Nouvelle Italian

For the next week or so, La Piazza at Hyatt Regency Delhi will sport garullous chef Giuseppe Genco in its Italian kitchen to create nouvelle delights. He has been most influenced by teppenyaki cooking. "Replace the wasabi and soya with vinegar and olive oil, and the taste is by no means alien to the Italian tongue."

Genco feels a chef's true genius lies in original creations. His own innovations include exotic salads such as marinated tuna with mint, chicken terrine with terragon served with pickles, and rolled and grilled eggplant with caprino and ricotta cheese. Main courses include pork loin medallions with mushroom and barolo sauce, baked king prawn with garlic and anchovy sauce and seafood pizza.

He is quick to reassert the supremacy of Italian cooking over other Mediterranean styles. "If Greece has five varieties of cheese, Italy boasts more than 300," he beams.

Though some of his experiments, like seafood in cream, would be considered blasphemous by puritan colleagues in Italy, Genco says: "My process of cooking is traditional." Wood fire ovens, spit fire barbeques, handmade pasta are absolute essentials in his kitchen. Bon appetit.