Shaadi and The City: Gut Instincts

The shimmery lining that borders the nimbus cloud of wedding planning comes in the form of food tastings. A welcome respite from some of the more cerebral decisions, restaurant visits allow you to think with your stomach. Doting managers, eager to be your caterers-of-choice, engage in gallant displays of their menus while singing the saccharine refrain : "Anything you want!" Your cousins don't care for cilantro? Your grandmother's strict Jain diet prohibits her from the onion-garlic-potato triumvirate? Your best friend from college demands gulab jamuns or threatens to skip the reception? [Insert Name of Desired Restaurant Here] can do it all, and throw in free mango ice-cream while they're at it. FYI: Most tastings are free.

Our culinary quest begins on a drizzly spring evening when my fiance and I stop by The Bukhara Grill, a swanky midtown establishment boasting a cascading waterfall entrance. Already, I'm excited. As I will soon learn though, elaborate entrances such as this one usually translate into extravagant catering costs. We are greeted by a booming voice and the towering owner, Raja, who leads us upstairs, orders a round of drinks and immediately familiarizes us with his roster of past events. It's a jaw-dropping resume that includes Salman Rushdie's 2004 wedding, U2's last New York visit and the White House's very first Diwali celebration. We devour the complimentary dinner, a breathtaking array of succulent paneer kebabs, creamy spinach kofta curry, and firni, a heavenly, melt-in-your-mouth rice pudding that practically leaves us in tears. Raja doesn't mess around. A week later, we receive the proposed budget. Unless we are willing to provide him with a sum that would probably buy a man-made island in Dubai, it becomes heartbreakingly clear that Bukhara will not be doing our wedding.

Eventually, we agree to take it down a notch and drive to New Haven, Connecticut, hitting a Yale favorite, Zaroka. I discreetly look around for a waterfall, but find that the ambience is an approachable blend of Tanjor paintings, organza throw pillows, and a smattering of Ivy Leaguers who didn't go home for the summer. We are introduced to Ram, a bubbly Nepali whose sentences are punctuated by nervous giggles. Between morsels of cocktail samosas and fluorescent pink onion fritters, we draft up a menu. When we tell Ram that we'll be getting married in a theater, he is skeptical. "No kitchen?" he asks, anxiously. "No facility? Tough, very tough..." he trails off. We aren't digging the lack of confidence, but ask him for a proposal anyway. Over two weeks later, we're still waiting.

While waiting, we stumble across a sincere and promising lead that may just be it. Nothing's final, though I can assure you they make the best and butteriest (<--so incredibly buttery that I've had to create a new word) kaali daal I have had the pleasure of dunking my naan into. They've never cooked in a theater before, but they're optimistic--I think they're going with their guts. Ultimately, so are we.