For the culinary enthusiast, it’s a great time to eat and drink out. There’s always a new collaboration, pop-up or bar opening its doors. Step in and you’ll see orders flying, cocktails landing in seconds, and everything running as if the team has done it a hundred times before.
They probably have — at the pre-launch tasting trials.
This is when ideas on paper (or in those random thought-bubble moments) are tested to see if they hold up. Ingredients get tweaked, techniques swapped, garnishes changed, presentation reworked, and a range of people weigh in. All this before anything reaches a paying guest.
Doubble, South Bengaluru’s newest 40-seater bar, opened recently. For its partners, chef Kavan Kuttappa and Vedant Mehra, who helms the bar, tasting trials have happened everywhere from inside Kavan’s Naru Noodle Bar kitchen, at a popular culinary pop-up space, The Conservatory when it is free and even at Vedant’s home where prototype cocktails were batched.
“We wanted to do fried potato, but in a more classic way,” Kavan says. Pavé, a 15–20-layer potato stack, was the direction — but the precision slicing and laborious process that the dish required made the early trials exhausting. The turning point came with the Katsuramuki peeler in the Naru kitchen, a tool they hadn’t initially thought to use. “With that, the pavé suddenly became feasible,” says Kavan. From then on, the pavé, with several variations, became the dish they carried into every event that needed a small bite – a continued way of testing it. Today, it is the only one Kavan refuses to tinker with anymore.
The Kallangadi cocktail was inspired by a watermelon–coffee drink that Vedant tried in Thailand a few years ago. “It was refreshing, and the caffeine worked really well,” he says. The idea stuck, and he pushed to develop a version for Doubble.
Coffee cocktails aren’t usually Kavan’s preference, and there was some back-and-forth. But the partners defer to each other’s strengths. “We started with watermelon juice, mulberry cordial, and different spirits. It worked once we began clarifying it and just dropped the coffee beans in while it strained,” Vedant says.
Across four versions, the drink shifted from gin to rum and finally a blend of both. Early tasting trials even used yellow watermelon as garnish for a bright pop of colour. The duo eventually had one round peer-reviewed at a gathering of the country’s top chefs. The popularity of the drink that evening won Kavan over. Today, Kallangadi appears with a sea-salt dark chocolate block, the final touch on a cocktail shaped through steady trials, small disagreements, and one idea Vedant simply didn’t drop.
Roast CCx in Banjara Hills, Hyderabad is a 500-seater spread over 60,000 sq.ft. For Executive Chef of Bakery and Pastry Joakim Prat, who has honed his skills in Michelin-starred kitchens globally, the scale of operations and production “was the biggest I have encountered in my over 25 years in the field,” he says.
Even before new dessert trials, Joakim’s starting point began with ingredients. Despite working with mostly French and European products, using local flour meant tweaking recipes and ratios, and that became its own line of trials. The bigger learning curve, however, came from flavour.
“In France, people prefer sharp flavours. Here, people like softer textures and lighter flavours,” Joakim says. Every dessert needed to be tested, tasted and recalibrated with the owner and senior team until the balance felt right.
With strawberries currently in season, Joakim built a full range around them with pavlova, tiramisu, tarts and cheesecake. He first made each version the way he would for a European crowd. Then came the trials: tasting together, adjusting intensity, easing sharpness, softening textures and repeating until the direction felt right. Across outlets, the menu now spans about eight desserts and is “selling out very quickly”, confirming they hit the mark.
Chaiyo (cheers in Thai), the new bar programme at Mumbai’s Seefah (known for its flavour-forward Thai and Japanese food), launched recently. “While the food menu remains unchanged, Chaiyo is about giving the bar its own identity. One that is fun, balanced, and rooted in the spirit of Bangkok, Tokyo and the team’s travels,” says chef-partner Karan Bane.
Tasting trials for Chaiyo would happen either before service or after, when the pace dropped and the team could think. Everything was tested at the restaurant bar with the same ice, equipment and conditions guests would experience. Chef Seefah looked into flavour and authenticity; Navneet, general manager and bar lead at concept and technique and Karan for balance and direction, worked through stages: internal R&D, senior-team tasting, and then a trusted circle of chefs and bartenders who were brutally honest.
The Chef’s Special cocktail – Japanese whisky or gin with a sesame fat wash and a Thai lemongrass–galangal cordial was challenging. “The sesame kept overpowering everything. We spent days adjusting temperatures and infusion times, with over 10 iterations before it finally tasted like the Japan–Thailand intersection we wanted”, Karan says. Another cocktail, ‘Minus’, was built with tequila chilled to –12°C, grapefruit cordial, absinthe and fizz. It turned into an unexpected science experiment. The first attempt was too thick, the second too flat, and the third finally delivered what the team wanted— crisp, icy, cheeky, and full of sanuk (lively in Thai).
Not every idea survived. A pandan–miso drink that sounded great on paper kept turning gluey on execution and was shelved. “Trials at Chaiyo were about disagreements, laughter, sparks of inspiration, and sometimes, everyone getting slightly tipsy,” Karan says.
Collaborations too are all about trials. And the coming together of Amrut Distilleries and Geist Brewing Co. to launch India’s first stout cask-finished single malt whisky is one such. It began simply with the curiosity of Geist Brewmaster Vidya Kubher and Head Distiller at Amrut, Ashok Chokalingam.
In early 2023, Amrut sent freshly emptied whisky barrels to Geist’s brewery, where Vidya chose to age their imperial stout in them. The early tasting in April 2023 was encouraging. “It tasted great at first,” Vidya says. “But when we tasted at the 6-month mark, the flavours that came out didn’t really align with what we wanted highlighted. It was high on liquorice, some tutti frutti, as well as elements of subdued whisky and vanilla.”
Vidya’s team decided to let the beer sit for a while longer. Over the next 5-6 months, fermentation naturally corrected the imbalance, softening the edges and bringing the stout back into focus. The final set of barrel-aged beer expressions — variations of the full-bodied Geist Imperial Stout aged over different time periods carrying traces of whisky and oak were released between December 2023 and February 2024, and sold out quickly.
Once emptied, the same barrels returned to Amrut. The whisky that went in picked up the stout’s roasted, chocolate-forward notes. This was aged for a year. The decision to bottle it unfiltered preserved its texture and clarity of flavour. The result is layered and distinct, with chocolate, caramel, dried fruit and a noticeable rose note on the nose — a finish that Ashok says he hasn’t seen before. Just 224 bottles were released across select retail stores in Bangalore in October 2025.
There is a lot of experimentation, creativity, eureka moments and heartache that goes into creating in the food and beverage industry. While consumers enjoy the final results, the backstories often remain unheard. So the next time you enjoy something, ask about its story – it may just add to the whole experience.
