Wednesday, November 5, 7:00 p.m.
Members $90, guests $115

We write in the midst of hurricane season, with Isabel pounding the Atlantic coast and typhoons pummeling the Pacific. Stouthearted souls that we are, instead of battening down the hatches, we open our doors to Monsoon and a Diwali Festival of Lights Dinner. This Hindu holiday of renewal is celebrated with feasting and the lighting of small oil lamps (diyas) or candles all around homes and gardens to ward off darkness—a familiar scene when howling winds fell trees and power lines (or, say, the grid goes down).

Nature, we know, can be bountiful or full of fury. Monsoon’s “Indian-inspired Asian cuisine” is creating quite a storm. The popular eatery was named “Best Ethnic” restaurant in Chicago magazine for dishes that incorporate “Indian and East Asian flavors with French technique.” Monsoon has also been celebrated by Bon Appétit, the Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, where Dennis Ray Wheaton was delighted by the “delicious Indian turn on the popular method of butter-poaching lobster...in five-spiced ghee with saffron beurre blanc on sooji.” Phil Vettel, restaurant critic for the Chicago Tribune, noted that chef Sumanth Das “eschews the traditional in favor of contemporary creations that marry Indian spices to such atypical partners as venison, beef tenderloin, and ahi tuna.”

Chef Das explains modestly that his “goal is simply to introduce Chicagoans to flavors of the East.” Das was raised in Bombay and schooled in Indonesia. He returned to India to attend hotel management school. Although he was headed to the front of the house, Das found inspiration in the kitchen, changed course, and began to develop his culinary skills in luxurious Indian hotels. He moved in 1999 to the United States, where he promptly earned a culinary arts degree at the Hospitality Institute of Chicago. Next stop: the Peninsula Chicago, as chef de partie and assistant chef of the hotel’s Shanghai Terrace.

At Monsoon, Das sweeps guests off their feet with his over-the-top Chocolate Monsoon finale, which Vettel described as “chocolate-ginger mousse with chocolate meringue, topped with a brownie drenched in chocolate sauce.” Seems to us if you’re going to get drenched, chocolate sauce beats the usual downpour by a country mile. It’s Monsoon season at the Beard House.