Sabina was not much of a foodie until she met Dino. She says, �Now my life is all about food.� She can cook, but her cooking is not half as adventurous as Dino�s, or anything as fantastic. She can put together a good Hyderabad meal. And she thought her Italian food was great till she ate Dino�s! But he is all about food...

SABINA Chopra and Dino Marteli are Bombay�s delectable restaurateur couple. They run the avante garde eatery Cafe Sesso at The Courtyard in Colaba where the menu is eclectic, the food as young and adventurous as they are. It is a futuristic kind of cuisine which Dino, who was a famous Indian model before he went to New York to study industrial engineering and designing, is gifted at preparing. �It is modern eclectic food, a world cuisine, where we�ve used a lot of imported products and because our larder represents the cuisines of the world,� says Dino.

Dino and Sabina have been friends for 20 years. However, they only teamed up when he returned from New York disenchanted with what he was doing and looking to set up a restaurant in Bombay. Sabina and her husband Anil helped him to set it up. Now Dino and Sabina are into Cafe Sesso full time. �It takes two to run a restaurant,� she says, �there is so much to do.� She looks after the business angle (�everything that is not to do with food�), the marketing, staff training, because she is a teacher by profession, she lectures at the SNDT and Sophia on special education. Dino looks after the cooking and service. He is hands-on totally and very passionate about what he does. But now he does not get into the kitchen as much as he would like to unless one of the regulars wants something special.

They talk about food easily. Sabina was not much of a foodie until she met Dino. �I would rather skip a meal than have a bad meal,� she says. �Now my life is all about food.� She can cook, but her cooking is not half as adventurous as Dino�s, �or anything as fantastic�. She can put together a good Hyderabad meal. And she thought her Italian food was great till she ate Dino�s! Now she admits to being a good domestic cook who can throw a party for 40 without getting into a flap. He is different. He is all about food. Part of his work while studying industrial designing in New York was to design restaurants so that they had a lifestyle look and feel about them and people came to hang out there not just because of the food. �Everything I learned, everything I wanted to do came into that,� he says.

Now they have Cafe Sesso which, while not a financially successful restaurant, has earned them lots of goodwill along the way. It has helped them and given them the confidence to plan something bigger and better in the heart of Bombay: a fine dining restaurant at posh Breach Candy that will offer fresh and innovative food, a funky bar of single malts and beers, a cigar lounge, with luxurious decor and plenty of day-time light. �It will be a high-end fine dining restaurant,� says Dino, �but not like a five star, five stars are very formal, ours won�t be.�