Pleasing a hotelier is never easy. Alan D’Mello goes behind the scenes with the kitchen team at Grand Hyatt Mumbai as they host over 500 very exacting hoteliers for HICSA 2009.
Executive chef Jean-Christophe Fieschi had planned his HICSA menu to the detail. This was his first time, though he had notes to guide him from the previous two years Grand Hyatt Mumbai hosted the benchmark event Hotel Investment Conference South Asia (HICSA) by HVS. Hyatt was one of the patron sponsors this year, so a lot was on the line.
It was easily the busiest the hotel has been this year. His team has been hard at it for two weeks leading into HICSA 2009.
The hyper glamorous Lakme India Fashion Week finished with an all-out party at 03:00 hrs the morning HICSA started. For the banquet team, it was then a mad rush to transform the ramp set-up with false floor to full stage in a classroom setting.
HICSA was opening in nine hours. Fieschi then had the high-profile Australian consulate dinner after this, yet he held his composure when we joined him for his 11:00 hrs team briefing on the second day at HICSA.
The team knew its job. Though visibly exhausted from the pounding received from the fashionistas, the elite group of young chefs went through the motions in quick step. Day one had its moments which the kitchen team kept in control and out of sight. As the marquee event for the day, the evening’s cocktail event went by remarkably well. So things were in gear for day two and the mood was up.
Details were run through in a practiced exercise after a brief introduction with Alessandro Pavoni, the visiting executive chef from the Park Hyatt, Sydney. HICSA was running 45 minutes behind schedule which accounted for a fair bit of re-scheduling. As this was being discussed, backstage, set-up was already in full swing for the big lunch Hyatt was hosting. The meeting took all of
25 minutes.
Along with Rajib Mazumdar, chef-de-cuisine banquet kitchen, pastry chef Eng Lee Pyng were the key people on the frontline. Mazumdar’s kitchen was enviously large space, not surprising given that Grand Hyatt has one of the largest meeting facilities in Mumbai.
The lunch was the last major HICSA meal at the hotel and things were already humming despite the schedule being pushed back from 13:30 to 14:15 hrs. HVS made up some lost time along the way though.
Mazumdar’s pre-event schedule was a juggle between his kitchen and the venues, the M restaurant below lobby level and Ballroom three. His kitchen team had the food sorted out by the time the briefing was over. After moving things to final holding, Mazumdar then turned his attention to the buffet, not before starting work on the tea time deliverables.
Lunch was a showcase event with delegates more interested in networking than eating. Nonetheless, since the host was the Hyatt brand, presentation was not underscored. But then it never is.
Morning’s mis-en-place came to the fore as Hyatt prepared to put on a final show with six counters. The menu was set to impress with classical Indian fare and live continental and Asian counters. It looked liked all hands were on deck as the two venues were buzzing with prep activity. Even general manager Ilan Weil and F&B director Duncan Gray pitched in (Vijayan Gangadharan is the new F&B director).
Meanwhile, pastry chef Pyng was putting the last touches to the desserts. With a reputation for perfection, Pyng was battling the clock and her health to put all the little dessert details together.
In fact, Pyng skipped the morning briefing and Fieschi was unsure if his star chef had made it to work that day. We were forewarned to keep our distance because while Pyng is camera shy, she does not like being disturbed at work, especially with the heat on.
Lunch time came and went in a breeze, once again with no major incident. Hyatt had pulled it off. Behind the scenes, Fieschi and team were well into planning for a consulate dinner and food festival the next day.
