Nuts

We started with a round of soup, tortellini in chicken broth with crispy okra that could have been warmer and sans the okra; perfectly creamy lobster bisque; and potato and green garlic soup that was thick, garlicky and just a little sweet, a clever take-off from French onion soup – it even came with a piece of bread dunked in it, typical of French onion.

Save these for cooler weather and concentrate instead on appetizers, especially soft pillows of pan fried gnocchi stuffed with asparagus, easily amongst the best dishes of our meal. Also good were super fresh scallops in wasabi cream; chevre in phyllo tarts served with a shot of cold, tart gazpacho; and a simple, barely cooked dish of palm hearts drizzled with olive oil and garnished with greens. Beet Carpaccio could have been slimmer and less sweet, just like a dish of chicken liver that was quickly abandoned for an entree of sea bass.

What’s the Dish?

Speaking of sea bass, this dish is going to create a lot of buzz. Amalgamating a cloud of fish and an old family recipe for coastal dal complete with drumsticks, Mr Akerkar might have included it on the menu as critic bait, but it works astonishingly well. Other recommendations include fleshy, Indianised pork chops, meaty Portobello mushrooms and Asian duck. We didn’t, however, love soba noodles in over-acidic dashi broth with only a slice of creamy tofu for relief or arugula and goat cheese ravioli, which you could find at any decent Italian restaurant.

Last Words

Dessert was pure debauchery, old classics like divine crème brulee and spicy-sweet jalepeno fondant jockeying with newbies – vanilla Bavarian served with three tropical sorbets, chocolate cake with the wickedest hazelnut ice cream in the city, hearty apple shortbread with mascarpone semi freddo and an unbearably light honey and lemon soufflé. The latter was our favourite, but these are all worthy of their calories, capable of lulling their partaker into a state of hazy bliss, eyes droopy, inhibitions lowered. It was through such a semi-coma that one journo repeated  - “We should do this more often.”

Indeed we should.

Getting there: 4, Shahid Bhagat Singh Marg, Colaba, call 66337534, approximately Rs 4,000 for a meal for two without alcohol.