"We are getting wonderful response from people who come here looking for sushis and kotsu karees," says HS Kalra of Dinesty, a fine dining restaurant specializing in Chinese and Japanese cuisines. When asked about bringing Japanese taste to India, Kalra explains, "We opened up the restaurant keeping in mind the changing demographics of the city. Our basic motto was to satiate the palate of the well traveled, health conscious Gurgaonites other than NRIs and foreign clients. Our melting pot is constantly evolving."

Same has been the experience with Vineet Taing of Coriander Leaf, which specialises in North West Frontier cuisines. "Pakistani cuisine is not new to India. We Indians have always liked and enjoyed the authentic Pakistani taste but hardly get any chance to have it. This very fact has been the reason behind our opening a frontier cuisine specialty restaurant and we are getting fantastic response not just from Pakistani delegates but also from Gurgaon based corporate personnel and CEOs." says Taing. Getting the actual Pakistani taste, however, needs a lot of hard work and resources. "The kachi ghost biryani and the ghost nihari, which we specialise in, need not just exclusive herbs and spices from Pakistan but also hard slog on the part of our chefs who are particularly trained by their Pakistani counterparts." adds Taing.

Operating for the last ten years Ritu Mehra of Red Hot Cafe has her own reasons to bring Thai taste to the mall city. "When I shifted to Gurgaon there wasn't much option for foodies in the city. I thought of providing a change by starting up with a Thai restaurant. Thai food being spicier and lighter on the stomach emerged as a refreshing alternative to the Chinese cuisine," says Ritu.

Manu Gupta, of Salsa Salsaa, a Mexican specialty restaurant in Metropolitan mall has been an architect by profession but left his 9-5 job to open up a restaurant specializing in Mexican cuisine. "When I thought of opening up the restaurant I was very much convinced that Gurgaonites were looking for some experimentation in terms of food. Mexican being quite an unexplored option till then it soon became my preference," says a proud Manu.

In addition to specialty restaurants, there is a list of multi-cuisine restaurants or world cuisine functioning in the city. To mention a few, there are the Fox at Vatika City, the Odyssey at Sahara Mall, Citrus Café at Lemon Tree Hotel and Palmyra at the Bristol Hotel.

It was not very long ago when one has to go all the way to Rome to be a Roman but these days the whole world seems to be in Gurgaon. It's a small world after all.