A meal can lead to partnership. Chef-restaurauteur Boo Kim, who heads Bandra eatery Bastian, experienced this first hand when members of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) came by for a meal. Given that the Korean chef grew up in Chicago after moving there from Seoul when he was four, the conversation veered towards American food. "The next day, I got a call from the team. They wanted me to give guests a 'taste of America' at one of their events, and, here I am," he says.

We are at Linking Road's Foodhall Cookery Studio and the experimental kitchen is suffused with the aroma of roast turkey. Kim has 60 minutes to keep the other ingredients ready until he is joined by his partner-in-gluttony, US Consul General David Ranz, who is three months old in office. A New Yorker, Ranz had recently told this paper that in the first month in Mumbai, he visited 25 restaurants.