The finer points of dining

LUNCH WITH BS/ Ritu Dalmia

Five years ago, her path-breaking Diva set the restaurant revolution rolling. But celebrity restaurateur Ritu Dalmia still can't see the boom.

I don't like visiting restaurants, I'd rather have kadi chawal at home", declares Ritu Dalmia. Considering this is the high priestess of fine dining in Delhi talking, you can't help but look a little aghast.

But there's no cause to worry. The celebrated chef-cum-restaurateur is simply making a point. "Restaurants are too much work", she explains.

At her path-breaking Diva, the Italian restaurant that turned five this year, and shows no signs of tiring, incredulously bucking the whole trend of eateries opening and closing with equal alacrity, Dalmia can barely sit still.

When she's not hollering orders across the kitchen, she's stirring up a new sauce, or even waitressing on a busy day. It's never a good idea to arrange a tête-à-tête with her at Diva, food writers have long since discovered.

As it turns out, "restaurants are too much work" for Dalmia even when they don't belong to her: There are menus to study, ambiences to compare, ideas to borrow and crockery to check out "" surreptitiously.

"When no one is looking", Dalmia will try to peep under her plate and figure out its source.

I am expecting all this to happen and more at the Oberoi's Traventino, our venue for this lunch. It doesn't. Instead, Dalmia is unusually relaxed.

"I am so happy to be here", she gushes, eyes twinkling. This is no polite conversation, the first lines of a TV chat show. My guest means it in all earnestness.

She's done the checking out, she informs me, on her last visit to Traventino "" three months ago, the last time she ate out ""- and can, therefore, "enjoy" today. For me, the venue is apt for another reason.

Traventino is, unarguably, the smartest new Italian restaurant to have come up in the city.

With its chef and the maitre d' flown in from Rome's Hotel Hassler and a wine collection whose range "" and investment "" is guaranteed to leave you just a little breathless, the restaurant meets all your notions of exaggerated finesse.

What it also does is mark the high point of the whole hospitality revolution. The same that Dalmia and her ilk headed five years ago, serving up gourmet fare when none existed "" save butter chicken.

So who better to put things in perspective than my guest?

But first the orders. Dalmia may not be under any pressure to check out competition, but competition is certainly looking pressured. The maitre d', who has been focusing his Italian charms elsewhere now swoops down on our table, falls over himself greeting her in rapid Italian.

Him apart, we're also to be graced with both a public relations manager and the chef in due course. But that later... Lunch is set menus: for two or more courses.

We both choose sensibly for a working day and order pasta and dessert. "Which pasta?" I ask. "You order first", Dalmia counters. "That way, I'll order differently and taste your food too!" We agree to the trade off; I choose ravioli, she gnocchi, her's, as is to be expected, turns out slightly better.

"The edges of your pasta are a little under-cooked", she points out, picking up some bread from the basket and, well, startling me. Dalmia has chosen to keep the bread ""- not on a plate, but on the table! The spotless white cloth now in the danger of being overrun by crumbs.

I am intrigued.

Is this etiquette, then? Sure. "The crumbs would fall on the table in any case so you don't put bread on a plate", she explains, and adds, "Italian cuisine is informal in any case".

Even in such pricey environs. There's always something to learn from eating out with a restaurateur.

Delhi has been learning too, evolving. But Dalmia refuses to be euphoric about the much-touted food revolution "" people experimenting with new cuisines, putting their money where their mouths are, even if she is relieved about Delhi's chicken fixation waning.

In her early days at Diva, she'd fight with customers asking to be served "chicken in pasta". Today, hardly any such demands come and the largest selling item on Diva's menu is smoked swordfish.

There are other things that make her less happy. For one, the market hasn't expanded in the way it was expected to: "It is not more people experimenting more, it is the same people experimenting more", Dalmia asserts.

Besides, swordfish or no, one has to cater to popular palates in the end. The Traventino menu, for instance, she points out, has been suitably tweaked, "it is more in line now with what will sell".

When my guest had dined here earlier, it apparently wasn't so successfully. The risotto, she feels, was overcooked but more than that when she'd ordered the celebrated Lardo di Colonnata, lard "" don't be put off by that word "" what arrived was something quite else.

"The chef said the dish wasn't doing well so he altered it. This happens to all expats who come to India; it takes them time getting used to it all", she says forgivingly.

I chew thoughtfully, and slowly "" Dalmia, after all, is hardly eating. She's far busier expounding on her pet theme: how tough it is to be a restaurateur.

Not just in Delhi but worldwide. "All over the world the success rate of restaurants is just 3 per cent, so when we say that restaurants open and close very fast in Delhi, it is the same with New York and London".

Being in the business is a lot of hard work with not enough money. "It's not that I say these things because I am afraid of competition... that other people will open restaurants", she defends herself, "but people get into the business because they want to be on Page Three.

It isn't all that glamorous. There have been times when me, my manager and partner have been polishing glasses all night because all our staff had quit".

The money, she claims, is hardly anything in comparison, Diva's turnover, she says is just Rs 20-24 lakh a month. "Our food costs are 48 per cent. For a restaurant to be successful, it should be 30 per cent."

So who subsidises the good life she seems to be living? "I am a single person, take just two holidays a year", she shrugs.

Dessert has arrived. My gelato misto, ice cream, is awesome. Dalmia likes her pannacotta, which isn't quite pannacotta"" "mango mousse", she pronounces and has some quick words with the apologetic-looking chef to confirm.

We move on to sweeter subjects. Diva is five, so where now? "It is still my baby", Dalmia says, but her dream really is to work on a restaurant like Vama (the chic Indian eatery in London she started before selling off her stake and coming home).

She feels too burnt out to start working on the project. For the time being, she's content with tikkas and paranthas she's serving up at a food court in Gurgaon.

"It's volumes "" it will start paying off soon and I don't really get involved in its day-to-day running." Just for money. Except on days when you find her behind the tava making butter paranthas. But that's another story.