THE NEWS BRIEFLY: Le Cirque's Star in Exit Mode; Vella Ramaswamy Heads Home; Vikramjit Roy Returns with Nian; and a Greek Skydeck

Mickey Bhoite is heading back
to Florence leaving his Royal
Enfield for the highest bidder

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

DELHI'S five-star hotels are heading for a churn because of exits by familiar faces and entrances by new arrivals.

The big news is that Le Cirque's Abhay Singh 'Mickey' Bhoite is going back home to Italy, where he plans to settle down in Florence (closer to his collection of more than 60 venomous snakes, who are now in the custody of his mother). That'll be a big blow to The Leela Palace New Delhi (a little bird informs us that Bhoite's deputy, Federico Tucci, is exiting as well) because Le Cirque's reputation owes a lot to Bhoite's personality and style of cooking.

Royal Enfield enthusiasts, though, are waiting for the opportunity to bid for Bhoite's custom-made motorbike, which comes equipped with mind-blowing woofers. Bhoite and his young colleague, Vaibhav Roy, team up together with friends as often as they can and hit the highways. People who know the motorcycle (known as the Highway Queen) say it is in sparkling condition and Bhoite is reportedly asking for Rs 4 lakh for the beauty.

Vella Ramaswamy may not have burnt rubber on highways, but the Mauritian who grew up in Australia is the only expat general manager I know who has seen two hotels in Delhi-NCR come up under his guardianship from the bhoomi pujan to the first guest walking in.

As the opening general manager of The Leela Kempinski Gurgaon (now known as The Leela Ambience Gurgaon), he got the hotel off the ground at a rather difficult time for the global economy and successfully established Spectra as one of Delhi-NCR's foremost restaurants. Then, as the founding father of the Kempinski Ambience Hotel Delhi, he turned its locational disadvantage on the head and took full advantage of the size of its banqueting area to make it the go-to destination for mega business providers in the MICE (Meetings Incentives Conventions Exhibitions) segment. The hotel is also a favourite of wedding planners and has seen many a Big Fat Bania Wedding take place with a no onion, no garlic vegetarian spread laid out for 1,000-plus guests.

Vella Ramaswamy gave Delhi-NCR
to hotels, but is now returning to
home city Melbourne

Puneet Singh is back in Delhi after
spending 20 years with Kempinski
Hotels in eight countries

Ramaswamy's time is up. The affable hotelier with a brilliant sense of humour is going home to Melbourne and he is in the process of handing over charge to a Delhiite, Puneet Singh, who is returning to his home city after putting in more than two decades with the Kempinski hotels in eight countries. After completing his hotel management studies in Germany, Singh got selected to Kempinski's four-year management training programme, which took him to Germany, the U.S. and Turkey. Thereafter, the polyglot roving hotelier, who's fluent in six languages, spent six years gaining F&B operations experience in culturally diverse markets, then held leadership positions at Kempinski hotels in China, Tanzania, UAE, Russia and Egypt, and even in the midst of all this movement, got his Executive MBA from the top-rated Reims Management School, France. Before his transfer to Delhi, Singh was the General Manager of the Kempinski Grand and Ixir Hotel at the Bahrain City Centre.

In other developments, Sevilla at The Claridges has been shut for its annual refurbishment; it is expected to open in October-end. I can't wait to see what Executive Chef Neeraj Tyagi and his deputy, Rajiv Sinha, have up their sleeves for the new Sevilla. Vikramjit Roy, who Delhiites remember from his days at Wasabi by Morimoto, is returning to the rooftop of ITC Maurya to open an 'Asian Cooking Studio' named Tian. The restaurant will replace My Humble House, which never came close to the popularity of Bali Hi. An IHM-Taratolla graduate, Roy opened Pan-Asian at the ITC Grand Chola in Chennai about a year ago and became an instant superstar in a city that hadn't been exposed to his genre of fine dining.

And of course, The Leela Ambience Gurgaon is taking a leap of faith by turning its poolside into a 69-seater restaurant, Skydeck Lounge, with a Greek menu washed down by ouzo, the anise-flavoured aperitif, and retsina wines, which have a more than 2,000-year-old history. It is the first five-star hotel to tread into this unfamiliar territory. I hope it's not the only one taking this plunge.

The Oberoi's Old Sushi Master Augusto Cabrera Back in the City as Town Hall's Managing Partner

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

Augusto Cabrera, seen above in his days at The
Oberoi New Delhi, is back in the city as Executive
Chef and Managing Partner of the 160-seater
Town Hall  restaurant in Khan Market.

WHEN The Oberoi New Delhi's Master Sushi Chef Augusto Cabrera left the hotel where he had the national capital's elite eating out of his hands at threesixty°, he said he was returning to his home city in the Philippines to open a restaurant that would be owned by his family. But lo and behold, he's back in the city as Executive Chef and Managing Partner of the new restaurant that has got everyone talking -- Town Hall at Khan Market. And he has hired his former second-in-command, who had reportedly moved on to Wasabi by Morimoto at the Taj Mahal Hotel, as the replacement for Vikramjit Roy.

For The Oberoi, it means competition that is too close for comfort, but having sampled the sushi rolls at threesixty° a couple of Sundays back, I couldn't discern any drop in quality. It was as if Augusto hadn't left. That is the strength of The Oberoi. It seems impervious to personnel changes. And I believe, a replacement for Augusto, who had joined The Oberoi from Dubai's Towers Rotana in 2004, will soon be seen in action at threesixty°. Then, it promises to be a battle of the sushi masters!

Enough of speculation. Now, let's return to the facts. Town Hall is a 160-seater international fine-dining restaurant with noticeably high ceilings, a sushi station and a terrace dining space with a wood-fired pizza oven. In scale, Town Hall is the most ambitious restaurant project after Set'Z, which is at DLF Emporio, and it is being promoted by Navneet Kalra of Dayal Opticals, who seems to own just about every square inch of Khan, including the ever-popular Khan Chacha, and the space now occupied by Harry's Bar and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Partnering with him is Randeep Bajaj, the 28-year-old owner of Amour restaurants, who has extended his wings from Hauz Khas Village and Malcha Marg Market.

Augusto joins them in his new role as chef-turned-entrepreneur (he describes the restaurant as the place where "East meets West"), bringing with him his wealth of professional experience and deep understanding of the Delhi market. It was he, after all, who rid Delhi's chattering classes of their fear of raw fish by introducing the culture of sushi rolls. The minuscule Japanese market, back then in 2004, was dominated by the classical approaches of Sakura and Tamura, the two haunts of the city's Japanese expat population.
I remember how Master Chef Nariyoshi Nakamura, who was then at Sakura (and is now being wasted at the Sheraton New Delhi, Saket), would sniff at the idea of sushi rolls. Sushi, in his dictionary, meant nigiri, nori seaweed-wrapped maki, temaki and the gunboat, gunkan maki. Augusto and threesixty° changed all that. Will he and his mates be able to breathe life into Khan Market, which looks like a ghost town after 8 p.m.? The city will soon be looking towards Town Hall for the answer.

CHENNAI CHRONICLES: What It Takes For A Restaurant to Top TripAdvisor Rankings

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

HOW DOES a restaurant, which is barely five months old, reach the top of TripAdvisor.com’s Chennai rankings and stay there? When I asked this question to Vikramjit Roy, who was discovered by Vice President (Operations), ITC Hotels, Gautam Anand, at Wasabi in New Delhi and transplanted to ITC Grand Chola in Chennai as leader of the newbie hotel's Pan Asian team, the young chef launched into a long discussion. Then he said something that has stuck in my mind: “We cook with a mother’s love. We have systems and recipes, but our secret ingredient is love.”

Chef Vikramjit Roy explaining to yours truly and Philippe
Charraudeau, Vice President and General Manager, ITC
Grand Chola, how to unveil the seared foie gras from
its orange peel quilt. That was sheer inventiveness. 

It was this past Friday, around 9 p.m., and Pan Asian was abuzz with people. The early-bird Japanese diners had already come and left, yet the restaurant was packed. A prominent family of Gujarati diamond merchants had occupied one long table to celebrate a birthday in the family. And it was hard to find a vacant table at the 176-seater restaurant.

I wondered why and I got my answer in the course of my meal. It was better than what Vikramjit had ever done at Wasabi — and I have maintained that his ‘swansong dinner’ for the Taj, the one he created for the Delhi Gourmet Club and it was attended by Anand, to be in a league of its own. What he laid out for us at on Friday was deserving of a Michelin-star. His team had transformed even the humble fish cake, a common feature of any Thai menu, by hoisting a stopper full of spicy mango puree on top of each. Before eating, you are meant to squeeze the stopper so that the mango puree oozes out into the fish cake, giving it a dramatically different taste profile. Anyone who can do that gets my instant respect. “It’s a complex affair to make a simple dish,” Vikramjit says, and I believe him entirely.

‘Progressive Asian’ is how Vikramjit describes the menu of his restaurant. Each dish is authentic, but it comes with a twist, or, as Vikramjit puts it, with “layers of elements”. The traditional banana blossom salad gets a young and contemporary twist (apart from another texture) when it is made to sit atop wasabi mash. The Sichuan-style crispy prawns arrive on a bed of avocado puree, with a crispy caramelised pineapple on top and ikura (salmon roe) on the side. Eaten together, they tantalise the palate with a bouquet of flavours and taste sensations.

Vikramjit explaining the intricacies of the
tuna (chu-toro, not less!) tataki spiked with soy
salt and served with wasabi mash. Yours truly
is seen with Atul Bhalla of the ITC Grand Chola.

Likewise, the duck carpaccio with a scoop of yuzu (citrus) sorbet on top was a brilliant reinterpretation of duck with orange sauce, an old-world French recipe. The topping not only added another flavour dimension to the carpaccio, but also made the act of eating raw meat more palatable. We see the same inventiveness in the ‘scallop in onion shell’ (the scallop actually comes in a quilt of onion!) and the baked chicken puff pastry, which looks like a miniature wine barrel and has a film of wasabi wrapping the chicken inside: the competing textures and tastes of the puff pastry, wasabi and chicken make it a treat for the palate and a trigger for the mind’s amphetamines.

In my view, it is dim sum chef Raju’s finest piece of work — he has brought back the best from the three months he spent at The Peninsular Beijing to master the art. He has indeed come a long way since he left his home in Pokhara, Nepal. “My entire team of 14 is from Delhi. We have all left our individual comfort zones with the intention to cook from our heart and connect with our guests,” says Vikramjit. Of course, without the support of ITC, which has a tradition of setting food benchmarks in the country, he may not have gone this far.
The IHM-Kolkata graduate (he talks about Sabyasachi ‘Saby’ Gorai as his super senior, so you can imagine how young he is!) was a part of the pre-opening team at threesixtydegrees at The Oberoi New Delhi, has worked under the brilliant Thomas Wee at Empress of China during its heyday at the hotel formerly known as the Parkroyal at Nehru Place, New Delhi, and been exposed to the best of Japan when he went to the Okura in Tokyo for an exposure to the classical hotel’s two Michelin three-star restaurants — Yamazato, which specialises in sushi, and the teppanyaki place named Sazanka.

Pan Asian is an old ITC restaurant brand. Vikramjit has just reinvented it, but he couldn't have done it so effortlessly had he not been at an ITC hotel inspired by the irrepressibly brilliant Gautam Anand. I hope Anand will now make it a national trend-setter like Dakshin. Fortunately, he has a chef we’ll hear a lot about. We have only seen the tip of his creative iceberg.

Ex-Wasabi Chef to Roll Out Sushi-Sashimi at ITC WelcomHotel Dwarka’s Shanghai Club

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

Shanghai Club has opened at the ITC WelcomHotel, Dwarka

AFTER the successful opening of the notches-above-the-rest kebabs and curries restaurant, K&K, at the ITC WelcomHotel Dwarka, it’s the turn of Shanghai Club — and it will be different from the original at the ITC Grand Central at Lower Parel, Mumbai, in one important respect. It will also serve sushi and sashimi prepared by a gifted young chef who, the Indian Restaurant Spy has learnt, has migrated from Wasabi by Morimoto at The Taj Mahal Hotel, Mansingh Road, New Delhi.

That’s the second big ‘transfer’, to use Premiership League football lingo, from Wasabi — the first being the extremely talented Vikramjit Roy, who has catapulted the Pan Asian at the ITC Grand Chola, Chennai, to TripAdvisor’s No. 1 (out of 675 restaurants in Chennai). It has an overall rating of 4.5/5. Now, that’s a headline-making coup for a newbie in a city dominated by established heavy hitters, from the ITC’s very own Dakshin and Raintree to Annalakshmi and Hip Asia.

Coming back to Shanghai Club, I am told that the restaurant will serve good, old-fashioned Chinese food. Are we, then, going to see the return of the glory days of Bali Hi, which under Master Chef Liang used to rock the rooftop of the ITC Maurya? Your hard-working spy will have the inside story soon.

The big anticipated opening at the Dwarka hotel, though, is Ghungroo, which is set to return with a music menu being put together by the man synonymous with the nightclub — Sunny Sarid. With the Dwarka Vivanta by Taj, which has been placed under the charge of Anil Malhotra, who was till recently the general manager of Taj Chandigarh, on the road to completion in the next eight months, the ITC WelcomHotel is seriously turning on the heat. But before you bring out your dancing shoes, check out the Shanghai Club.