Delhi's Navratan

LA PIAZZA

Truth is that it is worth going to La Piazza, Hyatt Regency Delhi, for pizza alone. For it is here that you get the gourmet stuff. What makes the humble pie touch the sky is that the restaurant boasts of, arguably, the only wood-fired (a Renato, no less) oven in the land. Blissfully the selection is limited to classics, there are ten in all, not counting the offer to put all your favourite toppings on the tart! This may astonish you that whilst the most sought after toppings are Quattro Formaggi (tomato and four kinds of cheese), Funghi (tomato, mozzarella and assorted mushrooms), Prosiutto di Parma (Parma ham) and Salamino Piccante (chilli-salami), my favourite remains Pizza La Piazza, which comes with an ambrosial topping of goat cheese with sun-dried tomatoes, roasted garlic and pesto, and I return for it again and again and again and... though the menu keeps changing at regular intervals.

WEST VIEW

The intriguingly named West View, at Maurya Sheraton, is a grill that negated in one fell stroke ITC Hotels� image of a one-dimensional �curry chain�, what with the success of Bukhara, Dakshin and Dum Pukht. Now it showcases the genius of Chef Gev Desai, and serves the home-style Western cuisine - grilled and otherwise. The menu changes every day - in fact, there is no printed carte. Instead, there is a stunning display of uncooked vegetables and fresh meats - local and imported - wherefrom a personal selection can be made. Having done the spadework, Desai handed over the kitchen to an all-female team, most of the time, anyway, led by Madhu Wadhwani-Krishnan. The meal is prix fixe - Rs. 695 (vegetarian) and Rs. 950 (non-vegetarian) and you can feast imported and domestic meats, cheeses and veggies, all of the highest quality.As you pore over the treats displayed in the �marche�, one of the chefs glides in from behind the grill to help you make a selection from an impressive array: lobster tails, prawns, Norwegian salmon, Himalayan trout, Australian T-bone, sirloin and rib-eye steaks, chicken franks, Danish farmer sausages, grilled chicken, Australian pork chops and assorted other domestic meats. Sadly, the vegetarian selection, though excellent, is somewhat limited.

KARIM

There is not much difference in the fare dished out at Karim, Flora and Jawahar, except that the owners of Karim claim that their forebears were chefs to the Mughal emperors. Manufacturing an imperial lineage may have helped Karim attract an audience, but there is nothing in the decor to suggest opulence. What it lacks in ambience is made up by the atmospherics. The food, of course, is commendable, and retains a distinct Delhi flavour. It is more robust than Avadh�s and less cosmopolitan than Hyderabad�s. For me, the dilemma has always been what to order from the tantalisingly large but almost exclusively gosht carte. The curries may be rich and monochromatic, but are quite exquisite. Though the pride place is assigned to Dilbahar Dopyaaza, a kid stew cooked with whole spices, Firdausi Korma, an innovative variation of Rogan Josh cooked with milange of spices, whole and powdered, and Badaam Pasanda, I favour the lighter, home-style delicacies like Aloo Gosht and Tamater Gosht.

TKsAsk a Delhiwallah, What�s hot? And he�s likely to respond with TK�s, the Oriental grill at the Hyatt Regency Delhi. It is a restaurant designed for enjoying good food that the chefs create on the hot plates, grilling fresh fish and roasting meats with skilled showmanship. They handle their spatulas better than many a drummer at a military tattoo. The success of TK�s, which is an acronym for Teppanyaki Kitchen, suggests that cross-cultural cooking, with predominantly Asian flavours, is truly in. In a very clever and honest move, Hyatt made it a point to tell its Japanese clientele that TK�s wasn�t a Nipponese teppenyaki place, but that it served an eclectic mix of Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Mongolian grills. There�s an a la carte menu and six set menus - two of which are vegetarian (Jasmine and Shogun), two loaded with seafood (Shima and Orchid) and to meaty(Bonsai and Shan). In each category you vcan choose to either be spartan or to splurge.