A special dinner calls for a special venue. When our good friend from Paris, Maureen Kerleau, informed us that she wished to present her wines at a Delhi Wine Club dinner, we selected Ploof, the sea-food specialty restaurant in Central Delhi , primarily because it had won the Best Décor Award from HT City Guide to Eating Out within the first year of its operations.

Most regulars, and they include several celebrities like Prannoy and Radhika Roy, CPM firebrand Brinda Karat (Prannoy's sister-in-law) and Jyotiraditya Scindia, visit the place because of the consistent quality of its food and ambience. I wasn't surprised, therefore, that all the people who had confirmed did show up for the evening.

No cancellations meant there was some overload on the facilities, but the restaurant did a pretty decent job of handling the overflowing house. The starters were great, especially the corn spring rolls wrapped around asparagus rolls, and they just didn't stop coming. The salmon salad was a good testimonial to how wine and food should be matched. The Lobster Bisque was so good that I don't mind admitting being guilty to ordering another serving, quietly using my influence as the DWC President.

Arun Batra, our internal critic, however, found his soup too cold for comfort. He also found the supply of essentials like cutlery and glasses a little too short, a sentiment, I find, is shared by Sourish Bhattacharyya. "To be taken seriously as a wine destination," Bhattacharyya said, "the restaurant must invest in buying enough of the right glasses. They don't even cost that much." Ranjit Gupta, another DWC member, shared this line of thinking. Bhattacharyya, though, said Manav Sharma, an ex-Taj hand who is the chef-manager of the restaurant, more than made up for these deficiencies by taking great care of the daughter-in-law of a member, Clare Datta (who's a gifted chef and caterer herself). Pallavi, Clare's daughter-in-law, wanted all her dishes to be without mushrooms. Sharma produced the alternatives in a jiffy and Pallavi, who's headed for Australia with her husband Nikhil, couldn't stop praising the chef.

I must take the blame for the inadequate number of wine glasses. I had felt that due to the limited space and the larger-than-normal attendance of so many people, we could use the same glass for two whites and another for the two reds. I did not take into account the possibility of the waiters pouring the second wine in still-unfinished glasses. Well, it strengthens our case for restaurants with wine lists investing in the training of their serving staff.

The standard of the food was good to very good. But Arun wondered what was Peking Duck doing in a seafood restaurant; Bhattacharyya was unhappy about the quality of the pepper-crusted Japanese bluefin tuna - of course, tuna, unless it's served rare, tastes like cat food, which is what it used to be till the Japanese elevated it with sushi.

I had mentioned earlier to the members that the restaurant wanted to convey the message that it was not only a seafood restaurant, but Arun also commented that the duck was too stringy. Earlier, Amarjit (AJ) Singh had refused to come for this dinner specifically because he said he had had a sad experience with the food and service - a subject on which he had sent a stinging email.

Our overall experience was positive. Vijaya Laxmi, who celebrated her husband Mike Hughes's birthday in his absence (he was in Singapore on business) was all praise for her vegetarian meal, especially the mushroom soup, which was unanimously declared by all the vegetarians as superb.

Maureen Kerleau, who represents many small wine producers in France , had met many members at IFE-India 2005. As our guest, she talked at length about her portfolio, which she's planning to bring to India . Her mission, in fact, is to introduce Indians to the wines produced by family vineyards - 80% of wineries in France are owned by small families.

One of them, Champagne Royer makes both a blanc de blanc and a regular Pinot Noir-Chardonnay Brut combo. They also produce the popular Rose using Pinot. From Champagne , Kerleau moved to Chablis, where Kerleau represents Christian Adine of Domain de la Conciergerie. In contrast with the unoaked, steely, bone dry Chablis, a White Burgundy, like the one from Domain d'Ardhuy based in Ladoix and Savigny les Beaune, two small villages in the Corton area, is known for its elegance, minerality and balanced oak flavours.

Guilbaud Freres in the Loire Valley (the appellation is Chinon) makes a very interesting Cabernet Franc. This light-to-medium-bodied red must be served chilled at 12-14 degrees C and can also be taken with meaty fish like tuna and perhaps even prawns, if you like to drink red wine with fish. But a St Emilion like Vieux Chateau Cros Lamarzelle from the small Bordeaux family of Cailley Pere et Fils needs a full-bodied yet elegant dish like the Peking Duck or even a robust lamb preparation.

Manav had put his heart and soul into the dinner. His serving staff might not be the best in town, but this is an industry-wide challenge - qualified waiters are very hard to come by in a market where there's a great demand for them. Invariably, our members find the service not up to the mark in stand-alone restaurants. They take the wine quality and the food-wine matches as a given and look for an excellent overall experience. I only hope Ploof will be able to handle 30-plus groups of five-star clients used to eating five-star meals with starred wines the next time we have a dinner there.