Around Town: Inside Mumbai’s latest 14-seater tasting-menu-only restaurant, Fitour

Chef Ashwin Singh calls his first menu a poem, and would rather you didn’t count its verses. At Fitour, the 14-seater tasting-menu-only restaurant that has recently opened in Bandra, the debut menu, Nostalgia, comprises 18 courses. Like most tasting-menu-only restaurants, there is no menu card to pore over. The courses arrive one by one, with the chef and his team guiding guests through.

All 14 guests begin together, so everyone has the same experience. “You will not know what is coming to your table. Food will come, we will tell you how to eat it, and once you are done eating, we will tell you what you ate,” Singh tells them before the first course. His reasoning is simple: food should be enjoyed at the right temperature. “Chefs are artists. My favourite artists are poets. This is my first poem,” he says, explaining why he calls the courses verses.

An evening in five acts

The experience unfolds in the basement of House of Akina, designed almost like a speakeasy, with music and lighting changing across five acts. Guests arrive at 7.15 pm, and service begins around 7.30 pm. Early courses come with brighter lights and playful music, including The Ketchup Song during the chaat course. By the barbecue course, the lights dim and the music turns intense. In the final courses, the room is bathed in softer light, with romantic tunes like Wildflower, Yellow and 1000 years.

There is a thought behind the theatrics. “Food is sensorial,” Singh told us later, and the changing lights are also a gentle nudge for diners to put their phones away.

The menu travels across India, with dishes rooted in memories rather than strict recreations of regional classics. It opens with a pani puri whose sphere is coated in white chocolate and mint chutney, while the water is made with bitter gourd and amla. The karela is cured in alum for nearly two weeks to remove its bitterness. The inspiration is childhood morning walks with his grandfather, who insisted he drink karela juice. “I still hate it from the bottom of my heart,” he laughed.

(L) The pani puri, dressed with marigold, filled with bitter gourd and amla water; (centre) Mogra, the first dessert, is a lychee sorbet with mogra cream; and (R ) a Jim Jam-inspired cookie reimagined as Bihari litti chokha, with a whole-wheat and sattu shell filled with aubergine chokha. Photo courtesy: Special Arrangement

Food memories run deep for Singh, now in his mid-20s, who grew up in Meerut and has cooked since he was six, making sandwiches for school ‘cooking without fire’ contests. At 11, he paid Rs 100 a lesson to learn recipes from his mother’s friend, and by the eighth and ninth standards he was posting cooking videos on YouTube.

A Jim Jam-like cookie is a reimagining of Bihari litti chokha, a savoury whole-wheat and sattu cookie filled with aubergine chokha. In the sol kadhi, kokum is replaced with fermented tomato water and served with cured barramundi. Another course features buransh-glazed pork in three layers, with a papad made from leftover rice.

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The mains take inspiration from the Great Indian Thali: dry-aged duck (king oyster and morel mushrooms for vegetarians) with beetroot and green ketchups, a chaas-inspired foam and a butter-garlic naan reworked as laminated dough with kalonji in place of garlic. The Mathania chilli sauce becomes a lighter beurre blanc.

One of the most personal courses is ‘Shirvalya and Mango Mahua Rasam’, which traces Singh’s journey through the cities he has lived in: his mother’s raw-mango aamras from Bihar, a rasam masala from Bengaluru, a mahua and raw-mango ferment from Kolkata and sunchoke from Bangkok. It ends with shirvalya, a Maharashtrian dessert noodle, reimagined as a savoury course. Everybody who tasted it found the flavours familiar, and was reminded of home. Desserts include a mogra that mimics the flower in appearance, aroma and flavour, and a school-days trio of orange-cream biscuit, Melody and paan.

Vegetarian cooking, too, gets equal attention. Singh comes from a pure-vegetarian family. “The day my mom found out I eat all sorts of meat, she was like, ‘You have ruined my family.’ So I cannot do any injustice to vegetarians in this restaurant,” he shared. Apart from a jackfruit preparation that could have worked better, the vegetarian courses hold their own. Interestingly, barring salt, turmeric, red chilli and coriander, the restaurant makes its spice mixes in-house.

The food can be paired with technique-forward cocktails that are just as interesting in flavour. There’s a dangerously smooth vodka-based cocktail with notes of apple and herbs, while another, tequila-based, brings together fresh fruit, pink dragon fruit (which lends it its beautiful colour), zucchini and a touch of curry powder. The drinks are rounded off by a thoughtfully curated wine selection.

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Vegetarian cooking gets equal attention. Singh comes from a vegetarian family “so I cannot do any injustice to vegetarians in this restaurant.” Apart from a jackfruit preparation that could have worked better, the vegetarian courses hold their own.

The cocktails are technique-forward, from a dangerously smooth vodka drink with apple and herbs to a tequila one with pink dragon fruit, zucchini and a touch of curry leaf.

At the heart of the room is a wall of pickles, ferments and spice mixes, some taking days, weeks or months to prepare. Barring salt, turmeric, red chilli and coriander, everything is made in-house. Nostalgia walls at either end carry food photographs and glimpses of Singh’s childhood.

The name Fitour is itself a childhood promise. Obsessed with chef Vikas Khanna and his New York restaurant Junoon, an eight or nine-year-old Singh told his mother he would one day open a restaurant called Fitoor. The original spelling was unavailable, so it became Fitour. The idea took shape after he joined Aspect Hospitality in June 2025 as creative culinary head, when managing director and CEO Hitesh Keswani eventually encouraged him to take the leap.

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His philosophy is simple: experiment with technique, but don’t lose the soul of the dish. “We don’t play around with the soul of the food,” he said.