Rs 38,48,710 for an Indian meal!

An American has splurged $ 83,000 [almost Rs 38,48,710 at Rs 46.37 for a $] for an eight-course meal for friends at one of the world's finest Indian restaurants in London.
 
The bill at the Tamarind in central London is by the far the largest the restaurant has seen, general manager Rajesh Suri said.

The anonymous customer from New York was a regular at Tamarind, dining there two to three times a month.

"There was an exhibition of his watercolours at a local gallery in London and he wanted to host a meal to celebrate the occasion," Suri was quoted as saying by the Daily Telegraph.

Tamarind, whose Indian cuisine has been described as of a "different class" by the foodies' bible Harden's, is no stranger to lavish feasts.

It recently laid on a banquet for 500 at a polo tournament in Geneva, while the Sultan of Brunei has been known to order his favourite dishes to be delivered by a private jet.

Suri said the evening took more than a month to "design". When guests arrived, they were greeted by fire jugglers, Bollywood dancers and musicians. The restaurant itself had been transformed into a vast tented maharaja's palace.

The eight-course meal included king prawns marinated in ginger, paprika and ajwain wine, wholewheat crisp and lentil dumplings, lamb served with creamed black lentils, tandoor-smoked aubergine pulp and braised saffron rice.

For dessert, there was reduced milk dumpling with pistachio served with fennel seed and ginger ice cream.

To wash it down, there was a selection of the restaurant's finest wines, including Chateau Mouton Rothschild 1983.

Alfred Prasad, the celebrated head chef, went through "four or five" trial dinners to fine-tune the menu and ensure that not only did the dishes and wines complement each other, but that the "colour combination was right" too.