Will the magique work?

Food consultant Marut Sikka has finally opened his own restaurant. Will he be able to sustain it?

For those who know Marut Sikka, the mystery of the disappearance of his smile is no great secret: the food impresario who has advised food corporates on their flavours and set menus for restaurants for a decade, has finally opened his own restaurant (the ill-advised Dhaba can best be ignored), and everything from its food to its design and location has generated the heat and gossip one would expect from a bestseller.

The food is brilliant right now, but will he be able to sustain it? The design is the way you or I might look at our homes, an eclectic mix of raw wood, homely furniture groupings (a jhoola too!), stark walls and lots and lots of candles ("do they have a special person just to light and snuff out the candles?" asks a friend), but will it match up to Olive when it opens?

Of course, it's great to escape to the Garden of Five Senses at Saidulajab for an occasional meal, but does it have the pull of an impulse decision to eat out?

To tackle the last first then, it would be silly to think of Magique (I know, I know, it sounds like a steel bartan bhandar, but everything can't be perfect) as an impulse restaurant "" at least until the casual, al fresco cafe dining is streamlined some time soon, so you can bask in the winter sun and have a casual coffee and croissant kind of lunch.

Because Magique is essentially a reserve-ahead kind of restaurant, especially if you're finicky about the place you want to sit in.

The indoors is definitely comfy, but it is the outdoors that, despite being in the more public domain, is the more intimate. And with weekends going full, it might not do to just arrive and hope for a table "" that's still something you can expect only on weekdays.

If there's a good deal of fuss being made about just another restaurant (watch your mouth, mate), it's because Delhi, bereft of a buzz dining option after Olive was shut down as part of the city's sealing operations (it's due to open at a mall in Saket), has not had a destination diner (Sevilla's good, but hardly trendy) for as long.

Where can you go to where it's the ambience rather than just the food, or the service, or the decor, that is enticing enough to keep you hooked and coming back?

Okay, Magique has that quality by the bucketsful. The water channels and lush vegetation thankfully soften the slightly toadstool-y look of the four shops in the Garden Village that have been converted over a year-and-a-half into the restaurant. Eighteen months? It's a little like a reviewer writing his first book "" when you know the critics are waiting to tear into your work, you can be excused for being nervous.

There was another reason Sikka probably applied the litmus test of time before (reluctantly) handing the restaurant over to the ultimate trial: the diner.

As a Jiggs Kalra protege, then a partner, and finally the entrepreneur who struck out on his own, there are two facts you need to know about him "" that though he does extensive research on food in laboratories and kitchens, he is not himself a chef (though he can cook a mean meal, unlike his chief competitor, A D Singh of Olive), and that his forte is Indian food, which though it's good if you want to eat out at Pandara Road, is hardly the kind of thing to create a buzz among the bold and the beautiful.

Haleem, his signature dish, is understandably great at a late night winter party (in very small doses), but you could hardly live off it night after night.

So Sikka did what any self-respecting chef, food lover or even food impresario (just love that word) would do: he experimented, he played with food, textures, combinations; he studied the way young Indians were eating out (a mix of flavours, Indian, Asian, exotic but modern), and he definitely created a look (though thanks for that is due solely to his designer wife, Anasuya).

It's the reason his smile is missing "" Sikka spends a lot of time personally supervising the kitchen. He's at the restaurant every night, checking out the bar, seeing to orders. In time, the stress levels might again rise once the party terrace kicks off (the season has just started) and the lunch business takes over.

Meanwhile, there's his catering business to take care of, the corporate end of food to look to too. Any number of reasons diners and party animals will be smiling "" instead of Sikka.