Plating Perfection

Star Chef Vineet Bhatia, kicks out snobbery from fine dining, introduces sharing plates at The Oberoi Mumbais Ziya, and spreads the joy of snacky food at his three upcoming restaurants.

- Riddhi Doshi

At the age of 9, while in Mumbai, Chef Vineet Bhatia would often suffer asthma attacks. Forty-one years later, for his 50th birthday, the first-time trekker set up a pop-up restaurant on the high altitudes of Mount Everest Base Camp, in May, and donated the money to a charity supporting girls’ education. “It wasn’t easy,” says Bhatia in an interview with BlackBook. “Despite the rigorous training, I was worried about an asthma relapse, and the unknown, but I was determined to do something different for my 50th.”

An appetite for risk

It is no surprise then that the adventure-seeking, Michelin star chef, who had given it all up in India to open a restaurant in London, with just seven pounds in his pocket back in 1993, took the risk of revamping 90 per cent of the tried-and-tested menu at The Oberoi Mumbai’s eight-anda-half-year-old, popular restaurant Ziya. The new list focuses on sharing plates and breaks away from the typical, rigid fine-dine format — starters followed by mains and then desserts. “We wanted to make it more relaxed, take out the formality and stiffness from the fine dining experience, but not compromise the luxury experience,” says Bhatia. His wife Rashima elaborates, “Ziya is no longer young, and we didn’t want to become, say an institution like Bukhara (The restaurant at Luxury Collection ITC Maurya Hotel in New Delhi), which is known for just one thing (its dal). You then become like a movie star, typecast for particular kind of roles.”

When The Oberoi Mumbai got Bhatia on board to open Ziya, in 2010, Indian cuisine lacked a progressive approach, claims Rashima. Bhatia gave Indian food a touch of luxury and served maa ki dal (lentil dal cooked by mom) as a sauce and with lamb chops, and