Look up and we bet you can’t take your eyes off for more than a few seconds. While you hunt for the image of your zodiac sign, the dome inside Zodiac Grill restaurant at Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, Colaba depicts an indigo blue sky filled with stars. For a minute, you actually feel as if you are sitting under the open sky.

Chef Hemant Oberoi

That’s what interior designer Elizabeth Kerkar meant it to be, when JRD Tata shared his vision with her to create a quiet grill room, which would replace the hotel’s iconic, 14-year-old classical French restaurant, Rendezvous, in 1987.

Whatever took its place had to be larger, grander and different, and this responsibility was entrusted to Chef Hemant Oberoi. “I set out to take a look at what was being whipped up in kitchens across the world. My first stop was, of course, France,” says Oberoi, grand chef of the Taj Group of hotels and corporate chef of the Taj Group Luxury Hotels.