The Zodiac Grill
The new Zodiac Grill and (above), Executive Chef Hemant Oberoi.
Executive Chef Hemant Oberoi�s Zodiac Grill is without doubt the country�s premier fine wining and dining restaurant, as wonderful an eatery as you may get anywhere in Europe, the food and ambience being matched by a carefully selected wine list and exquisite, white-gloved service.

In its 13-year history, it has shifted twice in the Taj Mahal Hotel; from the ground floor to the rooftop and now back to the ground level, where sound-proof doors close out the rock and roll from the Starboard Bar next door and where a pianist plays Fascination softly as the sommelier gently uncorks a bottle of Chateau Latour at your table. Happily, Chef Oberoi has kept the signature dishes of the restaurant untouched during the Zodiac Grill�s great journey between the floors of the Taj. And the Camembert Dariole is to die for. Everything else is subject to change. From soup to starter to main course and dessert.

Zodiac Grill, Taj Mahal Hotel. Tel: 202 3366.

India Jones
The India Jones, with a menu that resembles a travel map, in which stir-fry dishes are a hot favourite with Bombay�s eating out crowd, and where the desserts are unusual... to say the least.
India Jones, the new lower lobby-level restaurant of the Oberoi Towers, exudes warmth, intimacy and elegance. The ambience of the place, which is designed with metal, stone and water, to accommodate 110, provides a yin and yang balance to the Frangipani�s minimalistic decor next door. A variety of metals are used to demarcate the various sections within the restaurant, like copper, brass and nickel. The stones used include fossil stone, granite, mosaic, rosewood, Jaisalmer and Italian marble. Outside the restaurant, a burning 18-feet-high mashaal guides the hungry and the adventurous to India Jones like a friendly lighthouse in the night.

The kitchen is the most important part of India Jones. It is an open and friendly space with no demarcations from the seating area. The noise, aromas and interaction between chefs while preparing the meal resembles a busy home getting dinner ready for guests who have just dropped by. Diners are welcome to browse around and to choose their preference from the live seafood tanks. The refrigerators which run the length of the kitchen wall, resemble a library with shelves, only in place of books, the various ingredients used in the many cuisines are stored here.

The menu at India Jones resembles a map and traces the journey of a legendary traveller (India Jones!) from Burma to Vietnam, Singapore, Hongkong, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan and the Pacific Rim. It has 118 dishes in all with each dish mentioning the country of its origin. These include the Chinese barbecue oven preparations like Peking Duck and Chansui Pork, the wok range of stir-fry food. And hot teas, fermented, non-fermented and new age, without tannin to prevent acidity. There are green, jasmine, rose teas, chrysanthemum, lime and scent of forest, Vietnamese green tea and Chinese monket peak tea. And home-made sorbets in mango, lychee, water melon and green apple. Or a sorbet sampler for Rs. 225.

Samplers allow guests to taste a range of one particular item from various countries, and the different kinds of samplers are: the India Jones grand vegetarian and non-vegetarian samplers, curry samplers, appetiser samplers, spring roll samplers, wok samplers and barbecue samplers. Besides which, there are interesting dishes from the Chinese barbecue oven and the wok range worth sampling.

You can also choose to be seated at the Teppan table where the flamboyance of teppan cuisine is recreated by adroit chef juggling ingredients, salt and pepper shakers and knives while preparing the meal before you. His name is Chef Wikan Namvesis. There are set Teppan Yaki menus, starting at Rs. 1,800, which is a vegetable men, and going onto Rs. 3,800 for two, which includes spiny lobster and cuttle fish, red snapper and salmon, tenderloin and chicken breast.

An intriguing part of the cooking at India Jones is the use of the Indian clay oven, the tandoor, with Pacific Rim marination techniques, flavours and ingredients. The clay oven-baked fish wrapped in ginger leaf and flavoured with a touch of sambal bajak is a wonderful example of this Indian cooking style integrated into South East Asian cuisine. There are also homemade Asian flavour ice-creams with lemon grass, sweet coconut, chocolate cardamom, masala, white chocolate cashew, pandan and green tea being the dominant flavours.

An extension to India Jones is the Opium Den, a bar meant to accommodate 66, with low, intimate seating and a wall displaying a collection of hats and niches showing a display of antique pipes and terracotta and metal Indian figurines, the perfect atmosphere for a relaxing cigar and conversation. Rustic bar stools around the bar provide seating for a spectacular view of Marine Drive. And the cocktail list at Opium Den includes sake chilled and flavoured with lime and the favourite �Spirit of the Opium�, in which the combination of spirits is a secret.

India Jones, The Oberoi Towers. Tel: 232 4343.

Indigo
Rahul Akerkar in Indigo, where the food is handsome, the crowd hip, and the bar innovative.
Rahul Akerkar�s landmark Indigo, off Colaba Causeway in Downtown Bombay, which completed three years on April 1, is among everybody�s five favourite in-town restaurants. The food here looks and eats handsome, the decor is uncluttered and masculine, the service is not obsequious, and as far as the bar goes you have come to the right place.

The food is, to say the least, interesting, the kitchen is all the time growing in confidence. All the fish is fresh, but that is the case with seafood in all Bombay restaurants. Once the novelty of freezing and ice storaging our seafood wore off, we stopped doing so. Restaurateurs, housewives, everybody.

In three years, the kitchen staff�s skills have kept pace with the growth of the restaurant. And the rest of the staff has also helped. The room behind the bar, which was wasted as a lounge, has been turned into a dining area (the inside name is the yellow room), plus a room upstairs with another 30 covers.

In the middle of the Indigo Restaurant, like an island of exotic liquers, stands the Indigo Bar, presided over by Eric Lobo. It may not be the most complete bar in town, but it is certainly the most enterprising and exciting. It is also a fun bar that takes its liquor seriously.

It is the only bar in town and country where wine sells as much as spirits, which means civilised drinking. The cellar holds champagnes ranging down from Louis Roederer Cristal Rose Vintage (1990) to sparkling wines and wines from the famous vineyards of Alsace, Bourgognes, from Italy, Germany and Austria, and from the New World, from Australia, Napa Valley, it has dessert wine. And it has a large variety of Blended Scotch, 14 labels of Single Malt, and it has Apertifs, Liqueurs, Cognacs, three varieties of Grappas, the Tignanello Antinori, Ruffino Reserva Ducale and Cabreo Il Borgo Tenimenti Ruffino.

Indigo, Colaba. Tel: 285 6316, 292 3592.

Olive
The Olive quintet, from left, Henry Tham, Anupam Payekar, Martin D�Costa, Sagarika, and A.D.Singh.
Rahul Akerkar may be the ultimate culinary artiste, but A.D. Singh is the happy entrepreneur. Together they ran Just Desserts, for a few brief months breathing life into Flora Fountain after 9 p.m. Then Akerkar went on to Under The Over and Indigo, A.D. to Copacabana, Soul Curry, Soul Fry, the Sports Bar at Chinchpokli, and Olive Bar & Kitchen with Henry Tham Junior, the singer Sagarika, Martin D�Costa, and Anupam Mayekar.

One of these evenings, drive up Pali Hill and sit under a starlit sky and eat what they describe as New Mediterranean food. It�s a large but still select menu, not overpowering, pizzas and pastas; white salmon grilled in balsamic vinaigrette; feta and parmesan and harisa cream; garlic braised broccoli and almond pate; and everything done in extra virgin olive oil. You would say that�s Italian � it is. But it is also Greek, South of France, Spain, definitely Morocco, some Lebanese, and Turkish food.

You go to Istanbul and sit in the Taxim Park Square and breath the Turkish food displayed in the restaurants around you. At Olive Bar & Kitchen (kitchen has so much more evocative connotation than restaurant, or even restobar) also you can breath in the food. Mostly dry cheeses, but also a lot of seafood, calamari, oysters, lobsters, and olives, fruit and oil, couscous, the brown Italian rice, chocolate sauce. The kitchen scents should always dominate a restaurant, not be concealed from the customers. And the chef should make himself visible every 30 minutes.

Dev Malik is the chef here, a young face, earnest eyes peering from below the chef�s toque and behind steel-rimmed glasses. Part of the place is glass enclosed, air-conditioned, part open to the skies. The bar is in one corner, also half open, half closed. Candles and lanterns brighten the place, and soft sea winds climbing up the hill keep it cool. The sea is a couple of minutes down the hill, you may feel it, not see it. The menu has style, and is a little unusual, not too much. Not fine dining, more comfortable and relaxed. The nice part is that it is not fusion, which is neither here nor there nor anywhere.

Dinner is the best time to be there. Advance booking, week days and weekends, is advised. The ambience cannot be better, al fresco dining, candles and old-fashioned lanterns, friendly waiters trying to please, and the presence of two or three film stars, suburbia cool. To reach the place, you go down Turner Road, turn right at Otter�s Club to Carter Road, past the Rajesh Khanna bungalow landmark, and take the first turn right before Khar Danda, climb up to the top and there is Olive.

Begin your dinner with the seafood soup and the black pepper corn calamari. A special touch with the calamari is the lobster butter that is drizzled on to it when it is ready. Then you may move onto a house pasta or a pizza made on a thin and crisp olive freshgh base. There are oysters at Olive that come daily from Tiruchirapalli and are served in olive oil, a little red vine vinegar, with finely chopped orange rind, served broiled in caper butter, or raw on crushed ice. Amazing, a couple of years back there was nobody serving oysters in Bombay, now there are so many, and all of the best quality.

And risotta, the rice from Italy. At Olive they use the arboria, the one with the shorter grain. And they make it nice and glutinous, obviously they have got a guy in the kitchen who knows how to make his risotta Italia. And the lovely desserts that take you back to Parisian Dairy and Just Desserts at mid-night. Try the Dark Secret, it is a chocolate mousse, a combination of bitter and sweet chocolate, and something that is known in the trade as vienna stockings, and marschino cherries.

Olive Bar & Kitchen, Pali Hill. Tel: 605 8228, e-mail: [email protected]

Trattoria
The Trattoria, Bombay�s favourite Italian restaurant, where the food is so authentic, even visiting Italians feel at home.
For close to two decades now, the Trattoria at Hotel Taj President has been not only Bombay�s favourite Italian eatery, but also the hot hangout for most people. The catchword is: �Let�s meet at the Tratts! It is like a sunny roadside trattoria in Italy with colourful sunshades and pink-checkered tablecloths, where friendly moustachioed waiters hold aloft Mozzarella pizzas and bear bottles of Valpolicella. The rich, sour smell of Parmesan overpowering that of Italy�s 49 other cheeses. Salami and parma ham to choose from among the cold meats. Espresso and Cappuccino on tap.

Chef Sheroy Kermani at the Trattoria, who has twice been to Italy to train at the popular Meo Patacca restaurant in Rome, says that the food here is extremely suited to the Indian palate. �It is tomato-based and spicy, with lots of peperoncino chilli,� he explains. Peperoncino are small, fiery-hot, red chilli peppers that Italian chefs of the world add to practically everything from eggs and meats to vegetables. Bottles of �olio santo�, holy oil made by infusing olive oil with chopped peperoncino, are placed on the table for drizzling on the food.

In its 21-year history, this is the third avatar of the Trattoria. The old Trattoria that was opened in 1980 was an Italian theme coffee shop that also served Continental food. In 1990, shortly after he joined the Taj President as executive chef, Ananda Solomon gave the Trattoria�s menu a much-needed facelift. He made the food 80 per cent Italian and kept 20 per cent Continental. �What to do,� he says of the 20 per cent bit, �these were popular dishes on the old menu and Trattoria regulars kept asking for them.�

It is a 21st century restaurant now, all wood, glass, and granite, with a show kitchen where a brick-based Italforni oven bakes oak-flavoured pizzas. Happily, the new menu is 21st century too. Ananda has done away with the old lunch and dinner menu and the 24-hour menu and replaced them with a single one that does not restrict your order of food. �You can order a Pizza Americana at 3 o�clock in the morning at Trattoria and it will be served to you,� he says.

They use Mozzarella for the pizzas and Parmesan for the soups and cooking. It is Grande Padano Parmesan Cheese that has been matured like a good wine for 12 years to get out its full flavour. The pasta is Dececco, it is made of wholewheat flour and comes packaged specially for Trattoria. And the Trattoria orders pasta in spaghetti, farfelle, fusilli, penne and rigatoni forms. The rice is arborio of Italy.

And you must end your meal with a dessert from the showcase. Five per cent of the Trattoria�s entire sales come out of this showcase. Try the Cappuccino Tart. Place your order for this in between your meal because it takes about 12 minutes to bake. It is a coffee and chocolate tart served with cashewnut ice-cream. Eating time: 60 seconds!

Trattoria, Hotel Taj President. Tel: 215 0808.

Sampan
Chef Penpa Tsering at the Sampan, a master at Szechwan cuisine.
Chef Penpa Tsering�s Sampan at the Holiday Inn in Juhu is as authentic a Chinese restaurant as any you may find in Hong Kong or Beijing, though Chef Tsering is a Tibetan from Lhasa. His repertoire is mainly Szechwan, though there are a few milder Cantonese dishes on the menu, and some Korean barbecue. He also prepares a special menu for his favourite clients, if they tell him on the morning of their visit, the menu printed and ready.

The large picture windows bring in the Juhu sun and the Arabian Sea, and on the sun-deck, next to the swimming-pool, there are white skins, probably an airline crew, getting gently pink broiled. It is a lobby-level restaurant and there is only one entrance, through the coffee shop. The coffee shop is bright in gold and green, the green of actual plants. You walk the length of it, taking in the rich coffee aroma, then, through an arch, and past the smiling presence of the charming hostess from Shillong, you enter Sampan. And you breathe in the universal scent of Chinese restaurants, chilli sauce and jasmine tea, black mushrooms and litchi toffee.

The Sampan dim sums have that effervescent quality about them, of clouds that disintegrate over the horizon, leaving behind the steamed mince meats in the mouth. The chicken wings stuffed with prawns and mushrooms are somewhat elaborate for an appetiser. There is a chicken and prawn ball soup. The balls are little mouthfuls, the soup is chicken stock. And though it is a clear soup, the stock is laden with snowpeas, mushrooms, winter melon, vermicelli. You may also try the three seafoods soup, lobster, crab and pomfret in fish stock and rice wine. Afternoons are a little quiet at the Sampan, nights they send the customers back.

Sampan, Holiday Inn. Tel: 690 4444.