It’s go­ing to be un­like any oth­er lux­u­ry din­ing restau­rant in T&T, or so as­sures The Meena House’s own­er, Umesh Meena.

In an in­ter­view with Sun­day Guardian, Meena who has been

liv­ing in T&T for the past five years, af­ter be­ing brought from In­dia to work at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, "breaks down" the de­f­i­n­i­tion of "The Meena House."

"The Meena House of­fers an in­ter­na­tion­al mod­ernistic cui­sine

which is tra­di­tion­al­ly In­di­an, the roots are tra­di­tion­al and

in­cor­po­rates much of my ex­pe­ri­ence and jour­ney as a chef," he

ex­plains.

When it comes to just how au­then­tic he’s talk­ing, Meena said there was

ab­solute­ly no com­pro­mis­ing or chang­ing of any tra­di­tion­al recipe. He doesn’t even re­fer to the restau­rant’s culi­nary of­fer­ing as "East In­di­an," say­ing the term is re­al­ly a "Trinida­di­an" men­tion. He ar­tic­u­lat­ed that In­di­an cui­sine it­self is very di­verse and is al­so very re­gion­al.

The meal he pre­pared for the Sun­day Guardian on our vis­it to the Al­cazar Street, St Clair es­tab­lish­ment, was a clas­sic ex­am­ple.

In the restau­rant’s kitchen, we had the chance to help Meena as­sem­ble a lob­ster biryani—a fu­sion of lob­ster, rice, and spices all tossed up to­geth­er and served with a fresh toma­to-based gravy and yo­ghurt sauce.

The pop­u­lar In­di­an rice dish re­al­ly orig­i­nat­ed in the Mid­dle East, from Iran dur­ing its dy­nasty rule in In­dia un­der the Mughal Em­pire. Need­less to say, we al­so sam­pled the scrump­tious "cook up", and it was im­mense­ly sat­is­fy­ing, to say the least.

An­oth­er dis­tinct fea­ture you would find at The Meena House is its su­perb ser­vice. Meena is big on cus­tomer care and ser­vice, and he told us he finds that lack­ing very much in T&T since he’s been here.

Laugh­ing he says, "You won’t come here look­ing around for the

wait staff, won­der­ing where they are or find grumpy peo­ple."

In fact, on our vis­it, pri­or to the of­fi­cial open­ing last Wednes­day, though its doors were still closed to the pub­lic, there was still quite a buzz hap­pen­ing on the in­side.

We were sub­se­quent­ly told that this was as a re­sult of the on­go­ing train­ing of staff to en­sure once opened, cus­tomers would re­ceive the best ser­vice they could find on the is­land.

Meena said much of his life has been spent in the hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­try but he al­ways felt be­com­ing a chef and restau­rant own­er would be the op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­tro­duce peo­ple to an in­com­pa­ra­ble ser­vice.

Apart from The Meena House ser­vice and cui­sine that Meena

boasts about, the am­bi­ence is an­oth­er con­ver­sa­tion. The

mar­riage be­tween Vic­to­ri­an and Mid­dle East­ern style in its

dé­cor, in­clu­sive of paint­ings and fur­ni­ture, and with a

tra­di­tion­al In­di­an touch to fin­ish, par­tic­u­lar­ly adds to the

ex­pe­ri­ence.

The two-storey restau­rant al­so of­fers an in­ti­mate

and some­what ro­man­tic set­ting that makes good for pri­vate

cel­e­bra­tions and mar­riage pro­pos­als—the lat­ter, Meena is

hop­ing oc­curs fre­quent­ly.

Like sug­ar and spice, every­thing be­comes nice at The Meena

House, with Meena’s ob­ses­sion with the world’s great­est spices. He even has an en­tire "spice room" vis­i­ble to cus­tomers who choose to dine on the up­per floor.

In his spice room, there are bot­tles and jars filled with var­i­ous spices from around the globe. The most in­ter­est­ing to me was the man­go spice. I’d not heard of such be­fore and cer­tain­ly, I’d like to try any dish that in­cor­po­rates it.

With a plat­ter in hand, filled with raw spices, Meena said it’s

these lit­tle seeds and root barks that make all the dif­fer­ence in

how good or not so good a meal tastes.

When the restau­rant opened on June 19, 2019, it was as Meena imag­ined—beau­ti­ful peo­ple en­joy­ing great tast­ing food, a new spot, great con­ver­sa­tion and the per­fect am­biance.

"I hope that our cus­tomers would con­tin­ue to en­joy every mo­ment spent here as I have en­joyed every mo­ment cre­at­ing The Meena House," he says.