San Qi, Four Seasons, Mumbai : Foodgasms Galore !

As I walked into San Qi (pronounced San Chee) to try their Thai food special featuring the cuisine of North East Thailand (E-San), I couldn’t but help notice the wide open feel that the restaurant emanates through its two storied structure. Live kitchens, including a sushi bar and teppanyaki grill, complete the décor and I felt surprised to note that it was in fact a multi cuisine restaurant unlike what the name suggests.

After we were settled, we were introduced to Chef Seefah who heads the Thai kitchen and Chef Karan who handles the Japanese. The two of them very excitedly walked me through their E-San Menu as well as the Japanese. Eventually, we decided that we would try tasting portions from both the menus and left the selection up to the two chefs.

We opened our evening with two salads from the E-San menu, the first one was a Cucumber based Som Tam (Som Tam Tang Kwa), an interesting and refreshing variation from the usual raw papaya ones. The second salad was a spicy grilled pork salad (Nam Tok Mhoo Yang), which proved the old adage of looks can be deceiving quite right. It looked super spicy and dry, but the moment I popped in the first morsel, I could feel a burst of flavors ranging from sweet, sour and spicy doing a happy dance inside my mouth. I was later informed by Chef Seefah that it was her father´s recipe and I could see why it was just the perfect dish to start the meal. Each bite dripped with love!

Our next course of dimsums saw us trying single portions of several vegetarian and non-vegetarian dimsums. Some of the dimsums were quite unique like the Pokchoy and Crispy Garlic Dumpling and the Chilean Seabass Dumpling. These dimsums, apart from being loaded with flavor, were quite aromatic and delicate, the wrapper soft and translucent and the fillings flavoursome and light. Each dimsum was better than the next but these two reigned supreme over all the others in taste.

At this point Chef Karan started with his Sushi line up and served us some phenomenal dishes like the Veg Crunchy Avocado and the Crunchy Akumi Tuna Maki Rolls, Botan Ebi, Tuna Toro, Hokkaido Scallops, Torched Salmon & Spicy Miso Nigiri. It will be blasphemous if I spoke of one kind over the other; without exaggerating, these were some of the best sushis I had eaten in India. Lovely sticky rice, the right amount of mirin, great quality of produce – in fact the Botan Ebi and Tuna are actually flown in from Japan, as I was told during the review. One sushi that truly stood apart from the rest was the Torched Salmon which, contrary to my impression, was only slightly torched and was packed with flavours. Soft sensual salmon, layered with a spicy miso sauce on top of some Japanese sweet sticky rice was enough to give me a foodgasm right there; little did I know that there was more to come.

Before we could finish the Sushis, we were served a dish called Kanpacchi which was a Bonito flavoured citrus soya sauce based Sashimi. This dish reminded me of a similar dish I had tried at Akira Back in Delhi and was surely a worthy competitor to the same.

For the mains, we tried the Roasted Whole Baby Chicken – charcoal flavored with spicy tamarind dip (Gai Aob Taan, Num Jim Jeaw) This was brought in from the Thai kitchen and was grilled whole in a lovely tangy and spicy Thai marinade with a sweet and spicy shallot, chilly, lemongrass and tamarind dip. Had I not gorged in all the beautiful dishes earlier, I could have made this platter my whole meal.

The Japanese kitchen sent us a piece of New Zealand Lamb Chop cooked in a delicate miso based sauce along with a wonderfully buttery codfish fillet. Simplicity was the essence of this dish as the flavours were absolutely clean and the produce of a very good quality. The lamb chop was gamey and perfectly pink and the codfish was moist, buttery and delicious. I couldn’t have expected a better close to my meal.

The dynamic duo of Chef Seefah and Chef Karan were extremely passionate about whichever dish they served, the quality of each ingredient was top notch; the service prompt and the music levels perfect.  In my opinion, unlike many other places, the food here totally justifies the price, and I do look forward to my next visit there soon! With the kind of dishes I tried that night, the restaurant can quite justifiably be re-named – FOODGASM!

Ratings (Out of 5)

Food: 4.5 | Ambience: 4 | Service: 4.5| Overall: 4.5

Meal for Two: Rs. 5000 | Credit Cards: Yes | Alcohol: Yes | Timings: 12.30 pm to 2.30 pm | Wheelchair Access: Yes | Home Delivery: No

Address: No.1/136, Dr. E. Moses Road, Worli, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400018| Phone: 022 2481 8000

Disclaimer: This review was done on an invitation from the restaurant. Due judgment and care has been applied by the author to remain objective and unbiased in the review, but readers need to consider this review keeping this fact in mind.