HYDERABAD: Pesto sauce cloaking your favourite pasta and Burrata sprinkled on your salad. Sounds interesting, right? Delights like these are what Toscano, which has just opened in Knowledge City, serves at your table. The Italian restaurant is already attracting many with its fabulous ambience and delicious food paired with some wine. Chef Goutham Balasubramanian, founder and CEO of Toscano, walks CE through the journey.
“It’s a very interesting journey; my partner and I were the first chefs at The Leela in Bangalore. In 2008, we opened Toscano in Bangalore. Around five years later, we opened another outlet and from then on, we have been opening one outlet every year. We went to Chennai, where we have three outlets, and then Pune, where we have three outlets. We have been visiting Hyderabad since 2012 but somehow never found the ideal location. Now, we have,” says Goutham, adding that Toscano is a straightforward Italian restaurant which focuses on quality and consistency.
About what makes Toscano different from the other Italian restaurants in Hyderabad, he says, “Well, I don’t know much about the other Italian places in Hyderabad. We are all about being authentic and do not fuse other cuisines with Italian food. But there is a heavy influence of Italian cuisine in Arab and Mediterranean cooking. We use locally sourced ingredients and keep it very simple—simplicity is the most important thing.”
About the flavourful food that one can find at the new Toscano in town, the chef explains, “Right now, we have two formats: One is the classic format, which is your authentic Italian menu, and the other is an interesting neighbourhood format, where people can just come in, say, for some Spaghetti Bolognese and a glass of wine.