Restaurateur AD Singh's critics keep ranting about the fact that he's more a showman than a purveyor of fine food and they contrast him with his former business partner, Rahul Akerkar, who's famous as the man behind the success of Mumbai's Indigo.

I beg to differ. What AD, which is what Aditya Singh is known among his friends, has done is that he has brought fun back to fine dining and proved to puritans that good food and a pleasant ambience are not mutually exclusive. A restaurant experience is a combination of the two, so an good-looking restaurant, like Delhi's Olive, which is thriving in the 12th-century Qutab Minar's shadow, does not necessarily have to serve bad food.

The good thing about AD is that he's constantly raising the bar for himself, which is why he has hired the low-profile yet extremely talented Chef Sabyasachi, or Saby, for Delhi and the expat Italian from Romagna, Massimilliano Orlati, or Max, for his new restaurant in Bangalore.

Early in the week, some of us were able to check out Orlati's dishes, with the Italian Ambassador, Antonio Armellini, seated at the head of the long table, with his Chilean counterpart, Jorge Heine, to his right. Armellini was complaining about how five-star hotels were overcharging for wine, though they'd benefited substantially from the duty exemption on imported alcoholic beverages. "I ordered a wine that cost Rs 2,500 and when I saw the bottle, I told myself that this wine costs 3 Euros back home," the ambassador said. I entirely appreciated his point of view.

The long meal - Amarelli's outgoing deputy, Giorgio Starace, who was in China before his four-year tenure in Delhi, called it a Chinese banquet - was an education in the cuisine of the more prosperous northern regions of Italy.

The dishes, showing a pronounced classical French influence, were buttery and creamier - they weren't the simple Italian dishes that let the ingredients speak for themselves, but they were delicious nonetheless. And the prawns in a creamy orange sauce just flew off the table. They went very well with the Roero Arneis, which flowed freely and was just right for the terrible weather outside Olive's air-conditioned glass house. Most of the guests, though, chose to stick with the Chianti -- it's amazing to see how Delhi's movers and shakers just love their reds, even at the peak of the city's famously inhospitable summer.

The evening was also a reminder of how good company can just enhance a dinner experience. The long table comprised cigar baron Chetan Seth, fresh from his visit to Warsaw as part of a delegation led by India's Commerce Minister Kamal Nath; heritage hotelier Aman Nath, who talked about his new acquisition in Tranquebar, the old Danish colony; fashion designer Ashish Soni, who was complaining about how his London holiday was getting shorter by the day because of work commitments; and novelist Namita Gokhale, who provided interesting insights into the other hat she wears, that of a Sony consultant working on an important telemedicine project.

The much-maligned high society dos -- the ones we derisively call Page 3 Parties -- can be really rewarding, especially when the conversation swims along with good food and wine, and with few photographers around to distract the participants.