The glistening steel surface of the Teppanyaki counter is a stage waiting for the play to begin. Behind it, the larger-than-life calligraphy on the walls is a ready-made set design, against which the lead actors will perform the play.

We are at India Jones, Trident, Nariman Point, Mumbai. It is a bright summer’s day, with pre-monsoon clouds starting to make an appearance on the horizon outside. Inside, chaos reigns. But it is an organised chaos, one that will soon resolve itself into the perfect setting. Once the photographer with his trailing wires hooked to the computer monitor and the umbrellas masking the flash lights have been positioned, we wait for that perfect shot.

“Chef, put that toque on please”, requests Kanan Udeshi, of The Oberoi to the hotel’s executive chef Joy Bhattacharya, a soft-spoken maestro with a determined jaw line, whose culinary and managerial skills are worth experiencing.

I have been staring bemusedly at the two pink-grey slabs of meat in front of me. Thinking about how fattened liver has created such vociferous dissensions, such howls of protest in the culinary world across the globe.

Chef Xianchun Meng is looking equally bewildered by the bustle around him. A new recruit from China, his English is apparently not as brilliant as are his culinary skills. He is the restaurant’s dim sum chef, particularly fond of gulab jamun and about to kick up a mouth-watering foie gras dim sum.

Excited for another reason altogether is the other lead player. Chef Emanuele Lattenzi, executive Italian chef at Vetro (The Oberoi), has succeeded where everyone before him had failed – in educating the Indian palate on the delights of authentic Italian cuisine, the real mama mia!

Emanuele will be cooking a foie gras dish, Continental style, assumably with a good deal of experience in famed UK restaurants like Stefano Cavallini and Ibia as well as at the renowned Hotel Hassler in Rome. Our Roman maestro however looks a tad bit lost, as we discover that wife Lea is in Rome, due with their first child, expected any time soon, while he is here, chopping up the condiments that will accompany his pan-fried foie gras.

Joy’s chuckling like Mother Goose, chef Amit Gugnani hovers in the background, Xianchun reaches out to touch the hot Teppanyaki grill and before I can yell, “Don’t!” I find that the joke is on me. He’s reaching out to break an egg. It sizzles, scrambles and is shoved aside, its readiness giving the signal that our maestros can now use the grill that’s just hot enough. Instead, I turn my attention to the chefs and each one’s individual style of cooking. How often have we eaten in the world’s haute dining spots and how rare it is to witness the actual process that goes behind making that one delectable, finger-licking dish? Emanuele’s hands are rolling the gnocchi. Into each oval ball, he stuffs the creamy foie gras, as gently as one would feed a baby. Joy meanwhile has brought out the roast duck, already cooked in the traditional Peking style. Chef Meng starts kneading the dough and then rolling each portion into a circle for the pancakes, in much the same manner as you would to make crepes. And lo behold! In a matter of minutes, before me appear not one, but two mouth-watering foie gras dishes.