Mumbai’s best kept secret

Some restaurants satiate more than just our appetite

Remember the new French grille at an upmarket Mumbai (at that time Bombay) five-star hotel that opened with an imaginative punch line? There were no prices on the menu and, at the end of the “gourmet experience”, guests were invited to pay “whatever they felt was appropriate”. It’s another story that the scheme did not last too long. Along with the generous diners there were also quite a few who turned their noses up — indicating lack of satisfaction — and walked out with precious little on the waiter’s silver salver.

Now menus without prices are not an entirely new phenomenon. Many fine

dining restaurants in the continent have these, but only for the guests. The host for the evening gets a special one with all the eye-popping and mood-depressing figures. “Guests often feel embarrassed ordering expensive dishes” is their refrain, and perhaps rightly so.

I am told there is an obscure German rule that if the waiter can’t present your bill within 5 minutes of your asking for it, the meal is on the house! A friend tried this once in a posh specialty restaurant in Delhi — his big group walked out after waiting for

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almost 15 minutes and 2 reminders — but the waiter caught up with him in the lobby and after much whining and cajoling, he, of course, paid up.

I remember the time another friend’s wife, a strict vegetarian, embarrassed her hosts and the snooty hotel’s staff somewhere in France because they could not offer her any pure veg food and any non-alcoholic drink. But only till next morning. By breakfast time not only had they arranged for the widest variety of fruit juices and soft drinks, they had also had an hour-long chat with the chef at the Indian embassy in Paris and produced medhu vada and poori bhaji!

The incident that takes the cake, however, happened at the good old Taj in Mumbai. Our friend took the menu card from the captain and realised to his horror that he had forgotten to carry his specs. The captain quietly signalled to one of the bearers and soon this guy appeared with a beautiful wooden box with lovely half-moon reading glasses of practically each power level. There were almost 20 elegant frames with lenses from 0.25 to 8 or 10 reading power, beautifully arranged in velvet covered compartments with the power mentioned on a side in bold ivory numbers.