Eating On The Edge

POH—Progressive Oriental House—Mumbai’s latest temple to culinary capriciousness, is the brainchild of the deceptively school boyish Aveek Chatterjee, 25.

- C.Y. Gopinath

It meets all the three requisites for success in this hungry city’s chaotic culinary sweepstakes: a name that leaves you scratching your head, a chef who will try anything twice and a menu that is impossible to parse.

Chef Vikramjit Roy is an impatient kitchen chemist who sees no reason why anything should not be combined with anything else—once, anyway. He uses hardly any oil in frying, and no deep fat frying at all, with methods borrowed from molecular gastronomy such as dehydration, cryogenation and lyophilisation. The result is food that can range from sheer brilliance to utter non-starters.