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By Root 1970 0

in the hotels, and you’ll miss out on a highly recommended opportunity to see where the city’s innumerable foodies are feasting these days. To help you make the leap of faith, we’re discussing the best five-star hotel restaurants in a separate box, any of whom are worth dining at, but we hope you’ll find your way to at least one of the stand-alone choices we’ve reviewed below. For many more options (hundreds, in fact), you’d do worse than to consult the annual Times Food Guide, originally written by Times of India food critic Sabina Sehgal Saikia (who tragically lost her life in the Mumbai terrorist attack in 2008) but now in a transition phase, it’s available at booksellers and magazine vendors (Rs 100).

Five-Star Culinary Flagships Where You Can’t Go Wrong

The city’s five-star hotels offer consistent, refined service, and unlike in most capitals, the (elite) locals dine at them. All listings (barring South Delhi’s Hyatt and Crowne Plaza in Gurgaon) are in Central Delhi. Expect to pay a premium.

Bukhara ( 011/2611-2233), the Indian restaurant at the ITC Maurya Sheraton , has a busy display kitchen, where meat and vegetables hang from swordlike kebab spears and chefs slave to produce delicacies from a menu that hasn’t changed in 30 years and continues to earn accolades as one of the world’s finest Asian restaurants. Staff is for instance immensely proud that Bill Clinton apparently chose to stay at the hotel “because of our restaurant,” and there’s even a dish named in his honor. Start by ordering an assorted kebab platter and follow that up with any of the classic lamb (raan) dishes, best savored with thin butter naans. Finish off with a traditional rice-based phirni pudding or one of their amazing kulfis (ice cream). Next door to the Sheraton is the glitzy Taj Palace Hotel , where the city’s elite line up (sometimes literally) to get a table at Masala Art ( 011/2611-0202), which makes a very conscious (usually successful) attempt to dazzle. The chefs turn cooking into performance art, putting on engaging food demonstrations at mealtimes; spectators eat whatever delicacies are produced. Of the daily a la carte specials, look for achari jhinga (prawns flavored with raw mango), and galouti kebabs prepared with finely minced lamb and 126 different herbs. Reinventing Indian cuisine is Varq, the new restaurant at Taj Mahal . Absolutely sumptuous in design and cuisine, it soars higher than any of legendary Chef Hemant Oberoi’s creations so far; a mix of contemporary meets classic, innovatively using Indian recipes with exotic ingredients—prawns and asparagus curry from Calicut, meat curry cooked in a martabaan (clay pot), sea bass, and diver’s scallops—all seem to blend in effortlessly. Taj Palace also does old-school dining pretty well, so if you prefer a stiff, formal (and potentially very romantic) evening in the company of exquisite French cuisine, dress smart for Orient Express ( 011/2611-0202), where you dine in a posh replica of a Pullman train carriage. Enjoy preboarding drinks on the “platform,” as the bar area is called; your four-course journey is inspired by the countries through which the Orient Express passes on its Paris-to-Istanbul run, and is likely to include items such as Camembert soufflé with paprika sauce, pan-seared reef cod with raw papaya salad, and the extremely popular oven-roasted New Zealand rack of lamb, encrusted with herbs and almonds and served with lamb jus.

If you need a good excuse to swan through the lobby of The Imperial , reserve a table at The Spice Route ( 011/2334-1234), voted one of the top-10 restaurants in the world by Condé Nast Traveler. The decor alone is worth a visit—every nook and cranny is hand-painted by temple artists flown in from Kerala. The food takes you on a complex culinary journey, from the Malabar Coast to Sri Lanka, Malaysia to Indonesia, Thailand to Vietnam. Certainly, it has the best ever tom kha kai (classic Thai soup) and mouthwatering chemeen thoren (Kerala-style prawns).

There’s a veritable war going on among supporters of Delhi’s top Chinese restaurants.