What’s often not realised is that this creativity is transferable. New ideas? Isn’t that what modern business is about? Scratch an innovative restaurateur; find, more often than not, a former chef.

But restaurateurs thinking of utilising their chefs more fully should note that arty types might find the intricacies of profit and loss accounts a bit of a yawn. Rather than the boardroom, a better first posting outside the kitchen is the marketing department.

Chefs' understanding of what turns customers on, of colour, balance, aesthetics, should slot them in quite nicely with the chaps with the colourful ties and mid-Atlantic accents.

Crossing departmental lines isn’t just useful to the owner. Mehernosh Mody, Executive Chef at the Blue Elephant Group’s La Porte des Indes in London, says that it’s in the chef’s own self-interest to take a keen interest in the restaurant’s marketing strategies. You can be fantastic in the kitchen, says the award-winning chef, but if no one’s heard about your restaurant, no one’s going to taste your food. You have to take a proactive approach.

"If you know that what you’ve got is good, if you’re confident about it, then go out and market it. And the rest is for the public to judge. If they like it, they’ll come back and tell you it’s great."

Set up in February 1996, with Mody as executive chef and his wife Sherin Alexander as manager, the 350-seat La Porte specialises in Indo-French cuisine. Mody explains that, like the Portuguese in Goa, the French controlled a few small areas of India. In Pondicherry in the west, the French influence can still be seen: a French Creole population; some crumbling examples of French architecture; dishes with a "French twist".

With a diploma in hotel management from India, five years with the Taj Group, seven years with the Brussels-based Blue Elephant Group, Mody has the experience and training to handle a wide remit. A broad-based formal training equips him better than most to take an interest in extraculinary matters.

Perhaps the best example of this is the restaurant’s annual month-long food festival. Due to start in June, this year’s festival aims to celebrate the cuisine found in India’s southern states.

Dishes will include: Red Banana Fritters from Bangalore; Boatman’s Fish Curry from Madras; Pickled Pork in Aromatic Spices and Rice Vinegar from the Coorg Mountains; Malabar Prawns & Plantation Spices in a Rich Yellow Curry from Kerala. Set menus will range from £22 to £34.

Festivals take several months of planning, says Mody. It’s an intense experience with lots of hard work. "It’s not something we just think up on the spur of the moment and do. It won’t happen like that."

Deciding what theme to choose is a collective task. He and his wife discuss it with the management team before putting an idea forward to Blue Elephant’s board of directors. It weighs the various pros and cons.

Last year’s Spice Trail festival was built around a menu that used rare spices from different regions: regional cooking with added, well, spice; certainly, from the customer’s point of view, added value.

With the green light to go ahead, Mody searches through the relevant cookery books and his own collection of notes. He incorporates his ideas with those of his chefs. The dishes are trialed until Mody and his team are satisfied.

"We have to get the dish right. And that includes thinking how to market it. In this case, South Indian local names for recipes would mean little to most people. We had to translate them into words more easily understood by customers."

The final touch is a note announcing the festival on a banana leaf. This is sent out to the restaurant’s 15, 000-strong database. What sets the card apart is that it’s posted in India; it has an Indian stamp.

Mody explains: "With these little touches, we go all the way. That’s what this company believes in."

He admits that it’s expensive. He won’t be drawn on exactly how expensive. It eventually pays for itself. "We’re satisfied if the customers are satisfied. We eventually gain in the long run because we find that customers come back."

Mody adds: "For me, specially, it’s not just about making more money. It’s the fun, the challenge of doing something a little different from the usual routine, something to get involved in, something to stretch what I know about Indian food."