I don’t know if the earliest Chinese settlers in Hyderabad were Nanking, Peking or Haiking…but I do know that the years have removed many boundaries between fried rice, pulao and biryani. And the localisation of the original Chinese cuisine has been one that’s perhaps stopped just short of Kothmir and Curraypak.

I guess there is nothing wrong with that…it’s just a sacrilege…in fact I know many locals who came back from Kolkatta or even from China convinced that the local Hyderabadi brand of Chinese was more palatable even if not more authentic than its international counterpart.

And we grew up on a delicacy called American Chopsuey and our children swear by a Chinese Bandi run by a man called Pandu.

I guess, if you really think about it, almost all the cuisines that have evolved in and around Hyderabad have been victims of the malaise called localisation. I know for instance that Punjabi cooks in the early dhabas went out of their way to make their chicken preparations more suitable to the local palate. Similarly with Udipi food, Gujarati and Rajasthani…

Continental had been bombarded quite a few years back and perhaps that’s the origin of what Truffles Café so quaintly calls its Lalaguda Cuisine. And we even have an all veg Italian restaurant for Heaven’s sake!!!

But I am an eternal optimist. I hope and live with the hope that mankind will learn, and learn before it is too late that some things are best left unaltered. The latest concern is Greek Cuisine.

And for the latest on that front I stepped in behind the Blue Door.

One of my fondest hopes for this wonderfully Mediterranean Restaurant is the amazing belief that the promoter seems to have in engaging authentic, first generation Greek talent to stoke the fires in the kitchen and whip up stuff for his customers that’s as Greek as the Greeks themselves would have it. Plus when I hear that even most of the ingredients used are specially imported by the management, my heart swells.

So I am glad to see that in their impending Menu Change, they are looking at a Chicken Crepe that can adorn the bar as a Tapas…at a Greek Beef Salad that’s nutritiously green and cosmetically crunchy…at Prawns that are tempered and Beetroot that is not…

With main courses that are going to explore the chicken side of Risottos and desserts that are going to lay ice cream to rest on a bed of juicy wet orange cake…the fare is going to be on the better side of authentica. And I for one am looking forward to that original Greek Coffee and perhaps too the cathartic experience of smashing plates that I know has serious Greek connotations.

I just hope that Hyderabadis allow the original Greek flavour to remain in this restaurant otherwise the Mediterranean will soon change into the Bay of Bengal and the fake shawarma counters in the city will soon have Greek Kebab bandis running around alongside.

God Forbid!!!