Pizza Veg Exotica at Fortune Select Loudon; (below) chef Nisar Ahmed. Pictures by Rashbehari Das

How about pizza topped with Thai red curry or pasta cooked with jeera and haldi? In an adventurous twist to quintessentially Italian fare, Fiesta Incognito, Fortune Select Loudon’s first F&B promotion since the business hotel opened doors in December, has picked fusion food as its flavour.

“We wanted to bring unfamiliar tastes to familiar food. Pizza and pasta are already popular in the market so capitalising on this, we have experimented with the ingredients that go into the dishes,” explains head chef Nisar Ahmed of the Loudon Street hotel.

On till August 31 at Zodiac the coffee shop, sample desi flavours in Chicken Keema and Egg Pizza prepared in burnt garlic makhani gravy, or go American with Caramalised Onion and Olive Pizza.

The pick of the lot is Thai Chicken Pizza, chicken simmered in red curry flavoured with a tinge of lemon grass.

Among the pastas, Pine Chicken Fusilli Cilantro is a must for those who love the tangy taste of the cilantro pesto in the fusilli, with an unusual combination of pinenuts strewn in. The Pasta Indiana also deserves a mention for being able to Indianise the dish to perfection — the twisted corkscrew-shaped pasta tinged with the familiar shade of turmeric and a splutter of saboot jeera, so often seen in our Indian dals. A meal for two would cost Rs 800 (taxes extra).

“Food is the USP of our hotel,” adds general manager Amitava Guha Thakurta, who revealed that their next food venture is a rooftop seafood restaurant near the poolside. “With the new restaurant, our target is to achieve 50:50 profit from rooms and F&B.”

The hotel, currently running at “80 per cent occupancy with 95 per cent of the occupants being corporate clients”, is also keen to cater only to the “high capacity spender with a profile” and is firm in its decision not to convert its lounge-bar Nostradamus into just another high street nightclub.

“When we’re seven months old and we see our clients coming back, we know we’re on the right track,” signs off the GM.