Restaurant Bigwigs Bet Big on Home Deliveries and Takeaways, Airport Retail and Promised Turnaround of Railway Stations

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

THE Indian Restaurant Congress 2014, organised for the fourth successful year by Franchise India, opened at the Vivanta by Taj in Faridabad with the overarching theme of 'Think Global, Eat Local' and the inaugural speaker, Lite Bite Foods Chairman Amit Burman, drove home the point by stating how just one innovation -- the introduction of masala papad as a side dish -- drove the per outlet sales of Punjab Grill up by Rs 2 lakh a month in Delhi/NCR.

Lite Bite Foods Chairman Amit Burman gave
an insightful start to the Indian Restaurant
Congress 2014 with his analysis of the challenges
and future growth areas of the restaurant industry.

Innovation. Consistency. Localisation. These were the buzzwords that kept coming up in the presentations by the leaders of the industry as they looked into the crystal ball to predict the trends that would define their business in the years ahead.

Burman started his talk by listing the "continual challenges" -- higher-than-ever real estate, ingredient and personnel costs -- which have confronted the industry since the past year. Food inflation peaked at 20 per cent in November 2013 and energy cost went up on average by 11 per cent, Burman added. He listed four strategies to find a way around these challenges: smart menu engineering, efficient real estate use, smart hiring and tighter cost controls.

"We earn for the government, real estate owners and banks," Burman said on a light note, adding that taxes sliced off 20 per cent of the margins of a restaurant business, and rents as well as repayment of bank loans with interest accounted for another 30 per cent. What he mentioned in passing, though, is an even bigger challenge. Indians still do not eat out as much as their counterparts in south-east Asia, for instance. Though we eat out twice as much as we used to in the recent past -- eight times a month, compared with four in the past -- we are way behind the residents of Hong Kong (3.2 times a day) and Singaporeans (41 times a month).

In this tight market, how can restaurant operators make money? For Lite Bite Foods, which has become a benchmark-setter in the restaurant retail business, the future is in airport retail, which, according to Burman, offers more consistent footfalls and growth than malls or the high street. The company is now looking at food courts at next-generation railway stations, as visualised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as the next big growth avenue. "More and more travellers are eating on the go," Burman pointed out.

Home deliveries and takeaways were the other growth drivers highlighted by speaker after speaker. Discussing the Yo China growth model, the 51-outlets-and-growing restaurant chain's CEO, Ashish Kapur, said that home deliveries and takeaways accounted for 40 per cent of its revenues, providing a cushion to the dine-in side of the business. A sound logic drives this mixed growth model: You're paying rent for the entire day, so why don't you make your most expensive asset sweat harder! "Maximise business, reduce transaction costs," Burman said, pointing to the obvious benefits of this mixed growth model.

K.S. Narayanan, CEO, Pan India Food Solutions, whose brands extend from Copper Chimney to Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and Spaghetti Kitchen, made a strong pitch for "constantly innovating in the way we cook, serve, deliver and communicate". He made three points that the industry can ignore only at its peril:

* Food is very local, very culturally driven (hence, the new buzz phrase, 'eat local').

* Taste is an important driver of consumer preferences (hence, the salience of consistency).

* Consumers are becoming critics (hence, the paramount importance of communications).

Everyone talks about consistency, but it's easier said than done. For a single restaurant, it may mean, as Saurabh Khanijo, the man behind the successful trio of Kylin, Kylin Premier and Sartoria, put it: "standardisation of recipes and regular audits" to ensure that the recipes are followed without deviation. Kapur at once gave the audience a reality check.

Consistency of the quality of food that is served at a restaurant depends entirely on the consistency of supplies and the consistent quality of ingredients, which are both big challenges. The supply chain, likewise, is dependent on the efficiency of the transport network and the consistency of temperature control, which are both logistical nightmares.

Kapur said that in an ideal world, it would make economic sense to prepare at a central commissary and transport the thousands of dim sum consumed daily at the many Yo China outlets in Delhi/NCR (all that these would then require is steaming or frying once orders are placed), but this enterprise would require a "chilled chain", which is a dream in our country as we still struggle to put a cold chain in place. In an imperfect world, it's not easy to be a restaurant operator, but the growth rates are too tempting for any entrepreneur to ignore.

FORTUNE COOKIE: Proud To Be Indian Yet Refusing To Be Stodgy

This is my bi-monthly column, Fortune Cookie, which appeared in the edition of Mail Today dated Thursday, March 13, 2004. Copyright: Mail Today Newspapers

There's nothing in-your-face 'South
Indian' in the look of the new Zambar
at the DLF Cyber Hub, and the menu
too is deliciously unpredictable.

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

DELHI/NCR'S Indian restaurants, even after successive waves of liberalisation, have had a limpet-like tradition of looking like a half-witted Bollywood set designer's bad dream.

Oily furniture, formica-topped tables, slouchy waiters in fancy-dress costumes, Brian Silas's repetitive renditions of Hindi movie classics on piano (or worse, live ghazals!) and boudoir art -- these were (and still are) the staples of the ambience of Indian restaurants. Such was the seeming permanence of this dolorous decor, that when the late lamented Corbett opened at The Claridges, recreating the game park theme accompanied by a menu that ventured beyond the obvious, and Park Balluchi at the Hauz Khas Village deer park capitalised on its wow setting by serving kebabs on mock swords with burning charcoal, we let out a collective sigh of relief.

It turned to be a short-lived escape from the dead weight of predictability, though, for Corbett got replaced by the Mediterranean restaurant, Sevilla, and Park Balluchi became a haven for discount-devouring tour groups. Indian restaurants went back to their cocoon of complacency as the city flirted with newer tastes and more titillating flavours. At last, there's a glimmer of hope. Three recent openings, all at the DLF Cyber Hub in Gurgaon (bordering the country's IT/BPO hub), have shown the way forward for Indian restaurant decor.

The wacky decor of Dhaba by Claridges, also at
the DLF Cyber Hub (and DLF Place, Saket),
prepares you for masterpieces such as the
vodka tharras and the best butter chicken
in Delhi/NCR

A venture of Olive Bar & Kitchen's promoter, AD Singh, steered by Mohit Balachandran (Mr Chowder Singh of the blogging world), Soda Bottle Openerwala was the first off the block with a quirky decor borrowing heavily from the unintentionally funny notices on the walls of Mumbai's Irani restaurants. Even the glass tops of its old-fashioned tables are balanced, imaginatively, by the railway station chai glasses and the LED screen at the bar, which awaits a licence, enhances the visual narrative by playing rushes of Hindi film classics and of acts by Parsi stand-up comics.

At Zambar, filmmaker-turned-chef Arun Kumar's ode to the gifted home cooks and famous tea shops of the south, backed by the corporate muscle of Amit Burman and Rohit Aggarwal's Lite Bite Foods, the minimalist decor doesn't have anything in-your-face, or stereotypically South Indian. Yet the art on the wall are digitally embellished prints of old South Indian film posters (you can't miss a Rajnikanth or a Sivaji Ganesan); the music, A.R. Rahman's chart-topping Tamil numbers; and the menu has happy surprises such as Prawn Rasam, the addictive Cauliflower Bezule (fried cauliflower florets coated in spices and rice flour batter), mutton mince balls (kola urundu), Kerala tea shop chilli chicken, and the unbeatable squid rings with seafood filling.

Unsurprisingly, Zambar has been drawing full houses ever since it opened a couple of weeks back. It's still impossible to find a table at Soda Bottle without waiting -- people just want to have their Mutton Berry Pulao, the juicy fried chicken (Marghi Na Farcha) and Bheeda Par Eeda (fried eggs on spicy okra) again, and again, and yet again. And it's not any different for Dhaba by Claridges, the new capital of the Republic of Youngistan, promoted by Sanjeev Nanda, its wacky menu laid out by Ravi Saxena, Corporate Chef of The Claridges Hotels and Resorts.

Dhaba by Claridges takes the hotel's hugely popular restaurant, famous for its Balti Meat, out of the stuffy five-star environment, and funkifies (I don't know if there's such a word!) the highway dining experience. The ambience is playful, the signs on the wall have that irreverential quality that has made Comedy Nights by Kapil the current rage, and innovations such as vodka cocktails (nicknamed tharras) served in quarters (pau-a bottles) and the humble baigan bharta arriving in a beaten-metal canister, are all drawing trendy young people to this restaurant in droves.

These restaurants are rewriting the rules of how purveyors of Indian cuisine must look without playing around with the basics. The butter chicken at Dhaba by Claridges is the best, in my view, in Delhi/NCR, and people in the know insist that Soda Bottle's Berry Pulao is better than what you get at Britannia in Mumbai. We are in for good times.

NO PLACE FOR TASTE ENHANCERS IN POLISH VODKA

VODKA, in our imagination, may be irrevocably associated with the escape it offered to people weighed down by communist drudgery in the erstwhile Soviet Union, but it is Poland that possesses the oldest written record of the drink dating back to 1405. And it is home to some of the world's most acclaimed vodkas, notably the Wyborowa, whose bottle was designed by the celebrated Canadian-American architect, Frank Gehri.

So, I spent an afternoon with Charles Gibb, President of Belvedere, the vodka brand instantly recognisable for the image of Poland's presidential palace (Palac Belwederski or Belweder Palace, Warsaw) that it carries on its slender bottle, quizzing him about what sets Polish vodka apart from its competition. A Polish vodka, like Scotch, has to be produced from Polish rye or potatoes (Belvedere is made from a rye named Dankowski, which has quite a distinguished heritage and is famously associated with another notable Polish vodka, Sobieski). The water has to be drawn from a natural source at the distillery -- Belvedere's formula requires its water, sourced from an artesian well, to be purified 11 times, so that, in Gibb's words, "it provides a completely blank canvas for the expression of rye".

Polish vodka makers cannot also use additives such as glycerine and citric acid -- and this came as a revelation to me -- that the industry routinely uses to add a hint of flavour to what is erroneously supposed to be a tasteless product. "The idea of a neutral-tasting vodka is the American definition of the drink," exclaimed Gibb, a Scotsman who's married to an Australian and lives in New York. "You must be able to taste the Belvedere in your drink." (Look out for a more detailed interview with Gibb will appear on this blog very soon.)

WE SAY MACAROON, THEY SAYS MACRON

CELEBRATED patissier Pierre Herme's visit to the city, courtesy of the India Today Conclave, has triggered off a spirited debate, started by the man himself, on the difference between a macaroon and a macron. Well, it's simple -- macron is French and macaroon is English. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the first recorded usage of the English word,  macaroon, dates back to 1611. And Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, which was first published in 1861, has a recipe for making a macaroon. Both the words are derived from the Italian maccarone or maccherone, and they mean the same thing: meringue-like cookies made with egg white, almond paste, ground almonds or coconut, and sugar with a crisp crust and soft interior with a filling at the centre.

The confusion, I believe, has been caused by the picture accompanying the Wikipedia entry for macaroons -- it's of a coconut macaroon, which was a best-seller on the Wenger's menu and looks very different from the standard image of the confection. It was L'Opera that changed our mental image of a macaroon and more recently, Breads & More has outdone the French patisserie. Now, did you know that the bakers of the Tamil Nadu town of Thoothukudi (or Tuticorin) have an old tradition of making macaroons with egg white, cashew and sugar? You'll love the ones from Shanti Bakery, which has been making macaroons since 1964.

AND WHAT'S THIS 'POLMOS' BUSINESS ALL ABOUT?

EACH bottle of Belvedere, or for that matter any vodka produced in Poland, carries the acronym POLMOS. Its expanded form is 'Polish Monopoly of Spirits'. The expression harks back to the time when all vodka in this East European country, then behind the Iron Curtain, used to be produced in state-owned distilleries. After the Polish people got rid of communism in 1989, the government started selling its distilleries to the highest bidders and Belvedere, produced at a place called Zyrardow, 45km from Warsaw, was picked up by Eddie Phillips, a serial entrepreneur and son of 'Dear Abby', America's most famous agony aunt. The brand has been owned since 2001 by the luxury conglomerate, LVMH.

DINING OUT: Punjab Grill Lays Out A Platter Full of Nostalgia

This review first appeared on Page 23 of Mail Today dated January 3, 2014. To see the original page, click on http://epaper.mailtoday.in/epaperhome.aspx?issue=312014 and go to Page 23.

QUICK BITES

WHERE: 2nd Floor, Food Court, Select Citywalk, Saket

WHEN: Lunch and Dinner (12 noon to 12 midnight)

DIAL: (011) 41572977

AVG MEAL FOR TWO (MINUS ALCOHOL): Rs 1,800+++

STAR RATING: ****

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

IF YOU were to ask me about the culinary gift of 2013 to the freezing year that has just unfolded, I would say it is the return of regional cuisines -- without any glossing over.

Starting with the tangy and unforgettable
Kaali Gajar Ki Kanji, the Punjab Grill's
winter menu is a winner all the way.

Delhi/NCR has seen Bijoli Grill, which has been doing steady business from one far corner of Dilli Haat, open to rave reviews at Banga Bhawan, the West Bengal state government guest house on Hailey Road. The city has gifted a new lease of life to the dying tradition of the Irani cafe, an institution associated with such venerable names as Britannia and Kyani Cafe in Mumbai, at the Soda Bottle Opernerwala, DLF Cyber Hub, Gurgaon. Everyone I know, as a result, has been eating berry pulao and keema pao as if these are going out of fashion.

Panchvati Gaurav, an import from Mumbai and a favourite of those who love their Rajasthani and Gujarati thalis, is drawing packed houses at the Cyber Hub. Dhaba by Claridges has barely opened at the same location and people are already comparing it with Made in Punjab, which, without doubt, is a leader in its category. Even Monkey Bar has rewritten the rules of pub grub with its bacon-wrapped tandoori sausage dog. These new openings have collectively made that amorphous creature we call Indian cuisine fashionable once again.

With these thoughts swirling in my head, I stepped into Punjab Grill, which is at the farthest end of Select Citywalk, Saket. I had not been to Punjab Grill after Zorawar Kalra parted ways with Amit Burman and Rohit Aggarwal. My mission was to sample the new winter menu prepared by Gurpreet Singh Gehdu, a former sous chef of Indian Accent's Manish Mehrotra, who came into his own at the helm of the hugely successful Singapore outlet of Punjab Grill.

As Gurpreet had just returned from Singapore, I was expecting him to amaze me with the magic of molecular gastronomy. He had another plan up his sleeve -- to floor me with the brilliance of traditional flavours, which are going out of fashion because they require the kind of time and effort that only our mothers could invest in food.

I knew I was on to a treat when I had the Kaali Gajar Kaanji, which had been fermented for 72 hours and had an inviting tanginess, followed by the apple wood-smoked Shakarkandi Kamrakh ki Chaat -- sweet potato and star fruit tossed in sweet and sour tamarind. It was an unusual combination of textures and flavours, and the smoke was the killer app! A heart-warming Kharode Ka Shorba packing in the punch of gelatinous lamb trotters; Bheja Masala redolent of freshly ground garam masala; succulent Tabak Maaz -- lamb ribs simmered in fennel (saunf)-flavoured milk and fried on a tawa -- the kind I have not had after my first lunch post-marriage prepared by my mother-in-law and her sisters; hand-pounded Sarson Da Saag, whose rough texture, balanced by the dollop of white butter, came with the bite you normally don't get to experience in this day and age of electrical mixer-grinders; and the must-have Punjab Grill Deg Hot Pot, which is just the way you'd want to dig mutton koftas (with the texture of galawat kebabs) in a soul-satisfying gravy with carrots and turnips -- it's the shabdegh reinvented!

This is food that brings back memories of a childhood when it was a winter ritual to lay out jars of pickles and vadi out in the balmy sun, to be shared with families in the neighbourhood, and when summer nights used to be spent sleeping on the rooftop under the stars, waking up to early morning birdsong (when there were birds still around in Delhi that you could identify from Salim Ali's books). When I was having Gudh Wale Chawal and Bajre Ki Choori at the end, the memories came rushing in. It takes a good chef to bring that past back to life -- if only fleetingly.

Lite Bite Foods to Take Franchisee Route as it Powers A Major Expansion Plan

By  Sourish Bhattacharyya

LITE BITE FOODS launched itself in 2001 as the Indian master franchisee of Subway, when the international chain opened its first Indian outlet at Saket. Twelve years on, the Rs 120-crore F&B brand, which has seen a 30 per cent growth in its topline year-on-year, is looking for franchisees as it sets itself the target of becoming a Rs 500-crore company with more than 300 operational locations in 2014.

Amit Burman, Chairman, Lite Bite Foods, says, "The DNA
of our franchisees is very important for us."

Any talk of franchisees at once raises the spectre of compromised quality, but Lite Bite Foods Chairman Amit Burman, who's better known for turning the fruit juice brand Real into a 'real' success story, set at rest any doubts by stating: "The DNA of our franchisees is very important for us. And here's how we'll operate. Each outlet will be franchisee owned but operated by Lite Bite Foods. We will have a system of operation manuals, surprise visits and mystery shoppers in place to ensure consistency of quality."

This assurance comes at a time when Lite Bite Foods, an umbrella spanning 12 brands (four in casual dining and six quick service restaurants, one catering unit, and a growing chain of food courts) with a yearly footfall count of 2.5 million, is in the thick of expansion. Punjab Grill has spread its wings of Bangkok and Abu Dhabi; the upcoming Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport Terminal 2 (439,000 sq. ft. when complete) in Mumbai will have 32 Lite Bite outlets; and the company is looking very seriously at international  expansion across Hong Kong, Dubai, London and the United States. Lite Bite Foods recently acquired Scalini, a fine-dining Italian restaurant in London, which the company now plans to take to more locations abroad.

Rohit Aggarwal (white shirt and hands in pockets), Director,
Lite Bite Foods, at the company's 7,000-square-foot
commissary in Udyog Vihar, Gurgaon

To give muscle to the company's drive for consistency across outlets, Lite Bite Foods opened a 7,000-sq-ft central commissary at its headquarters two years ago in Gurgaon with an investment of Rs 3.5 crore.

As Rohit Aggarwal, Director, Lite Bite Foods, gave me a guided tour of the gleaming facility, where 300 kilos of sauces for pastas and pizzas are produced daily (among many other products), he said the commissary serves three purposes: maintain the consistency and quality of food products at Lite Bite Foods outlets; reduce the time taken to develop new products from 45-60 days to two weeks; and reduce kitchen space across outlets, which is very important in this day and age of expensive real estate.

The commissary's product line extends from 60-70 kilos of batter for the idli, dosa and appam served at Lite Bite's airport outlets and 50 kilos of hummus to more than 7,000 pieces of bakery and confectionery items prepared daily, and right above it is the quality assurance and hygiene laboratory that keeps a hawk's eye on Lite Bite outlets. It consumes six tonnes of maida and two tonnes of atta per month. It supplies marinated meats and seafood to Foodhall outlets in Delhi and Mumbai. It has helped Lite Bite Foods achieve 15-20 per cent capital expenditure saving and brought its food cost down by 4 per cent. And it is the watch tower from where Burman and Aggarwal plan to ensure consistency across a network of franchisee outlets that will power their expansion plans.

Masala Library by Jiggs Kalra to Open in Mumbai on Oct. 5 with Progressive Indian Twist

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

THE much-anticipated opening of the Masala Library by Jiggs Kalra, the ‘Progressive Indian’ restaurant being launched by Zorawar Kalra, son of the Indian fine-dining maestro, is set for October 5 at its chic address — First International Financial Centre, the green building where Citibank has relocated its India headquarters, at the Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai.

Zorawar Kalra has been in the news since he sold his stake in Wrapster Foods, the joint venture company that ran the highly successful Punjab Grill restaurants, to his old business partners, Dabur scion Amit Burman and Rohit Aggarwal of Lite Bite Foods. After exiting Wrapster, Kalra formed a new joint venture, Massive Restaurants, with Gaurav Goenka of Mirah Hospitality to roll out the upper-end Masala Library, the middle-market Made in Punjab, which it making its debut at The Hub at the DLF Cyber Park in Gurgaon, and a chain of chic mithai shops.

Speaking from his about-to-open restaurant in Mumbai, Kalra said Masala Library will showcase ‘Progressive Indian’ cuisine, which combines authentic flavours with nouvelle presentation styles. It will also have a lot of molecular gastronomy happening — “not as a gimmick,” Kalra assured us, “but as a genuine flavour enhancer”. He added: “Each dish on the menu has a story. A lot of thought has gone into each one of the items. We started with 100, but have retained just 70 of them.”

He then gave a foretaste of the explosion of creative gastronomy that awaits us at the Masala Library by describing the dish named ‘Steamed John Dory, Flavours of India’. The fish in this preparation will be served on a platter designed like an artist’s palette with eight differently flavoured relishes representing the kitchens of the different parts of the country. So you can have one central ingredient in eight different ways in one serving! Or, as Kalra puts it, “You can taste the whole of India in one dish.”

The menu has Lal Maas, Mutton Vindaloo and Meen Moily to cater to those who like to walk on the much-treaded road, but the sauciest San Marzano tomatoes from Italy go into its butter chicken (“these are not tart and can be smoked very well,” Kalra explained), or the essence of peas are turned into pea pods using the reverse spherification process, or the hearty rarha meat is given a vegetarian twist by substituting mutton with soy, or for those weary of the boring hara-bhara kebab, Kalra’s chefs have created the pesto kebab served with parmesan papad.

Care to sample innovations? Then, your must-have list must include the foie gras crème brulee, prawn balchao kulcha, trio of Bhindi Jaipuri, Papad ki Subzi and Hand-Pounded Choorma (“savour a multitude of flavours from just one dish,” Kalra explained), and ghewar cheesecake with almond chikki. Kalra and his team also have their share of fun with the menu. One of the dessert items, for instance, is Childhood Memories, which takes us to the time when as children we used love eating mud, chalk and other unmentionables. To recreate the experience, this dessert platter has flower pots with brownies mimicking the mud, water cans brimming over with chocolate sauce, edible chalk, and ice-cream biscuits shaped like another childhood favourite, Parle-G.

Will the pricing be over the top? Kalra assures us it won’t be. The nine-course tasting menu is being priced at Rs 1,900++ (vegetarian) and Rs 2,100++ (non-vegetarian) per person. And if you order a la carte, you can have a soul-satisfying meal for Rs 1,500++ per person. Not a bad deal for a restaurant in the financial hothouse of the country that promises to take Indian fine dining, so far dominated by establishments such as Indian Accent, Varq and Masala Art, to another level of excitement, evolution and excellence.

Gaon Ka Khana and the Dope on Punjab Grill Going Molecular in New Upscale Avatar

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

(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

that Punjab Grill is going upscale and venturing into molecular gastronomy to wow its regulars.

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.

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

BEHIND THE SCENES: Pollo Tropical’s Grilled Chicken Saga with Caribbean Twist

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

WHEN I went to meet the genial Manjit Singh Saini, who has brought the Florida-based Pollo Tropical (pronounced Po-yo Tropi-kaal) to India, one big question raged in my mind: “Why Pollo Tropical? Why not Burger King, or Quesnos, or whatever?”

As we sat down at India’s first Pollo Tropical at what was earlier the Food Chowk behind DLF Place, Saket, Saini said he had one big idea when he ventured into the restaurant business. He wanted to sell chicken, but not fried chicken, because the new generation had moved on to grilled chicken. Each visit to KFC, where he saw young people opting for the fiery grilled chicken, convinced him of this significant dietary shift.

So when Saini, whose father had started Paramount, the family’s thriving precision instruments business, in 1964, started scouting around for a brand to bring into India, he first thought of Pollo Campero, which was eventually brought into the country by Amit Burman’s LiteBite Foods, after being impressed by the burgers he had eaten at the chain’s outlets in Guatemala and El Salvador. He even checked out franchising opportunities with Nando’s and ChicKing.

Saini’s love for chicken took him to far corners of the world, but it was Pollo Tropical that beckoned him. He got to know from a friend that a senior Pollo Tropical executive, Senior Vice President for International Development, Marc Mushkin, had travelled to India with a franchise trade mission led by the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Commerce, Nicole Lamb-Hale, in 2011. Locating his coordinates, Saini got in touch with Mushkin on email and got invited to Florida for exploratory talks with the 25-year-old company’s leadership.

Manjit Singh Saini (centre, standing) with
Pollo Topical's Senior VP (International
Development) Marc Mushkin, left, and
U.S. Embassy's Minister-Counsellor
John McCaslin at the franchise's opening

A determined Saini landed in Florida, ate at 16 Pollo Tropical locations in two days to convince himself that he had made the right choice, and sealed the deal, which will see Paramount Cuisines, parent company of Pollo Tropical in India, opening nine restaurants in the National Capital Region, Haryana, Punjab and Chandigarh in the next two years.

The Miami-based chain, which is famous for its open flame-grilled chicken, owns and operates 95 locations in the United States plus four licensed restaurants on college campuses in Florida. And it has 33 international franchised locations in Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Honduras, Panama, Trinidad & Tobago, and Venezuela. New Delhi is the latest addition to Pollo Tropical’s expanding map and the group’s first location outside the Western Hemisphere.

When I visited the Pollo Tropical (http://pollotropical.com) outlet at Saket, I was surprised to find the 2,750-square-foot restaurant had a 1,000-square-foot kitchen — very generous by the standards of Indian restaurants. A major part of it was taken up by the open-flame griller from Imperial (www.imperialrange.com), the California-based global supplier of cooking equipment, and I saw whole chickens with skin cooking in their own juices.

The cooking process, according to Shriya Kaur, who heads the F&B operations at Pollo Tropical, can take up to 45 minutes. A PAR sheet (and I thought these are used only by the gambling industry!) informs the kitchen staff about the number of chickens that would be required for each time slot. It’s that much systems-driven, which is why Mushkin has been here 12 times in the last six months. Each chicken, for instance, weighs between 1,300 and 1,500gms and is sourced from the Sonepat-based broiler breeders and poultry processors, Skylark Group (http://skylarkfoods.com).

The Pollo Tropical store behind DLF Place, Saket

Before the grilling comes the most important part of the process: marination. Pollo Tropical’s proprietary marinade is made with fruit juices and a blend of Caribbean spices, and to ensure that each drop of it seeps into the muscle fibres and bones of each bird, the whole chickens are placed in a ‘vacuum tumbler’ that can take 75 of them at a time. Each chicken spends an hour in the vacuum tumbler and has its flesh and bones pulled in different directions in a way that ensures not a pore is without the marinade.

Other features of Pollo Tropical’s menu are the salads drizzled with dressings made afresh daily, steamed yellow rice flavoured with vegetable stock and served with beans, a bouquet of five dipping sauces (of which the cilantro garlic and Caribbean pineapple are unbeatable), paneer preparations that taste refreshingly different and wholesome, and potato wedges baked in a Rational oven (as is the paneer) so that they don’t get soggy and yet are not bone dry.

Saini is confident that Pollo Tropical will acquire a committed following in the months ahead, so his team is busy organising food tastings at the mall (DLF Place), active on Facebook and Twitter (social media seems to be working best for them), and encouraging the early patrons to post reviews on Zomato with freebies as incentives. Of course, at the end, it will be the food that will do the talking.