“I am very hungry. Thanks for featuring me in this column. I will be able to eat on the pretext of giving an interview,” says Sammir Dattani, chuckling like a little boy delighted at the sight of his favourite dish - chicken chilly.

He hurriedly digs into it sitting pretty at China Town, the Chinese restaurant at Ashok Hotel. He is really frank. “I am a real foodie but not a fussy one. I love spicy food more,” he states, adding, “I am a food-lover because I have grown up visiting our family-owned restaurant called Silk Route in Mumbai. It serves Chinese and Oriental food. I often go there now also. I supervise cooking, give a few tips, make some changes in the spices used. It is being looked after by my father and brother,” says Sammir as he spares a glance at the neatly done table with a tablecloth matched with the rose petals criss-crossing the candlelight reflecting in a bowl of water on it.

Sammir, who added one more `m’ to his first name on his mother’s insistence prior to the release of his debut film Rajshri Film’s Uff Kya Jadoo Mohabbat Hai, says about this addition, “She is a great believer in numerology. I agreed to become Sammir on condition that if it doesn’t work, I won’t allow her to add more `i’s or r’s to my name. I believe in working hard, all `i’s and `r’s will follow,” he laughs while taking a helping of potato tikki with sweet-and sour sauce to make it tangy.

In this dimly-lit restaurant built like an old fort, the most beautiful part are colourful stones kept under a glass cover on the floor.

The stones seem to emit light like a charcoal through a bulb hidden beneath. Enjoying this ambience, Sammir carries on, “I did try to cook at times. But the results were too bad to encourage me. But don’t think I will starve if I have nobody to cook for me. I can prepare omelette, sandwiches, Maggie… ”

As he switches over to vegetable sandwiches, he recalls an incident that turned him into a staunch non-vegetarian.

“My family is preferably vegetarian. But they never objected to non-vegetarian food. Once my friends duped me into it. They served me a dish which I liked so much that after having a full plate, I asked for one more. They started laughing. One of them revealed, `Jo tu paneer tikka samajh ke kha raha hai, vo chicken tikka hai. Ab bhi aur chahiye?’ I was so overwhelmed by its taste that I nodded in agreement. From that day onwards, I turned a regular non-vegetarian though I still relish vegetarian food just because of habit. My parents also didn’t object to my eating non-vegetarian food.”

There are few things that are little known about this hero of director Mani Shankar’s forthcoming film Mukhbir, currently at post-production stage. He is playing an informer in the film.