ITC Gardenia, Bangalore, Indian Restaurant

Whilst staying at the ITC Gardenia, Bangalore, India. We visited their India Restaurant. We had a selection of their curries, which were all excellent, followed by Shahi Tuhra.

Shaha Tuhrais made by pouring delicately reduced milk over crisp home made bread sweetened in saffron syrup, garnished with silver leaf and pistachio. So it's like a India bread and butter pudding. It was very sickly, but I had to eat it all!

Finished with a plate of fresh fruit.

Sea Coconut and Lychee dessert

A popular dessert amongst Chinese culture, fruit on a bed of crushed ice. This particular dessert contained Lychee and Sea coconut, which is the Coco de Mer species of Coconut that has been soaked in syrup/sugar. I was told it was good for the respiratory system.

Sour Plums

A favourite with the locals, not so much with me. They are dried plum segments that are heavy on added salt and sugar. I made the mistake of popping it straight in to my mouth without asking what it is! This food blog has definitely made me more open to trying new foods, I don't even ask what it is now before I throw it in my gob.

Durian!

Regarded as "the king of fruits" in Singapore, I had to try it!

First of all, the smell. Some people love it, they smell a very sweet sickly smell, whereas there are some people that say "it smells like the armpit of a corpse!"

The husk has very sharp jagged points to it and you have to hack through it to access the fruit.

So, you will see my reaction to the fruit on the video, but here it is in writing.

It has a consistency of butter, with fibrous flesh running through it. You are meant to pick up the large stones and suck the flesh off, whereas I opted for a spoon! The smell changes from it's lingering sickly smell to a more spicy smell as it gets closer. The texture is creamy, with occasional firmer nutty parts. Finally the taste... It taste like a sweet garlic butter, it has a spicy feeling to it that the locals describe as "heaty".

We unfortunately only managed about 1/4 of it, which is a shame for it's $20 price tag. We gave the rest of it to the locals in there. They said they couldn't believe it when they saw a couple of Westerners eating Durain, describing us as brave but still managing to laugh very hard at us as we walked away.