For years, ITC had wanted a hotel for the city in which it is headquartered, but the dream had never quite taken off. However, as it enters the new year, the group was able to give shape to its dream in the form of the ITC Sonar Bangla, inaugurated on the last day of 2002 complete with eight restaurants and dining outlets, besides banquets and a giant spa. With this, the company aims to shift the goalposts in Kolkata’s hospitality industry in its favour.

Offering 21 "ITC One" suites for CEOs, 84 Sheraton rooms and 126 more rooms for lesser mortals, the hotel overlooks more than eight acres of landscaped gardens to the west, the bypass highway to the south and west and protected wetlands to the north.

"It’s a bagaanbari or a businessman’s resort," says ITC Hotels managing director, S S H Rehman. "Bagaanbari" or garden house was what Bengal’s zamindars built on a city’s outskirts for "cultural and recreational" purposes, says a local bilingual dictionary.

For the first activity, a full-scale art gallery has been designed by art pundit, Ina Puri. The gardens fill in for the second part- a chip-and-putt golf course, tennis courts, a swimming pool and jogging facilities have been thrown in.

"We want to tempt guests coming for business meetings or conferences so that they stay on to enjoy the resort even after they have finished their business," says manager Ranvir Singh Bhandari. He is most excited by the eight restaurants, quite understandable in view of the city’s penchant for dining out. The offerings include frontier foods at Peshwari, traditional Indian dining at Dum Pukht, oriental food at Pan-Asian, the international Eden, the West View bar and grill, the Dublin pub and Darjeeling tea houses.

The last is a novelty- the tea houses (which will no doubt do just as well as vodka-salons after sunset) have been built around a unique 120-metre long water pool with floating lilies, lotuses and swaying reeds. With walls of Oriental wood screens, they are the only low structures amidst the four blocks. The lotuses and lily pool reflect light inside the buildings during the day, while the building lights are reflected outside after sunset. It also imparts a great sense of space to every corner of the property.

Supervising much of the gastronomic activity is chef Imtiaz Qureshi, who gravely announced the nuances and challenges of adapting Bengali and Marwari cuisine to the "dum pukht" style special to Welcomgroup. "This is the best hotel I have worked in, so I have to capture the subtleties of Kolkata and Rajasthani Marwari food and the west and east Bengali preparations without a flaw, " he said.

For those looking to form a congregation, there is a 7,000 square feet banquet area as well. The good news is, the rooms are in separate blocks connected by covered pathways to the restaurant and banquet block, so that public functions do not disturb guests.