The restaurant, which is the only one in the city to have a revolving floor, offers a magnificent view of the city as one eats its delectable Oriental cuisine. 92 minutes is all it takes for you to get a tour of the entire city. The menu offers Japanese, Thai, Chinese and Korean fare. Within Chinese cuisine, it covers the provinces of Szechwan, Hunan, Shanghai, Canton and Beijing.

Subhasish Ganguli, executive assistant manager, tells us the restaurant was earlier called Tops and served Indian and continental fare. It was redone about two years ago, and Oriental cuisine introduced. The restaurant was the first to introduce Korean food in Mumbai. "Thai food is an alternative to Chinese food," he says. "And there is a sizeable Korean community in Mumbai, which savours our fare." First came crunchy pickled cabbage and carrots with a tangy flavour, and with them, flat fried noodles with sweet and sour sauce and Szechwan sauce (a spicy sauce made with red chilli paste, celery, ginger and garlic). An unusual combination, which suited my palate. The mocktail was a sweet Oriental Fantasy.

Next, I tried So Bulgoki (`So' meaning beef, `Bulgoki' meaning barbecue in Korean), a Korean dish that is cooked in front of the guest. It is usually marinated beef, but there are innovations with prawns, chicken, cuttlefish and squid. We had a Vegetable Bulgoki. Pretty nice.

The Barbecued Spare Ribs (Rs 225) and the Pork Cooked in Honey Glazed Sauce were from the Beijing region. Beijing or northern food is a hybrid cuisine. Vegetables are often given especially interesting treatments.

The Crisp Lamb Chilli (225) was lamb fried crisp, tossed with spices from the Szechwan and Hunan provinces. Szechwan situated in the West, is the heartland of China. The cuisine is distinctive, spicy and hot. The Yunan province, south-east of Szechwan, has a range of cuisine, similar to Szechwan. You can mix and match the provinces culinarily to get extremely satisfying results. The Korean Haemool Jeongol, hot soup with assorted fish and clams, is very popular at the restaurant, says food and beverage executive Ganesh Sharma. But most people have to develop a taste for Korean food.

The restaurant also serves the ever popular dimsums, vegetable, prawn and chicken. Dimsums can be eaten with Kothe sauce, which is made of coriander, sugar, vinegar and rice wine, but the original dimsum sauce is black bean sauce, made of fermented black beans. The desserts ranged from Almond Tofu (Rs 110), which is mildly sweet, to the divine honey flat noodles with ice cream (Rs 115) and the delectable batter fried apple/ banana with honey (135).

Sulekha Nair