Rome wasn’t built in a day

A frizzy haired man with an Om scarf and a tilak eats pizza at a corner table at Serafina, the fi ne-dining Italian restaurant recently relaunched in Mumbai.
You could be forgiven for thinking he’s a tourist. But he is the owner of the restaurant — Fabio Granato.

Granato is based in New York, Serafi na’s headquarters. Last week, he was on a short trip to Mumbai to oversee the functioning of the restaurant. In addition, he packed in a morning trip to Siddhivinayak and sampled a few local dishes, names of which he can’t remember.

Other than Italian, Granato enjoys Japanese and Indian food. “I love sushi and my daughter and I end up having Indian food at least once in two weeks,” he says.

Granato says that what he loves the most about his role in Serafi na is that he can eat and criticise to his heart’s content. “I consider my partner Vittorio (Serafi na cofounder Vittorio Assaf) to be like the chef of the Serafi na family and I’m the critic. I drive him crazy with my comments. Once, I was in Japan for the launch of our restaurant and the chef there had to serve me one of his innovations, strawberry risotto, 25 times before I said it was good to go on the menu.

Serafina’s New York launch year, 1995, wasn’t without incident either. “The mayor dropped by to have our pizza and the pizza chefs had a fi ght a few hours before he arrived. I was so nervous,” says Granato, doing a tensed face palm. He had to tell the mayor they couldn’t serve him pizza because of a “technical glitch” and that they would deliver it to him for lunch the next day. “I’m laughing at that incident now but it was horrible when it happened,” Granato says. Thankfully, he hasn’t been in such a spot again.



Kim Kardashian visits Serafina with friends but she “only orders salads to watch her weight”; other celebrity regulars are Leonardo DiCaprio and Justin Bieber. (Getty Images)