Jai Wadia

For the past 25 years Trattoria has laid out an Italian table for the connoisseurs, making the fare finer and richer by the day.

Chef Solomon has been with Taj President since 1990 and has been responsible for positioning Trattoria as a gourmet destination. The Konkan Café which offers a wide range of sea foods in the west coastal tradition, and the Thai Pavilion are the two other signature restaurants that he has helped to set up. He has nurtured the restaurant and its staff to keep pace with the discerning and changing tastes of its loyal customers, with the result that these restaurants stand apart as brands built up painstakingly by him and his team.

Trattoria was given a trendier makeover in 2000, and it now sports warm wooden interiors, French-style windows with plenty of sunshine flowing in, and an Italian mural covering the entire back wall. It also boasts of a modern open-style kitchen where chefs can be seen in action from the dining area, enhancing the entire experience.

Chef Solomon keeps a watchful eye on the changes in lifestyle and preferences of people as well as the trends in the industry. "I didn't want Trattoria to be known merely as a pasta and pizza place, and so we repositioned it with a focus on the main dishes of Italy," he reveals.

Accordingly, in due course, new and exciting dishes were introduced, including customer favourites like prawn cocktail, lobster thermidor, and the house specialty, brick-baked spring chicken with roasted potatoes, cooked in a red wine reduction sauce! Customers can today enjoy the widest variety of seafood like sea bass, red snapper, salmon and fresh tuna and also taste the best steaks in Mumbai. In their quest to provide the most authentic fare, Trattoria began the practice of importing the finest ingredients from Italy — pastas, cheeses, oil, and even meat.

Flip through the menu card and the exotic tongue-twister Italian names begin to tantalise the taste buds: Antara arrosto all gel di arance or duck with braised spinach and orange gel; malfatti or spinach and ricotta cheese dumplings; and stufato di ostriche or stew casserole of oyster, white wine, tomato and pepper: temptations galore that have grown in patronage over each passing year! And after one has tasted the succulent prawns newburg, or tender chicken coated with a rich pesto sauce, followed by the semi frido, (a new frozen dessert with fresh cream and mango pulp with mascarpone cheese), one is sure to come back for a second helping, and keep coming again and again!

Lunch buffet was introduced a few years ago, followed up by the Sunday Brunch, which soon became a common theme for families. Today, the restaurant is brimming to capacity for lunches on weekends, with a crowd that waits willingly for as long as 45 to 50 minutes for a table to become available.

Conscious that the palate is slave to human hands, Chef Solomon has taken every care to ensure that the hands he works with are the most skilled ones. "We sent a group of chefs to Italy to learn about their food and the culture, and bring back authentic flavours,'' he says. This, he asserts, has made a remarkable difference in Trattoria's service techniques.

Wine, discovered Chef Solomon and his team, was a crucial element of Italian cuisine and this led to a greater focus on fine Italian wines. Wine was earlier being sold only in bottles but now one can even enjoy a single glass of the finest Italian wine. The restaurant has also introduced new range of breads — discernible from the tantalising aroma of freshly baked hot-from-the-oven breads and garlic rolls as one enters the restaurant.

Although far from being a cakewalk, this journey has been an exciting one. But Chef Solomon sees the next 25 years as a greater challenge: "One has to be much more innovative and constantly create something new, so that the flow of customers continues unabated,'' he says. Towards this end, Trattoria plans to offer finer varieties of fish in the next five years, which will include a lot of shellfish, scallops and even John Dory, a fine-dining elite fish: scheduled to appear on the menu in the next few months.

Trattoria has also introduced the concept of having one menu round the clock to cater to the global traveller, who is now enabled to order any item from the menu at any hour of the day. Trattoria also plans to focus more on the beverage experience and new varieties of coffee beans. Improvements in food styling are also on the cards.

Behind the drive for product innovation has been a vision that views change as a challenge, to be met with the utmost enthusiasm of the people who, with an unwavering commitment to delivering quality fare, have created the unique entity called Trattoria. As Solomon says: "One should not wait for the market to change. I would rather be a change initiator as far as food is concerned, and the Taj has always been known to introduce new flavours for the first time in the city. You also need a lot of passion to drive this entire thing. There is a spirit behind every restaurant — the people spirit — represented by the chefs and staff who believe that they can make it."

To celebrate its 25th anniversary, Chef Solomon has put together a special menu that has the old-time favourite dishes of the time when it first opened its doors in 1983. Other special events have also been planned and, as the celebrations continue, we lift our glasses and say: "Viva Trattoria!"

Uploaded on May 16, 2007