A modern backdrop, authentic Chinese and Thai cuisine: That’s Purple Rice for you

The vibrant décor proves to be is a bit too absorbing for one to get into mathematical complexities, with silver coloured wallpaper with a liberal amount of purple in the ceilings and also in form of paintings is well coordinated to sooth one’s aesthetic sense, is what you find as you step inside Purple Rice.

But why Purple Rice? “Purple is the colour of the youth, energetic and full of life. And our aim is to provide Chinese food in a modern ambience. Hence is the name and the décor,” explains Vipul Dua, city’s youngest hotelier. “I wanted to do something different .Though it was a big risk but I wanted and that’s I have brought traditional dinning into modern and causal dinning, with mascot that keep us alive everyday.
Though there are colours (red, Black and white) that represent Chinese, but Purple Rice is far away from those.
Vibrancy is the key word. For, it is not just the walls that radiate vibrancy but also ‘behind the counter scene’ which is full of it. The sound of chopping and sautéing fresh vegetables as the chefs, under the guidance of chef Bhaskar, prepare your dish in front of you adds to the set up. “You can have a dish of your own choice,” says Vipul. Vegetables are on display and one can pick and choose.
There are other frills too. Like a shelf full of books that include Linda Goodman’s love signs, books on Hollywood and Bollywood and Thai and Chinese cuisines.
“I am a youngster. So I know what youngsters want,” Vipul sounds confident. But then he has a reason to be. Armed with a diploma in hotel management, Vipul has gathered experiences from Radisson, London and Hyatt Regency in Delhi.
Though authentic Chinese and Thai food is the mantra here, Vipul has done his bes to appease the Punjabi taste buds. His chilly paneer comes with the terminology mast desi Chinjab, while his special chilly chicken is desi mast chataka. Besides the exotic names like vegetable gyoza, Pok Choy with black mushroom oyster sauce, sliced fish with black bean sauce, there are familiar names like chilly chicken. “But our chilly chicken or chilly paneer sans the Punjabi touch,” he is quick to add.
His Purple Rice noodle soup, a Thai specialty. “The soup we are serving here is what you get in Hong Kong.”
A meal here costs Rs 400 to Rs 500 per head, including beer or wine from Australia, South Africa, Spain, Italy, France, or India. “The idea was to create a wine culture in Chandigarh where people could develop a taste for wine. It is about creating a culture, developing it, and maintaining it.”

Well, that’s again a debatable matter, but one can say with authority that the clear shrimp soup with vegetable and garlic seasoning sure is tantalising!

Here’s what the menu boasts of. Leading way are soups like ‘Seafood Beijing Soup’, ‘Crab Meat Soup’ followed by starters such as ‘Indonesian promfret satay’, ‘Jumbo shrimp rolls’, ‘Crab salt and pepper’. “The main course brings in specialties like ‘Lobster Butter Chilli Garlic’, ‘Chinese Steamed Trout’,” lists out Dua, and which is available 24/7 and 365 days a year.

Incidentally, when I, the famished, first nibbled an exotic assortment from an Oriental wok (pan), with my left hands holding an alloy steel knife, my ears tuning into overhead neo-Western music and my right hand clanking the clattering white bone china cutlery with a fork, this subtle revelation had not yet dawned, even though it was high noon. All this came later; much after the soul had been satiated with a hodgepodge of fragile South Asian delights. Even personalities could change, by the way.

I debuted here with Purple Treasure Soup, said to be the creation of the chef (Bhasker, scooped from Taj Delhi, now wearing a purple bandana) with eight types of exotic vegetables available on your table for Rs 75 (veg) and Rs 105 (non-veg). Swooshed in, the crunchy-munchy pale liquid did do some good.

I followed up with lamb, with Paper Thin Lamb, with soft shredded meat stir fried with three types of bell-peppers and served, smoking; the itsy-bitsy creamy white bits trapped amid shreds of greenish foliage. The Paper Thin Lamb, which is said to be one of the specialties of Purple Rice, is on your table for Rs 195. Full in taste, the chewed lamb melted on contact and the taste-buds exhumed a lingering acknowledgment.

But barging into the lamb were mouthfuls of another crunchy-munchy—the very red and very brown Chicken Lettuce Wrap (boneless chicken breasts wrapped in lettuce leaves and tossed with some Thai sauce). The pieces would gently explode in the mouth’s gentle squeeze and fill the hot, dry tongue with instant fantasies.

The Zumbo prawns, as it turned out on eating were, prawn-like. They had a make-do name– Hot Chilli Prawns—and a nationality too—Indonesian. Really meaty, when guided, glided out of the stick and plucked golden brown.

On the black-brown round table swam in the promised Standing Pomfret, whole-fried with Malasian know-how and Xo sauce. Like fish eating fish, the sea/river fish, smeared with thick and tangy gravy, was dismembered, sideways, and eaten with my fumbling brown-wood chopsticks and eaten with the driest and the lightest chicken noodles of my recent memories. The Red Snapper ( 700 gm) , which goes under the heading make your own pomphret with any kind of sauce and same with fish is streamed and fried ( Rs 225 /395) , which will perfectly relish your dine.

Dessert has dates and I had honeyed Date Pancakes, the Chinese flour wrap popping out a chocolaty paste that the nice ice cream flowed into and made the mouth hot, cold, sweet and someway indescribable, the dripping honey apart.

The mouth is now buzzing with sting bees of smell. I swallow the saliva and silently, the jasmine tea arrives in a white porcelain kava, with remnants of some floating leaves. Sugarless, tasteless and also aroma-less, the warm brown water feels grudgingly good on my burning taste buds, like jasmine tea gliding over white porcelain

Be it the ambience, the décor or the food - eating out at Purple Rice is truly a different experience for the Punjabis.

BOX:

Concept of Live kitchen:
The restaurant boasts of live cooking with vegetables being chopped and sautéed in front of you, under the guidance of chef Bhaskar. The ambiance enhances visit while you indulge in to your food. Every detail from the food to the decor is something to look forward to.

The Seafood is available round the clock -24/7 and 365 days a year.