DINING OUT: Jackfruit Burger Leads Surprises at Depot 29

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

QUICK BYTES

WHAT: Depot 29

WHERE: B 6/2, Levels 2 & 3, Commercial Complex, Safdarjung Enclave (Opposite Hauz Khas Deer Park rear entrance)

WHEN: 12 Noon to 3:30 P.M.; 7:30 P.M. to 12 Midnight

DIAL: (011) 43139867

AVG MEAL FOR TWO (MINUS ALCOHOL): Rs 2,000+++

Depot 29 serves limited selection of beer and wine because it hasn't got its liquor licence yet.

The Spartan decor of Depot 29 allows you to
focus on the food, which is just the kind of
cafe food -- a mix of Mexican and burgers
in this case -- that is coming back in fashion.

THE CLOSEST Safdarjung Enclave's B-6 Block Market has ever got to gourmet food is Yamato Ya, the city's first Japanese convenience store, tucked away in one non-descript corner facing, to use a favourite Delhi expression, the 'back side' of the Hauz Khas Deer Park. The only time it gets busy is when the young residents of neighbouring Arjun Nagar descend upon the lone department store that doubles as the local booze shop to slake their thirst with chilled beer. And the only restaurant it had -- It's Greek to Me -- faded away like the Hellenic Civilisation; the general somnolence hasn't spared even the Cafe Coffee Day outlet.

Chef-Restaurateur Ritu Dalmia of Diva fame
with Vikas Narula (left) and Girijashanker
Vohra, her two Depot 29 partners.

In the last some months, the B-6 Block Market has dramatically turned around from being the neighbourhood nerd to the new people magnet. The transformation started with The Hungry Monkey, which positions itself as a 'Modern European' restaurant, but is essentially the new must-be-seen-at hangout of South Delhi's rich kids. In this busy market, Ritu 'Diva' Dalmia, who, like AD Singh, has become a serial restaurateur working on different formats and cuisines, teamed up with two young men -- Vikas Narula and Girjashanker Vohra -- to launch Depot 29 in what used to be an office. It takes an invigorating climb to reach the restaurant, unless you opt for the fashionably old-fashioned elevator that welcomes you with a lingering whiff of Chanel No. 5. On your way up, the only sign of life you see is a door promising the opening "very soon" of a Thai spa.

This review first
appeared in
Mail Today
on August 8,
2014. Copyright:
Mail Today
Newspapers

Depot 29 is a case-book study of Dalmia's new business model. Optimal square footage (1,800; split into two levels), seating for 48, a stripped-down industrial look, regular furniture (a tad uncomfortable for the horizontally challenged), the cheapest possible crockery, cutlery and glassware, but the food is just the kind you'd want to return to the restaurant for, or order in. Depot 29 was packed to capacity on a sweltering afternoon -- and I was the only man in it, apart from the people working there! It was clear that it had been quick in acquiring a following through the power of the word of mouth.

Comfort food -- quesadillas, tacos, burgers, savoury and sweet waffles -- rules the menu, though the 28-year-old chef, Ekansh Malik, is a Le Cordon Bleu, London, graduate who's come back after working under Atul Kochhar at Benaras. My significant other and I just loved the chicken and corn empanadas; she couldn't stop gushing over the grilled prawn and bacon tacos (I am told the ones with pulled pork are to die for!). The chicken and grilled prawn burger that followed unsettled me. It was a bit too dry and without personality, and the bun was lifeless too -- I made this point in a social media group and Narula promptly Inboxed me that they were re-engineering the burger (that's good PR!).

The sense of disappointment did not last long because the jackfruit (kathal) burger, which I ordered for a lark, was the best thing I have had in many days. What we asked for next didn't look -- or taste -- promising. The burata, which had collapsed and was oozing oil, was a rip-off. The guacamole dips and corn chips were average. But these are not likely to be remembered after a meal that ends with the Depot 29 banana waffle served with a generous helping of toffee sauce and a scoop of vanilla ice-cream. It was like heaven on a plate.

The service was friendly and informed -- and Narula was around all the time. I struck up a conversation with this pleasant, bright-eyed young man after he saw me struggling with the mustard and promptly got me kasundi. He started life taking the usual high-achiever career route -- engineering, then management -- and worked in Mumbai as well as Sydney before deciding one day to become a restaurateur. The corporate world's loss, I hope, will be our gain.

DINING OUT: Diya Turns Five with the Menu of a Masterchef

QUICK BYTES

WHAT: Five Years of Diya with Kunal Kapur

WHERE: The Leela Ambience Hotel, NH-8, Gurgaon

WHEN: Till July 27. Open only for dinner (6:30 to 11:30 p.m.).

DIAL: (0124) 4771255

PER PERSON: Four-course meal (vegetarian) Rs 3,350++; (non-vegetarian) Rs 3,850++

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

Masterchef India co-host
Kunal Kapur earned his spurs
as chef de cuisine at Diya, the
under-rated Indian restaurant at
The Leela Ambience Gurgaon,
where he's now the executive
sous chef.

FIVE YEARS AGO, after dining at Diya at The Leela Ambience Gurgaon, I'd hailed the restaurant as the next big thing in Indian fine dining, without knowing that the chef who had sweated it out to inspire me to write that glowing review was the now-famous Kunal Kapur, the endearing (and enduring) face of Masterchef India.

Kunal was then an uncelebrated chef de cuisine, but he brought with him the experience of working at some of the finest Indian restaurants of the Taj Group hotels -- the old Handi and Haveli in Delhi; Southern Spice at Taj Coromandel, Chennai; Karavalli at The Gateway Hotel on Residency Road, Bangalore; and at the Holiday Village, Goa, under the greatest exponent of the state's cuisine, the inimitable Urbano Rego. Yet, Diya hardly ever figures in drawing room conversations, or in animated Facebook food group discussions. Neither does Made in India at the Radisson Blu, Noida, where Kunal worked shoulder-to-shoulder with the under-rated master chef, Arun Tyagi.

In the last five years that Diya, and the hotel, has been around, Kunal has become a celebrity TV show host and best-selling cookbook writer (he has moved up the corporate ladder as well), and the restaurant is now headed by Angshuman Adhikari, a former acolyte of the Michelin-starred, UK-based chef-restaurateur, Atul Kochhar. You can imagine my joy therefore when the hotel invited me for a meal cooked by Kunal, who has returned to his old kitchen to showcase the cooking skills that got him the ticket to fame. Giving me company were the hotel's friendly (and hands-on) General Manager, Michel Koopman, and the charming Nidhi Verma, the marcomm manager, who's a fund of stories.
I have had a lunch orchestrated and served by Masterchef Australia co-host Gary Mehigan at the Grand Hyatt, Mumbai, where I shared my table with a media baron who had just made a lot of money selling his popular afternoon newspaper, but who insisted on describing himself as a farmer from Alibaug (of course, he knew more about farming than all of Delhi's farmhouse owners put together, so he could qualify to be a farmer!). Mehigan wasn't cooking; his executive chef was. On July 15, however, it was Kunal who prepared dinner for me and at the end of it, I was happy to see my long-held view -- that TV chefs can't cook, so they are on TV -- lying in ruins around me.

The mutton shank guddu kurma
is one of Kapur's stand-out
dishes, which showcases his
ability to meld the influences
and flavours of India's many
kitchens into an unforgettable
taste experience

Kunal surprises you not in the Gaggan Anand or the Manish Mehrotra way, with modernist drama and molecular gastronomy, but in his orchestration of flavours and influences he has imbibed from across the country. His style of cooking is classical with a contemporary twist, a touch I find missing in my favourite Indian fine-dining restaurant, Dum Pukht at ITC Maurya. The most eloquent representative of his style is the multi-textural haleem kebab, where the solidity of the mutton boti is balanced by the slight mushiness of dal, daliya and jowar -- biting into one is like having a generous helping of the Hyderabadi dish (a Ramzan must-have), whose taste is reinforced by the quenelle of haleem that is served along with the kebab.

The Hyderabadi influence kept showing up, first in the grilled scallops served with the saalan of a baghare baigan, and then in the guddu kurma, where mutton shanks were cooked in a rich bone marrow gravy. If the surprise of the evening was the 'Punjabi bruschetta' -- liver, kidney and diced mutton cooked in the tak-a-tak style, topped up with a kachumbar salad, and served on toasted French bread -- the murgh malai shorba with a vol-au-vent island stuffed with murgh khichda was a treat for the senses: an explosion of flavours that did a tango with the taste buds. But the desserts blew my mind: cinnamon-flavoured shrikhand with juliennes of a Granny Smith apple (its tartness the perfect counterfoil to the shrikhand's sweetness) and the Bailey's chhena payesh must at once be declared the national dish of Greater Bengal! Kunal is not just the co-host of Masterchef India; he's the master of his craft.

This review first appeared in the Mail Today edition dated July 18, 2014. Copyright: Mail Today Newspapers.

DINING OUT: Delhi's First Restaurant by a U.K. Celebrity Chef Off to a Great Start

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

IT'S NOT often that you get served the best risotto you've had in many years straight out of the pan by an international celebrity chef who has a warm-hearted laughter and vehement views on the wine that is sold in his own restaurant.

London's celebrity chef, cookbook
writer and television presenter, who
sold  his chain of restaurants in 2012,
has returned to the business with
Zerrucco by Zilli at The Ashok
in Delhi's Diplomatic Enclave 

It was a Friday night and Aldo Zilli's first day in India, a country he had known only through its spices, Gordon Ramsay and Rick Stein's television shows, and one of our best exports, Atul Kochhar, chef-owner of the Michelin-starred Benares restaurant in Mayfair, London -- the two had met 20 years ago at a television cook-off. He showed no signs of jetlag (he thanked British Airways for it) and laughed heartily when I said Jacob's Creek (the wine of the evening) was Wimbledon's official plonk and therefore fit to be served only to the Williams sisters.

I knew I was being uncharitable (because the restaurant, Zerruco by Zilli, was a couple of days away from its official opening and hadn't yet got its wine supply) and perhaps politically incorrect, but you can be just yourself when you're with Zilli, who has more restaurant success stories, best-selling cookbooks, product endorsements and newspaper columns than most other celebrity chefs, and yet wears his status very lightly. His Italian roots show up when he makes every guest feel special not because it is good for business, but because he's genuinely warm-hearted.

Zerruco by Zilli has come up where Mashrabiya, the Middle Eastern restaurant run by Arjun and Amit Amla at one corner of The Ashok, used to rock with its heady mix of belly dancing, good food, flavoured shishas and pleasing ambience. It survived longer than Maroush, the rooftop Lebanese restaurant at the ITC Maurya, but it had ceased to make business sense.

Zerruco by Zilli has stepped into Mashrabiya's vast space. Sprawling across a 3,000-square-foot dining room, with a 70-foot-long backlit panel made with individually designed wooden pieces, and an equally expansive al fresco area with its own bar and wood-fired pizza oven, it is Zilli's first foray into the restaurant business after 2012, when he sold his chain in London (the most famous name among them being Zilli Fish). And it promises to be Delhi-NCR's liveliest Italian restaurant serving what Italian chefs do best -- cook food whose simplicity is as beguiling as its bouquet of tastes and flavours is seductive. The laudatory tweets from the fortunate few who partied till well beyond midnight this past Sunday -- it started as a brunch, but there was no stopping the guests -- echoed the same feeling even as Zilli exclaimed: "OMG Indian people can party 12 hours later"!

Promoted by Kashif Farooq and Prashant Ojha, who turned Urban Pind into a nightlife phenomenon before it had to shut after the landlord demanded a rent that the duo couldn't afford, the co-branded restaurant has also benefited from the expertise of its principal consultant, Manish Baheyti, a former senior executive with The Oberoi Group who also had a stint as Director of Marketing at the Hyatt Regency New Delhi. As General Manager of The Trident Bhubaneswar in 2005, Manish, who's from one of Rajasthan's minor royal families, posted the hotel's highest profit in 23 years. The trio clearly bring a wealth of experience to the table and only they could have braved the one year it took them to build the restaurant out of a space that had become a rubbish dump after Mashrabiya shut down.

Kashif, who's 33 and a graduate of Delhi University's Sri Venkateswara 'Venky' College, has an interesting back story that I have to share here. The young restaurateur spent his early childhood in Srinagar, but had to relocate with his family to Japan because his father could not cope with terrorist extortion threats. "Kashmiri Pandits weren't the only people who were made refugees by terrorists," Kashif said with feeling. He had always wanted to be in the business of hospitality and next big dream is to open a hotel in Dubai. "Why not in India?" I asked. He replied that it is very difficult to do business here.

My meal with Zilli alternating with Kashif, Manish and an old friend, image consultant Pareina Thapar, started with minestrone soup -- I loved the way it was served just the way I have been having it since childhood, without any modernist interventions. Next came the crispy fried squid tossed with fresh chilli, garlic chips and coriander -- a temptress, it's one dish that would keep drawing me back at Zerruco by Zilli, as would the silky wild mushroom risotto. The Margherita Pizza was, again, just the way you'd have it in Naples.

Another Italian classic, Melanzane alla Parmigiana, layers of fried aubergine with tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella and basil, was also presented without any fuss or frills, and the vegetarian tagliatelle was brought alive by a red pepper sauce. But the show-stoppers were the pan-roasted seabass fillet with fennel and orange salad, potatoes and spiced red wine sauce, and the Cicchetti Lamb, which is a mover and seller at Manchester's acclaimed Italian restaurant after which this pan-roasted rack of lamb with a red wine glaze takes its name. It's home-style Italian fare whose beauty is that it is well-made and connects with the soul.

With Zilli's life being regular fodder for my favourite U.K. newspaper, Daily Mail, there's not a nugget of it that is not known to the reading public, so I merrily flaunted my knowledge of his stiletto ravioli, which he had originally designed for the U.K. edition of Vogue. He quickly produced two of them, the green (and more popular) one being stuffed with mushroom and ricotta, served with asparagus and tomato mascarpone sauce.

The baked dark chocolate and chilli fondant complemented with vanilla ice-cream was the fitting finale to the treat. Zilli proudly declared that it beat the entry by a Michelin-starred chef on a television show. Well, Zilli doesn't need a Michelin star to prove his credentials. He has mastered the art of stunning simplicity.

Three New Pedigreed Chefs Land in Delhi: Angshuman Adhikari at Diya, Sujan Sarkar at Olive Mehrauli and Alex Marks at Orient Express

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

DIYA at The Leela Gurgaon is one of Delhi-NCR's few finer Inventive Indian restaurants that can be counted on your fingertips, but it has never got its due, maybe because the chef who was responsible for its outstanding menu, Kunal Kapur, is more famous as the genial host and judge of Masterchef India, and not for his tawa parantha stuffed with feta cheese, spring onions and onion seeds (kalonji).

Kapur has risen steadily up the hotel's corporate ladder -- he's now the executive sous chef -- so Diya will soon have a new chef and he's Angshuman Adhikari, who has been running Michelin-starred Atul Kochhar's Simply India restaurant at the year-old St Regis in the scenic Le Morne peninsula, an old hideout of runaway slaves on the south-western tip of Mauritius. Angshuman was sous chef at Kochhar's Dubai restaurant, Zafran, before he moved to the Indian Ocean island nation.

The St Regis at Le Morne stands in the shadow of a 556m-high basaltic monolith that looms over the palm-fringed resort thriving in glorious isolation on a beach in pristine condition. It is here that Kochhar, who opened London's Tamarind restaurant and now presides over Benaras, conceptualised Simply India, where the Samundri Do Pyaza, a treat for seafood lovers, competes for your attention with Karara Kekda Aur Salad (soft-shell crab paired with apple and peanut salad and apple chutney); Batak Chettinad served with cabbage and vermicelli foogath (which gets its name because of coconut and curry leaves); Tandoori Machhi teamed with crispy bok choy and Kochhar's signature smoked tomato chutney; and Citrus Rice Pudding with Blood Orange Ice Cream.

I can see Diya becoming the talk of the town, which Angshuman knows very well, having worked at Set'z with the formidable Master Chef Arif Ahmed, but it is not the only restaurant that'll see the infusion of pedigreed talent. The ever-popular Olive Bar & Kitchen at Mehrauli has got itself a prized import -- the young Sujan Sarkar, who's fresh off the boat from London (and all set to get married). I was reading up about Sujan when I stumbled upon a tweet by Heston Blumenthal of Fat Duck fame informing his followers about how this talented dynamo was "preparing [a] dazzling display" for TreatFest 2012. It's not often that Blumenthal tweets as enthusiastically about a young chef.

Described as a "gastronomic genius", Sujan was crowned London Chef of the Year and was National Chef of the Year finalist in 2012. The rising star of 'molecular ingenuity' who uses liquid nitrogen like a magician, left Mumbai's JW Marriott, where he launched his career, in 2004 to join the Hilton hotels in the UK. Soon, he found himself working at Jamie Oliver's Fifteen, from where he moved under the wings of the Relais & Chateaux grand chef Peter Tempelhoff, and then on to the Michelin-starred Galvin at Windows on the 28th floor of the London Hilton at Park Lane, where he got to work with Andre Garrett and Chris Galvin.

Sujan Sarkar, seen at the TreatFest 2012 in the UK,
has joined Olive Bar & Kitchen, Mehrauli. His
appointment has been a casting coup for the
restaurant's charismatic owner, AD Singh.

Moving fast, Sujan changed gears and went on to be the opening chef of the Automat American Brasserie on Dover Street, Mayfair, whose popular menu is as famous for its macaroni and cheese with truffle as for its chicken liver and foie gras mousse served with plum chutney. From Automat, Sujan also ran the affairs of the private members' club, Almada, which opened beneath the brasserie and attracted the likes of George Clooney because of its classic decor, good food and discreet setting.

Alex Marks is the other debutant from London who is opening his innings at the Orient Express with a dinner on Tuesday, November 12. He's replacing D.N. Sarma, the Taj veteran who learnt his craft from the legendary Arvind Saraswat and became synonymous with OE. Well, OE needed more than just Sarma's reassuring presence to shore up its jaded reputation and Marks, who earned his spurs at Gordon Ramsay's Maze at the Marriott on Grosvenor Square, may just be the oxygen that the chic restaurant badly needs.

Marks got noticed because he did a pretty competent job of stepping into Ramsay's star protégé Jason Atherton's shoes at Maze -- a gushing review of the restaurant had lauded it for its "attention to infinitesimal details and a commitment to exactingly high standards". He was previously the head chef at the Michelin-starred Foliage, the Modern British restaurant at the Mandarin Oriental in Knightsbridge that has been replaced by Heston Blumenthal's Dinner.

With such talented chefs with impeccable track records arriving in the city (apart from of course the incredible Rahul Akerkar), we seem to have a great gastronomic season ahead. I can't wait to see how it unfolds.

Everything You’ve Wanted to Know About Aldo Zilli’s Foray into India

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

THE PROBLEM with being a spy is that you don’t always get every piece of the jigsaw puzzle right. My post on Aldo Zilli’s Indian foray has evoked a tremendous response and fortunately, it also helped me re-establish contact, thank to my good friend Pareina Thapar, with Manish Baheyti, a dapper hotelier and a product of the Oberoi Group whom I have known off and on since his days as Director of Marketing at the Hyatt Regency.

In 2008, Manish and his wife Sonali established Haute Services Pvt. Ltd., which is a boutique consultancy with hospitality and art advisory as its main verticals. Their hospitality clients have included Usha Lexus Hotels, Seasons Group and Sinclairs. And it was Manish who set in motion the process that is bring Aldo Zilli to India.

Let’s hear it in his words and these are from an email he sent me late at night (my comments are in parentheses):

I have known Kashif (Farooq) and Prashant (Ojha) socially for many years and we got the opportunity to work with them from January this year as the lead consultants to a restaurant they wanted to open in place of what used to be Masharabiya (the open-air restaurant that used to be famous for its Lebanese food and belly dancing till it shut down) at The Ashok. Except for architectural services, interiors and kitchen design, we advise them on all other aspects of putting together this brand.

The need to provide a sound positioning to this restaurant in terms of its food offering, coupled with the fact that Delhi has a discerning palate, encouraged us to look overseas to engage a known name. Atul Kochhar (the Michelin-starred chef-owner of London’s Benaras restaurant) and I have been close friends for over 23 years, both having started our careers at the Oberoi School of Hotel Management, and I reached out to him for suggestions, which led to identifying Aldo Zilli.

The restaurant, Zerruco by Zilli (so he’s not bringing Cicchetti, as I had speculated), is co-branded with Aldo and our understanding is to grow the brand to be present in at least two more locations over a period of three years. There is no investment from Aldo Zilli. Besides Kashif Farooq and Prashant Ojha, who are the main promoters of this venture, they have three investing partners, namely Prashant Aggarwal, Bikram Oberoi and Munish Lal, for whom this will be the first hospitality venture.

The menu for the restaurant is completely designed by Aldo and he brings to the table his recipes from some of his most famous restaurants such as Zilli Fish, Zilli Green and the over 12 books he has authored, some of them big bestsellers. This gourmet dining restaurant will have a separate section in the menu for vegetarians as he found that majority of his patrons for Zilli Green in London were well-heeled Indians with a penchant for Italian vegetarian food.

I spent a week with Aldo recently in London and I can say that he is thoroughly excited about making his first-ever foray into the Asian market with a restaurant in the Capital of India.

Urban Pind’s Kashif Farooq Ties Up with Celeb Chef Aldo Zilli to Get Acclaimed UK Restaurant

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

WHAT’S with celebrity chefs and their love for Delhi? Even before we could stop talking about the galaxy of Michelin-starred chefs who spent a week in the national capital, thanks to Anand Kapoor and his non-profit Creative Services Support Group, the city is abuzz with the news that London’s celebrity chef and television presenter Aldo Zilli is opening a restaurant at The Ashok, the state-run hotel infamous for its evil-smelling corridors, in partnership with Kashif Farooq of Urban Pind.

Television celebrity and cookbook writer Aldo Zilli's Fresh
and Green was on the Daily Telegraph's Top Ten Books of
2012. He has teamed up with Kashif Farooq to bring the
much-acclaimed Cicchetti restaurant (TripAdvisor rating:
4.5/5) to the state-run hotel, The Ashok, in New Delhi.

Zilli has just made headlines by creating a pair of edible stilettos from fresh pasta stuffed with spinach, ricotta and truffles (price: 7.90 pounds) for the multiple award-winning Manchester restaurant, Cicchetti, which is said to be the favourite of Coleen Rooney, wife of the England and Manchester United superstar Wayne Rooney.

Farooq’s Urban Pind, the N-Block Market, Greater Kailash-I nightclub, has seen better days, when the queues outside it and its discriminatory “foreigners first” entry policy kept the watering hole in the news.

Those were the days when Farooq could get away by making his infamous statement — “Foreigners know how to talk to or approach women. Indian men get drunk and start to misbehave.” He said this to author Omair Ahmed in Outlook magazine, but now, after being for years the must-go-to party spot in South Delhi, Urban Pind seems to be no longer top of mind for Delhi’s night birds.

Born in the Italian seaside town of Alba Adriatica in Abruzzo, Zilli ran a number of restaurants in London (the most famous of them being Zilli Fish, a Soho institution, which he sold along with the rest of his chain after he hung up his chef’s whites in 2012). And of course, he’s a television favourite — as we learn from his website www.aldozilli.com, he has co-hosted with Enzo Olivieri a top-rated cookery show shot in Sicily (it has gone into its second season); he has travelled around Britain with fellow chef Silvena Rowe to compete in local cook-offs; his wife Nikki and he have mentored on television a homeless boy on television; he has lost 15 kilos on a reality show named Celebrity Fit Club; and he has even charmed the audience with his Italian songs in the ITV1 show, Celebrity X Factor.

He is also an acclaimed author of ten cookbooks and two autobiographies — his book over 100 vegetarian recipes, Fresh and Green, was on the Daily Telegraph’s Top 10 for 2012. He writes a weekly column for the Daily Express Saturday Magazine; he has consulted with Kraft Foods and Morrisons Supermarkets, where his Pizza Calabrese with Nduja (Calabria’s signature soft salami) was a national best-seller; and he has opened his own public relations and marketing company, Zilli Media (www.zillimedia.com).

Who brought Kashif Farooq and Aldo Zilli together? The buzz is that the match was sealed by Michelin-starred chef Atul Kochhar of London’s Benaras restaurant. And the restaurant brand that they are bringing in, Cicchetti (named after the Venetian term for ‘small plates’, pronounced ‘chi-KET-tee’), is run by Carlo Distefano’s San Carlo Group, which has become famous riding on the success of the restaurant, which opened last year at the Piccadilly with a TripAdvisor rating of 4.5/5 after a hugely successful start in Manchester, and the Waterloo Street cocktail bar-cum-restaurant, Fumo. After he sold off his business, Zilli joined the San Carlo Group as Chef Consiliere, a consultancy position that makes him responsible for designing the menus of Cicchetti (www.sancarlocicchetti.co.uk). Having made its debut in Birmingham in 1996, the Group has spread its wings to 12 locations, including Kuwait, Beirut and Bangkok.

The entry of Cicchetti into The Ashok follows closely on the heels of the rather unimpressive opening of Michael van Cleef Ault’s nightclub for the fatcats, Pangaea, in partnership with the colourful owner of Spice Global, B.K. Modi. The industrialist’s other venture at The Ashok — Nom Nom, the Pan Asian restaurant in association with Dharmesh Karmokar — is yet to acquire the buzz of its Mumbai counterparts, which have got rave reviews from critics and guests alike. Will Cicchetti do what the combined star power of Michael van Cleef Ault and B.K. Modi has not been able to achieve in the jinxed state-run behemoth?