Near Radio Club, Colaba, Mumbai.
The mouth is the ultimate cultural barrier, and there’s perhaps no cuisine more difficult for the traditional Indian palate than Japanese cuisine, with its celebration of things like cold lumps of rice. Which is what makes today’s stylish new Japanese restaurants like Tetsuma a culinary version of the mysterious black monolith in Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001—an evolutionary marker of the sophisticated new Indian, and her tastes and lifestyle. Tetsuma is situated in a converted warehouse: a large, zen-inspired space, with a miniature frangipani tree and pools filled with pink petals.
Unless you’re a black belt in Japanese cuisine already, we’d recommend the well-thought-out tasting menus they offer for small eats, main courses, as well as sushi—which, between them, give you a great guided tour of everything from soft-shelled crab and wafu steak to garlic tiger prawn and salmon teriyaki. Also, to woo the hesitant Mumbai diner, they have a whole array of vegetarian specialities, probably more than in most restaurants in Tokyo. The Chilean sea bass in black bean sauce is excellent, and so is the pepper-crust black cod. But beware of the bizarre wasabi ice cream!
