By Sourish Bhattacharyya
AFTER flagging off Punjab Grill’s forays into Bangkok and
Dubai, the restaurant chain’s operator, Lite Bite Foods, promoted by Dabur
scion Amit Burman and knitwear exporter
Rohit Aggarwal, is now contemplating
expansion to the United States. It is looking at Tysons Corner Center, the biggest mall development in the
Baltimore-Washington area in Fairfax County, Virginia, as a possible location
for the fourth international address of Punjab Grill, after Singapore, Bangkok
and Dubai.
Sharing this information over a
sumptuous Gaon Ka Khana spread presented at Zambar on Sunday by Gurgaon Foodies, a Facebook group
promoted by Pawan Soni and Aalok Wadhwa of Indian
Food Freak, Lite Bite Foods Chief
Operating Officer Sharad Sachdeva also disclosed
that Punjab Grill is going
upscale and venturing into molecular gastronomy to wow its regulars.
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| (From left) Indian Food Freak and Gurgaon Foodies co-founder Pawan Soni, yours truly and wedding planner Nita Raheja at the Gaon Ka Khana lunch organised at Zambar, Ambience Mall, Gurgaon, on Sunday |
The new direction of the restaurant
chain’s menu will be first unveiled at Ambience
Mall, Vasant Kunj, where Punjab Grill is opening in place of Fresc Co along with a revamped Zambar, which has been going places ever
since Arun Kumar TR, its low-key but
hugely talented filmmaker-turned-master chef, took charge of its kitchens. A
former GMR senior executive who powered retail concepts at the Indira Gandhi
International Airport, Sachdeva clarified that Fresc Co is being nixed at
Ambience Mall, Vasant Kunj, on the suggestion of the mall operator.
Sachdeva, an IMT Ghaziabad MBA, also
informed us that he has collapsed the traditional wall in restaurants dividing
the back of the house and the front end by making the Punjab Grill cuisine
consultant responsible for its profit and loss accounts as well. The chef de
cuisine, in other words, has also become the custodian of the brand’s financial
health — a bold experiment, but very much in sync with these difficult times
when food costs are spiraling out of control.
Zambar, meanwhile, was packed to
capacity with Gurgaon’s food lovers who enthusiastically dug the six-course Gaon
Ka Khana spread that was accompanied by a steady flow of beer and wine. Arun
Kumar said that feeding people who knew about food (and you’d expect such a
gathering when it’s put together by the moving spirits of one of the most livewire
restaurant reviews and recipes site) was a different experience altogether.
They were inquisitive about the dishes and open to food innovations, the
extremely knowledgeable Arun Kumar added.
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| Lite Bite Foods COO Sharad Sachdeva (standing) with Delhi Gourmet Club member Pooja Sharma and yours truly |
It was a happy afternoon, and though
the service was not always up to speed, we never felt it because the wine
flowed like water and conversation was strewn with laughter and nuggets of
wisdom. I shared my table with Mr Old Monk and founder-member of the Delhi
Gourmet Club (DGC), Rocky Mohan, who
was with us for a short time but as always a gold mine of culinary wisdom; the
gregarious Nita Raheja, a leading
wedding planner and communications professional, and her husband; drummer and blogger
about town Vivek Vaid; and DGC’s very
well-informed member, Pooja Sharma, who
had come with her husband, an automotive interiors specialist, and was regaling
us with her stories of eating out in New York, especially at wd-50, a much-acclaimed
Manhattan Lower East Side restaurant powered by Wylie Dufresne. When there’s
good food, can delicious conversation be far away?
Photos: Courtesy of www.indianfoodfreak.com
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