Veni, Vidi, VICI

8216;8216;Mumbai is far ahead of every other city in India as far as trying something new goes,8217;8217; says Bill Marchetti, executive chef at the ITC Maurya Sheraton, New Delhi, which hosted Marchessa Anna Tasca Lanza last fortnight. The response to the Sicilian8217;s visit8212;the second in the chain8217;s celebrity chef series8212;was 8216;8216;good8217;8217;, he says, but nowhere close to the manic bookings to sample London restaurateur Alan Bird8217;s shepherd8217;s pie in October last year.

When experimentation does work, most of the credit goes to the brand than the cuisine. 8216;8216;Delhi is a bit conservative,8217;8217; admits Diva8217;s Ritu Dalmia, head of the Capital8217;s best-regarded Italian stand-alone, who went to the Marchessa8217;s school for Italian cooking in Regaleali, Sicily. 8216;8216;At the same time, I have to admit that everything I8217;ve ever introduced on the menu at Diva8212;I change menus every three months and have covered every region8212;has done extremely well.8217;8217;

Of course Dalmia takes care to cater to the popular taste buds: so it8217;s often Piedmontese heavy and saucy in the winter and Sicilian spicy, with a liberal use of tomato and garlic in the summer.

Even in Mumbai, undisputably more experimental than New Delhi, chefs find themselves up against the Indian insistence for heavy dairy8212;read cream and butter8212;in the most delicate of dishes. So when Sebastiano Mastrangelo, chef at Mezzo Mezzo, JW Marriott, Mumbai, cooks the way they do back home in Puglia, the cognoscenti applaud.

8216;8216;I incorporate lots of vegetables in my main courses. That is the way it has been done for generations in the south of Italy,8217;8217; he says. 8216;8216;Our mainstays are sea meats, olive oil and herbs. I8217;m lucky that most of these are available here.8217;8217;

Sample his pan-seared cod fish, served with a generous helping of vegetables, or the pasta farfalle, embellished with fresh tomato sauce, herbs and veggies. The dressings of his salads have a touch of citrus, rather than balsamic, which is more popular up north.

In many ways Italian cuisine in India suffers from the same one-land-one-food perception that India has abroad, resulting in a virtual hegemony of one region in restaurants. While the West8212;notably London8212;is just waking up to regional cuisines other than north Indian, Italy still continues to be red sauce land.

What further complicates matters is that the basics of the cuisine are pan-Italian. 8216;8216;Trying to regionalise things like pasta, pizza and risotto would be wrong,8217;8217; says Emanuele Lattazi, executive chef at Vetro, The Oberoi, Mumbai. 8216;8216;The differentiating factors are simply the style of cooking and the usage of locally available ingredients, such as herbs.8217;8217;

None of which matters much to the largely undiscerning Delhi diner. So, while Dalmia is optimistic the little-bit-of-Liguria, little-bit-of-Campania trick will eventually sophisticate palates, new restaurateurs are hedging their bets. Andrea Pauro8217;s yet-to-open eatery, Baci, in tony Sunder Nagar, for instance, may be dedicated to introducing the aperitif culture to the Capital, but in its fine-dining section it will offer a sampler of everything Italian cuisine is known for.

8216;8216;I8217;m one of those very indecisive people,8217;8217; laughs the half-Italian, half-Indian Pauro. 8216;8216;I8217;ve travelled all over Italy8212;Rome, Sardinia, Venice, the south8212;and Iwant to give my clients the very best of this cuisine.8217;8217;

Well, no arguments there.

With inputs from Jharna Thakkar/Mumbai