Head Chef at Grand Trunk Road, Dayashankar Sharma, has spent a lifetime adopting traditional Indian practices in food preparation and cooking.
In an age of diets and substitutes to aid weight-loss and healthy hearts, Chef Sharma is setting the record straight by adhering to time-honoured recipes dating back to the Royal Era of Hindu & Mugual Kingdoms for more than one hundred years.
A traditional Indian diet, one rich in grains, pulses and oils such as mustard, peanut and groundnut, offer a striking range of benefits in comparison to ingredients generally found in modern Indian eateries, including refined salts that are not only subject to vigorous processing, but also not even native to India.
Using little or no dairy, a rarity in contemporary Indian cooking, Chef Sharma employs oil-based marinations, no artificial tenderisers and a host of spices that subscribe to healthy eating; including Boneless walsh lamb flavoured with cinnamon; a digestion aid and anti-bacterial, Chicken supreme kebab with Cardamom, known to ease heartburn and depression and a Rose petal & avocado ice cream, flavoured with lavender and wildberry kheer, revered for their soothing qualities.
Chef Sharma says: ‘At Grand Trunk Road, I offer a genuinely uncommon experience of Indian cooking; a back-to-basics attitude that is more delicious and beneficial to the body. By working with ancient recipes without the need to include additives or unhealthy extras – everything is as delicious now as it was a hundred years ago.’
His menus are derived from a wealth of first-hand knowledge gained from his own extensive travels along the The Grand Trunk Road for five weeks in early 2016; rich with forgotten methods and recreated within their wildly popular South Woodford address.
