Tonight, Don't Miss Worldwide Celebration of French Gastronomy -- 14 Delhi-NCR Restaurants Are a Part of It

Visiting Michelin-starred French chef Akrame Benallal with his counterparts from
the 14 Delhi-NCR restaurants participating in the worldwide Gout France dinner
being served by 2,000 chefs across 150 countries in five continents. 

IN A WORLD where divisive politics rules the news, imagine people following discrete religions, speaking different languages and having varied skin tones united by the adhesive power of food. Tonight, 2.000 chefs across 150 nations in five continents will serve a French dinner at their restaurants in a one-of-its-kind celebration of a country that is synonymous with gastronomy and haute cuisine.

The Ambassador of France in India, Alexandre
Ziegler (right), welcomes Michelin-starred chef 
Akrame Benallal (Restaurant Akrame, Paris), 
who's in New Delhi to curate the Gout France
dinner at the Embassy of France tonight. 

One keeps hearing that French cuisine doesn't have much of a following on our side of the world, yet India is No. 3 on the crowded world list of Gout France, or Good France, which is the name of the initiative being steered by the French Foreign Ministry with the legendary Michelin multi-starred chef Alain Ducasse since 2015. As many as 66 restaurants, including 14 in Delhi-NCR, are participating in Gout France this year, only after getting the seal of approval from an international committee of chefs. "The common point of this event," in the words of Ducasse, "is generosity, sharing and the love of what is beautiful and tastes good. It will be a delightful interlude and an opportunity to celebrate French cuisine worldwide."

French gastronomy, incidentally, is on the UNESCO list of the intangible heritage of the world and Gout France draws its inspiration from Auguste Escoffier, who launched the Dîners d’Épicure (Epicurean Dinners) initiative – the same menu, the same day, in several world cities and aimed at as many diners as possible – in 1912.

In Delhi-NCR, too, each of the participating restaurants, which include Le Bistro Du Parc, Qla, Olive Bar & Kitchen, Pluck at Pullman New Delhi Aerocity and Nostalgia at The Imperial, will serve a French menu tonight. And one of the lucky diners will be eligible for a trip for two to France being sponsored by the French tourism development agency, Atout France (for contest detail, go to Zomato).

The high point of the event, which sees 150 French embassies around the world pitching in, is a dinner being curated by 35-year-old Akrame Benallal, chef-owner of the Michelin two-starred Restaurant Akrame in Paris, who spent yesterday (March 20) afternoon with the chefs from the participating restaurants. A protege of Pierre Gagnaire and Ferran Adria, whom he calls "the Rolling Stones of the kitchen", Chef Akrame, who likens his menus to fashion collections, opened his restaurant in 2011, got his first Michelin star within six months (a rare occurrence!). Today, he owns a fine-dining restaurant each in Paris and Hong Kong (which also has a Michelin star), two bistros in Paris, and a wine and cheese bar, also in Paris.

The Ambassador of France in India, Alexandre Ziegler, who's from Sauternes, home to the world's finest dessert wines in Bordeaux, and who owes his Germanic name to his Swiss great-grandfather who moved to Paris a century ago, clarified that French cuisine is not only haute cuisine. "People tend to believe that French cuisine is very expensive and quite complicated, but gastronomy can also be a daily life experience," Ziegler said. "My best culinary experiences have been in my grandmother's home, village cafes and bistros. You can travel across France only to discover its gastronomy."

Ziegler reminded me that France is the world's No. 1 tourist destination -- 86 million people visited the country in 2016 -- and the number of Indian visitors went up to 500,000 last year, representing a growth of 45 per cent over the last two years. More and more Indian visitors to France are showing a "growing interest" in "new experiences" -- and these include gastronomy and wine tourism.

Tourism, Ziegler said, is an essential component of people-to-people exchanges that bring nations closer to each other. "Partnerships between nations are not made only by diplomats signing MoUs," the ambassador added and shared three important bits of statistics:

• More than 3.5 lakh Indian nationals are employed by French companies operating in India.
• There's been a 20 per cent increase in the number of Indian students going to France for higher studies.
• Around 250,000 French tourists visited India last year and whereas in the earlier years, 80 per cent of them would limit their itinerary to Rajasthan, today, they are exploring destinations in South India, especially Hampi, and old cities such as Varanasi.

Gout France may be a one-night affair, but it underlines one salient feature of the emerging world civilisation -- food brings people closer in a discordant universe.

DINING OUT: Go Dhan-Dhan-Dhansak with the Dikras at Soda Bottle Openerwala

WHERE: Ground Floor (it's closes to the main entrance), DLF Cyber Hub, Next to Building No. 8, Cyber City, Phase-II, Gurgaon

WHEN: 11:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m.

DIAL: (0124) 6518801; (+91) 8527636633

AVE MEAL FOR TWO: Rs 1,200+++. The restaurant doesn't have an alcohol licence yet.

STAR RATING: ****/5

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

IT'S HARD to come up with one big idea in a lifetime, but AD Singh is like an ideas factory. The hugely successful restaurateur with an evolved sense of style has spawned three uniquely different restaurant concepts this year (and there's one more in the pipeline).

Soda Bottle Openerwala combines authentic good

food with the eccentricity of the decor of an Irani

cafe, a priceless yet dying institution of Mumbai

The year started with Le Bistro du Parc at Defence Colony, below the Moolchand Flyover, which introduced the city to the idea of bistronomy (a limited menu changing daily, depending on the best produce available in the market). Guppy by Ai followed at the Lodi Colony Market, where family-style Japanese dining has found an address and a loyal clientele who've ensured that it is impossible to find a seat at lunch or dinner if you go without reservation. And now comes Soda Bottle Openerwala, at the busy-as-a-beehive-on-steroids DLF Cyber Hub in Gurgaon, which I rate as the most daring and therefore doubly successful new restaurant to open in Delhi-NCR in many years.

Soda Bottle Openerwala is an Irani cafe, an institution that is gasping for breath in Mumbai, barring the two notable doughty exceptions -- Kyani Bakery and Britannia. The expression 'Irani cafe' at once brings back memories of bun-maska, dhansak, berry pulao, Duke's raspberry drink, nan-khatai and paani kam chai, and of course, Nissim Ezekiel's hilarious poem inspired by the notice at his favourite haunt, the late Bastani and Company at Dhobi Talao, Mumbai:

No talking to cashier / No smoking / No fighting / No credit / No outside food / No sitting long / No talking loud / No spitting / No bargaining / No water to outsiders / No change / No telephone / No match sticks / No discussing gambling / No newspaper / No combing / No beef / No leg on chair / No hard liquor allowed / No address inquiry — By Order." (I owe this gem to Jayshree Bajoria's story carried by the BBC News website, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4485523.stm.)

To bring this institution back to life in a city that has been hardly exposed to it, AD Singh worked hard with his trusted lieutenants Mohit Balachandran (whom many of you may know as Chowder Singh of blogosphere) and Chef Sabyasachi 'Saby' Gorai (who has since left to launch his own consultancy), and a brilliant new hand, Anahita Dhondy, who worked at the Taj and JW Marriott after graduating from the prestigious Institute of Hotel Management in Aurangabad, and then went to Le Cordon Bleu in London to complete her culinary studies.

Dhondy, who's as pretty as she's accomplished at a very young age (she reminded me of the equally talented Naina De Bois-Juzan of Le Bistro du Parc), says she owes her knowledge of Parsi/Irani food entirely to her mother, Niloufer, who's a much sought-after caterer, and her grandmother's dhansak and sambhaar masalas -- the latter being a combination of 15 ingredients, including Kashmiri red chillies, garlic and heeng. She finishes, for instance, her hard-to-stop-drooling-over Salina Marghi (a light but tangy chicken curry with fried potato shavings on top) with gur and traditional Parsi vinegar, which is now produced by just one man in Navsari, Gujarat. That's a family secret, she says.

Soda Bottle Openerwala marries authentic good food, funky interiors that bring alive the eccentricities of Irani cafe decor, and lively music from the 1980s. But the killer app, without doubt, is the food -- ask for the mutton berry pulao (sprinkled with cranberries in the absence of zereshk, or barberries, that the Iranians love), salina marghi, bheeda par eeda (fried eggs, sunny side up, baked with okra), and wash the soul-satisfying meal down with old-fashioned cold coffee made with Nescafe or the Irani chai (where the Brooke Bond Red Label decoction is added to reduced milk), and yes, don't forget the Toblerone mousse (it's a most desirable sin to have been created by a woman!).

It's not for nothing that there's a stream of people walking into the restaurant at all times, and some are groaning about the long waiting period during lunch. AD & Co have given the Irani cafe a new lease of life at a place where you'd least expect it to be successful. It is a tribute both to Delhi/NCR's evolved palate and to AD's entrepreneurial instinct.

Just 22 of the 42 restaurants scheduled to open at DLF Cyber Hub are up and running, yet it already gets more than 10,000 footfalls a day. With restaurants such as Soda Bottle Openerwala, and Made In Punjab (Zorawar Kalra's ever-popular venture) or The Wine Company started by the Yo China-Dimsumbros trio (you'll read about it soon), I can see the number heading in just one direction -- north.

AD Singh Goes Lean to Roll Out 20 New Restaurants & Bars by 2014-end

AD Singh's shares his success mantra for these tough times: trim project costs, limit seating and space, source local ingredients, rejig your HR policies and hold on to good people by making them partners or giving them Employee Stock Options (ESOPs), and go for acquisitions and mergers.

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

AD SINGH is the most unlikely restaurateur -- he set out to be an engineer, did not make it to an IIT so he went and completed his education in America (Lafayette College), became a boxwallah, and wrote restaurant reviews on the side. Yet, today, the "passion-driven entrepreneur" has become synonymous with new restaurant concepts -- starting with Olive Bar & Kitchen, which made fine dining fun at a time when it seemed like an impossible dream -- that make people in the industry sit up and wonder why those ideas didn't strike them.

Guppy by Ai, AD Singh's newest restaurant, cost him
20 per cent of what it took him to open its predecessor
at the MGF Metropolitan Mall in Saket, New Dellhi

Backed by funding from the Aditya Birla Group and ready to roll out 20 new restaurants and bars by 2014-end, AD today has a new operating philosophy to keep up with the straitened times, though he maintains "the future of the food business isn't as gloomy as the economy". Being lean is AD's new mantra. He says he's "trying to develop a model for tough times" and his new restaurants will reflect his new philosophy of delivering style and substance without searing the wallets of his investors.

AD was able to deliver his latest baby, the laidback Japanese restaurant Guppy by Ai at New Delhi's newest hotspot, Lodi Colony Market, at 20 per cent of the cost of its predecessor, ai, which opened six years ago at the MGF Metropolitan Mall, Saket, but had to shut down after being hugely successful. The old ai sprawled across 13-14,000 square feet and had a nightclub, The Love Hotel, attached to it; Guppy by Ai has 2,200 square feet and 45 covers per seating. Likewise, Le Bistro du Parc, AD's other new venture, across the park literally from the hardy perennial, Flavors, makes up for limited space with great everyday French food and an ambience that invites you to stay on.

AD Singh: passion-driven entrepreneur

"You don't need Italian marble to deliver a great dining experience. We need to combine charm and affordability," says AD, who has halved the running costs of his restaurants by trimming expenses and sourcing good local ingredients, such as yellowfin tuna from the Andamans. He mentions as a role model the success of The Rose at Hauz Khas Village (www.therosenewdelhi.com), a chic 12-room boutique hotel with a garden cafe and a spa, which cost its promoters all of Rs 80 lakh.

"For the longest time, the real winners in our business have been the landlords," says AD, "but we are seeing signs of maturity in the market. The larger real estate players are looking at restaurants that last for the long term. They want restaurants that will be around at least for the nine years of the lease term."

A great one for  sprawling, independent spaces,  AD has now signed up with DLF for two new restaurant concepts -- one of them being the first Olive Cafe -- at India's first dedicated food mall, The Hub at the Cyber Park in Gurgaon. "I am quite confident about The Hub," says AD. "It can be Gurgaon's No. 1 food destination because people want choice."

AD has also given a new direction to his HR policies. The shift has been inspired by the successful transitions made by his former staffers. "Three of the most popular new places in Delhi have been opened by people who have worked with me," he says, listing Rara Avis (Laurent Guiraud), Imperfecto (Nuria Rodriguez) and PCO (Vaibhav Singh). AD's is the first restaurant company in the country to offer "substantial partnerships to our managers".

The first beneficiaries have been the talented executive chef of Olive Bangalore, Manu Chandra, and Olive Mumbai's long-time business development manager, Chetan Rampal, who have been made partners in the company set up by AD to manage Monkey Bar and Like That Only in Bangalore, and roll out similar gastropubs across the country. AD reckons this company will be valued at Rs 25 crore by the end of this year.

Likewise, AD has extended the ESOPs offer to 14 of his managers. "This is a key process in our development because our managers have come of age," he says. "It shows our willingness to share the upside to attract and retain talent." For another powerhouse of talent in his team, Sabyasachi 'Saby' Gorai, AD has tapped into the young man's passion for teaching by setting up the Olive Culinary Academy, whose first batch of 14 graduates has just entered the work force.

Acquisition and mergers are AD's next big step. The country is teeming with bright young restaurateurs who are struggling against adverse market conditions. AD is offering them an opportunity to come on board so that "we can script exciting F&B stories together" and "work on building a common platform for sourcing, real estate tie-ups, back-end controls and talent management". To potential partner restaurants, AD is also talking about the near future when his company gets listed and together they get to earn from its market valuation.

All this corporate talk makes me nervous. Organisations lose their soul when the bean counters (read PE funds and the rest of the men in suits) start calling the shots. But AD's heart still beats for the right cause. "We see ourselves not as a chain, but as a collection of boutique restaurants." he says. That's reassuring, coming from a man who brought fun back to the business of dining at a time when fuddy-duddy five-stars ruled the roost.