Indian Accent Takes You On A Nostalgic Trip This Monsoon With Its Chaat Tasting Menu

The Chaat Menu On Everyone’s Mind

If you'd asked me a year ago, I'd have told you Indian Accent was one of those places you admire from a distance. Brilliant, sure, but a little closed off, a little intimidating, the kind of fine dining that felt more like an occasion than a place you'd actually want to be. That perception has completely shifted over the last few months. Between the four-course light tasting menu and now this chaat menu, the restaurant has quietly turned into somewhere I genuinely want to be every weekend, not somewhere I psych myself up to visit. There's a warmth to the experience now that wasn't as obvious to me before, food that's technically brilliant but never forgets to be comforting, service that feels generous rather than performative. This chaat menu is a good example of exactly why that shift happened.

Chaat, if you think about it, is a strange thing to build a fine dining tasting menu around. It's street food by definition, meant to be eaten standing up, in under thirty seconds, usually with your fingers slightly sticky and a queue forming behind you. There's an inherent tension in taking something that democratic and putting it on a seven-course, ₹2,900-a-head format with a glass of Chandon Brut on the side. Executive chef Shantanu Mehrotra clearly understood that tension going in, because the menu doesn't try to resolve it by making the chaat fancier. It resolves it by making the format looser, giving each dish room to breathe rather than forcing it into a rigid tasting-menu mould.

The Opening Trio: Nadru ki Chaat, Shisho, and Moong Pani Pakodi

The meal opens gently, almost deceptively so. Nadru ki chaat, lotus stem sliced thin and fried until it holds a delicate crunch, arrives with a spice mix and a scattering of shisho and baby pousse. On paper, pairing a Kashmiri lotus stem preparation with a Japanese herb sounds like it could go either way, but on the plate it makes complete sense. Shisho carries a slightly aniseed, almost minty sharpness, and it does exactly what fresh coriander or mint would traditionally do in a chaat, cut through the richness of the fry and reset your palate before the next bite. The baby pousse adds a bitter, peppery note underneath, so the dish never tips into being one-note crunchy.

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Moong pani pakodi with tamarind follows immediately after, smaller, softer fritters sitting in a shallow pool of tangy tamarind water. Where the nadru chaat is about texture, this one is about temperature and acidity, cool, sour, faintly sweet, the kind of bite that clears your mouth out completely before the next course lands. Nothing across this opening trio feels decorative. Every element, down to the herbs, is doing a job a traditional chaatwala's chutney or garnish would normally do, just translated into slightly unfamiliar ingredients.

Moong Sprout and Sweet Corn Bhel, Goji Berries

The moong sprout and sweet corn bhel with goji berries was the first dish where I actually stopped mid-bite and thought about what was happening on the plate. Bhel is one of those dishes everyone assumes they know well, puffed rice, sev, onion, a sharp green chutney, and most fine dining attempts at it either overcomplicate the crunch with unnecessary textural elements or lose the sourness that makes bhel work in the first place. This version does neither. The moong sprouts add a fresh, slightly grassy bite, the sweet corn brings pockets of natural sugar, and then the goji berries show up as this unexpected chewy, tart note that ties the whole thing together rather than sitting on top as garnish. It's a genuinely well-considered plate, restrained where restraint matters.

Puchka, Five Waters

Then comes the puchka, served with five waters, and this was the dish I walked in most sceptical about. Puchka lives and dies by immediacy. You eat it the second it's handed to you, or the shell softens and the entire point of the dish collapses. Slowing that down for a tasting menu format felt, at first, like a contradiction. But the five waters change the logic entirely. Instead of one hit of tamarind-jaljeera flavour disappearing in a single bite, you're handed a small procession, one sharper, one almost sweet, another with a deeper, more savoury pull, and you're meant to work through them individually rather than all at once. It essentially takes a two-second street snack and stretches it into a five-minute tasting exercise, and somehow it doesn't feel forced. It's one of the cleverer bits of course pacing on the entire menu.

Gujiya, Morello Cherries, Mixed Seeds

Gujiya with morello cherries and mixed seeds was the most unexpected course on the menu, and also one of the most successful. Gujiya, traditionally deep-fried, dense, filled with khoya and coconut, is a festival sweet through and through, usually eaten in small bites because of how rich it is. Reworking it into a course that leans savoury rather than dessert-sweet, with tart morello cherries cutting against the density of the filling, is a genuinely interesting call. The mixed seeds add crunch and a faint nuttiness underneath, so what could have been a heavy, cloying bite instead reads almost like a palate cleanser with actual texture to it, a strange but welcome midpoint between the earlier savoury courses and what's still to come.

Aloo Tikki Hash, Chana Dal, Chutneys

The aloo tikki hash with chana dal and chutneys is where the kitchen leans hardest into technique, and it's also where I have the most mixed feelings. Turning a tikki into a hash format changes its entire mouthfeel. You lose that specific contrast a good tikki is built on, the crisp, almost blistered exterior giving way to a soft, spiced potato centre, and instead get something closer to a composed plate, potato broken down and crisped in pieces, chana dal for bite, chutneys handling the acid and heat separately rather than baked into a single mouthful. It's well executed, and I understand the instinct to give it a more tasting-menu appropriate structure. But it's also the one course where I found myself missing the original format the most. Some dishes don't need reinvention, they need respect, and a good tikki is one of them.

Dal Samosa, Green Pea Nimona, Tomato Raisin

Dal samosa with green pea nimona and tomato raisin was a quieter, more comforting course, and honestly a welcome breather after the aloo tikki hash. Nimona, if you've grown up around north Indian winters, is one of those dishes that instantly reads as home food rather than restaurant food, green peas cooked down slow with warming spices until they turn almost creamy. Having it show up here, reworked into a more refined format but still unmistakably itself, ladled around a crisp dal samosa with a tomato raisin note adding sweetness underneath, was a nice reminder that this menu isn't trying to distance itself from where these dishes actually come from.

Dessert: Orange Chuski, Aam Ras Poori, Gud Batasha

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And then dessert, which is where the whole concept clicks into place. Live your childhood, orange chuski, followed by aam ras poori and gud batasha, is exactly as nostalgic as it sounds. The chuski in particular is a genuinely clever bit of menu writing as much as cooking, it doesn't try to elevate the orange ice candy you had as a kid growing up, it just recreates it faithfully, sharp, artificially bright, slightly too sweet in the best way, and lets the memory do the rest of the work. The aam ras poori and gud batasha that follow round things off gently, mango pulp against warm, puffed poori, a small sweet batasha for that last hit of jaggery. Paired with a glass of Chandon Brut, which sounds like an odd combination until you actually taste it, the sweetness and sharp cold of the chuski against the dry, slightly yeasty bubbles is a genuinely well thought out pairing rather than an afterthought.

The Bigger Picture

What struck me most, sitting through all seven courses, wasn't any single dish. It was how consistently the menu resisted the urge to over-intellectualise chaat. Fine dining versions of street food often fail because the kitchen tries too hard to prove the dish deserves to be there, more technique, more plating, more unnecessary garnish standing in for confidence. This menu mostly avoids that trap. It respects that chaat's appeal was never really about complexity, it was about contrast, sweet against sour, crunchy against soft, hot against cold, and it builds every course around preserving that contrast rather than replacing it with something more "refined."

That's ultimately why this menu is a good example of exactly why that shift happened. It's playful, it's rooted, and it's proof that a tasting menu doesn't have to abandon comfort to be taken seriously. Nothing here feels dressed up for the sake of it. Somehow, that's the reason I want to be back at Indian Accent every weekend now, not just for an occasion.