In front of me sits a simple margherita pizza, dripping with tomato sauce and topped with carefully placed strands of spinach. I say carefully, because I had seen Chef Pasqualino Barbasso pause — in the midst of his brisk yet fluid kneading, rolling, chopping and topping — to consider where exactly to put that last bit of leaf so that it looks evenly scattered.

At first bite, the pizza is tangy, soft and barely cheesy. The chef evidently likes to highlight one over the other — his polly pizza has a dash of mozzarella and no sauce at all. They’re both delicious, but the lunch guests at Focaccia aren’t here for the pizza that Chef Barbasso serves.

They’re here for the pizza he performs with.

A title-holding acrobatic pizzaiolo, Chef Barbasso is in town to wow diners with his skill. The first sign of an impending show is the empty table in the centre of the sunlit restaurant, stripped of its customary tablecloth and accompanying chairs. When the chef walks up to its clean wooden surface and begins rolling fresh dough, a couple of diners on the next table look up. But most continue eating and chatting, till a sprightly dance tune hits their ears and a small, white disc flung into the air catches their eye.

The dough hardly seems to touch his fingertips before doing a pirouette and spinning off in another direction. The pliant disc gets thinner and larger, turning cartwheels between his hands before darting below his knee. Over his head. From shoulder to shoulder. Shoulder to palm. Fingertip to the rafters on the ceiling, and back.

This dough is much tougher — the key to that lies in extra salt, he says — than the one he uses to make edible pizzas, but it eventually gives into the pressure. Without missing a beat, the chef gets started on a fresh batch, even kneading in time with the music. Soon enough, he is juggling two discs while spinning slowly on his feet. He then chooses one of them to focus on, turning it into a wide spinning sheet that he takes from table to table, pausing longer at the ones where children sit agog.

Eventually, the music becomes too tempting for the audience: one or two diners, who were simply swaying to the tune earlier, get up and do a short jig while waiting for Chef Barbasso to prepare his next batch. He takes over from them when he’s ready, and finishes with a flourish, a round of applause and plenty of high fives from his newly created fandom of two-year-olds. The diners once again settle into their quiet conversations. But he’ll be back, to enthral them in an hour.

Chef Pasqualino Barbasso will be performing during lunch and dinner service at Focaccia, Hyatt Regency, till February 10. For details and reservations call 61001234