Thoughtfully curated Italian and wok tossed meal at Park Hyatt

Few places personify personalised luxury like the Park Hyatt goa, resort and Spa, they even have a social media hashtag something like #luxuryispersonal. so when they introduced the 'thoughtfully curated culinary experiences for the month of January, we knew it would truly be an experience.

there were three experiences on offer, the woks of art, which was a wok pop up , recipes from Lombardy region of Italy, and a chef crafted apertivo on saturday afternoons. 

As I mentioned this was through the month of January, so while you may not be able to savour the dlights even as you read this blog, i hope it leaves you with mouth watering imagery.

we ourselves found time during the hectic first month of the year, right at the very last minute. and multi tasker that I am , we decided to indulge in a Chinese-italian evening. Yes, we did that, the cardinal sin of ordering schezuan style pepper prawns , and crispy fried lotus stems, to pair with our goat cheese ravioli and tiramisu. 

Yes, we lived a little dangerously that night. 

 
we began the meal with a salad, because of my new year resolution to pack in more greens, and because i can't ever come to Da Luigi and not have the Da Luigi special salad, of arugula, parmesan, cherry tomatoes and good quality extra virgin olive oil. simple elegant and yum.

As I mentioned earlier, service is what makes Park Hyatt a delight to visit everytime, and by now, the wait staff remembers us, which in itself is such a personalised service.  
we got some nifty suggestions on what were Shubham , our wait staffs favourites on the menu, and went ahead with his picks.

the above is the crispy deep fried lotus stems, where the stems were wafer thin and tossed with deft speed, in a richly aromatic asian dressing and then garnished generously with the holy trinity of garlic ginger and spring onion.
The below image doesnt do justice to the humungous prawns which were cooked to perfection. soft , not rubbery, still with a little spring and bite to them. it's hard to describe perfectly cooked prawns, but it is one of my pet peeves, when the fresh produce is not treated with the dignity that they deserve.
Wok cooking is perhaps the best way to cook prawns, without over cooking them.

jnp

Now we moved to our Italian part of the meal.
we had a main course of ravioli casoncelli, which was a ravioli stuffed with raisins, pears, pine nut in a butter and sage sauce. it was almost like a dessert sort of sweetness. and while Pawan compared it to the Goan Patoleo, I compared it to the bengali Pati shapta.
Chef explained to us that the Lombardia region of italy, is influenced heavility by the European countries surrounding it, thus the use of butter and sage, and tomatoes are not traditionally used in most of their recipes.
 and if the portions look small in the pictures, it's because our wait staff had thoughtfully halved the portions and plated it such that each of us got three raviolos.
The next course also had european influences. the chicken Milanese style with Aioli sauce and green salad, was an Italian cousin of a chicken schnitzel. the breaded piece of chicken was still moist and lean enough for me to convince myself that I was still on course with my diet.

So happy were we with our thoughtfully portioned meals, keeping in account of our individual new year resolutions, that we decided to indulge in a tiramisu as well.

The setting, the musicians , the staff, it was all so familiar and friendly. we almost felt we were dining in our own backyard. truly thoughtfully crafted experience.