Zorawar Kalra Set to Unveil Farzi Cafe in Gurgaon & Woo Market for $8m Cash Infusion

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

IT IS difficult to be Jiggs Kalra's son because of the gastronomical legacy you carry on your shoulders, but Massive Restaurants Managing Director Zorawar Kalra wears his heritage with elan. As he gets ready to open his newest concept restaurant, Farzi Cafe at the Cyber Hub, Gurgaon, reinventing the coffee shop culture with the tools and techniques of molecular gastronomy, Zorawar is carrying forward his father's tradition of innovating with imagination.

With Farzi Cafe, Zorawar Kalra is all
set to firmly establish himself as the
young and credible new face of
Modern Indian cuisine

Jiggs Kalra turned the salmon tikka and galauti kebab into national favourites; Zorawar Kalra is pushing the envelope with boti kebab tacos, dal-chawal arancini, karela calamari and anda bhurjee with chilli con queso (or molten cheese dip spiked with chillies) -- all invented dishes that may seem to a traditionalist to be straight out Mad Hatter's tea party, but which, without doubt, will bring the young back to the cuisine they had forsaken because it had become too predictable to tickle their taste buds.

And as he goes about giving Modern Indian cuisine a new direction with his talented team of Varun Duggal, the strategist, and Himanshu Saini, the star chef who (with Saurabh Udinia) has made Masala Library the go-to restaurant of Mumbai, Zorawar is working to a five-year business plan loaded with ambitious targets. He had set out with an infusion of funds from Gaurav Goenka's Mirah Hospitality, which has also made big-ticket investments in Riyaz Amlani's Impresario Entertainment and Hospitality and the Rajdhani restaurants, but with this  money exhausted by his first round of projects (including Made in Punjab), Zorawar is going back to the market to raise $8 million (Rs 48 crore at the present exchange rate) to finance his expansion plans.

Zorawar's plan is to take Made in Punjab to Tier-II cities, with 15 of them up and running in the next three or four years, open at least eight Farzi Cafe outlets in the same period, starting with the next one in Dubai, and go international with Masala Library with a network franchisees extending all the way to Dubai. "I am looking at Massive Restaurants notching up a turnover of Rs 225-250 crore at the end of five years," Zorawar said in an interview with the Indian Restaurant Spy.

Money does matter, but it's food that gets Zorawar most excited. He seems to be firm believer of the old restaurateur's adage, "Good food gets good money." Farzi Cafe, he says, has been an idea he has carried with him for eight years ("the first cafe in the world to showcase molecular gastronomy"), but it took shape only over the last six months, after extensive food trials.

Zorawar's vision was given a shape and form by the highly talented Himanshu, Manish Mehrotra's former protege who first came into the limelight when he won Chicago/New York restaurateur Rohini Dey's much-publicised 'chef hunt' last summer with his sarson da saag quesadilla served with butter milk foam. It was in that moment in the spotlight that Himanshu made a couple of telling comments that foretold his future. “There is a thin line between fusion and confusion," he said. "Once that is sorted, half the battle is won." He then went on to pay a tribute to his original guru: "You can’t think straight with food. Every dish must be prepared  like a story. That’s what I learnt from Manish Mehrotra.”

Farzi means 'fake', but it could also be an illusion, which is what Zorawar wants to serve on the plate -- a dish that doesn't taste the way you'd expect it to from it looks. The cafe's bar menu has a dozen molecular gastronomy-inspired cocktails and its tapas selection is crowded with surprises, from spare ribs spiked with the world's hottest bhut jolokia chillies and a double- deck galauti burger to tandoori lamb served with maple-soy sauce and whisky sour cream and a Philly cheese raan hot dog.

For the mains, some of the options are Thai green curry khichdi, roomali roti ravioli with eggplant mozzarella bharta and poha Pad Thai with wok-tossed red snapper. A couple of the desserts seem straight out of science fiction -- phirni oxide, for instance, or Bailey's lollipop prepared on Zorawar's favourite new toy, the anti-griddle, which can reduce the temperature of any liquid to minus-30 degrees Celsius in a flash -- but there's also the Parle-G cheesecake or the Cassata Indiana served with Magic Pops. It's as if Zorawar and Himanshu just let their imagination go on a free ride on the wild side.

Diners in Mumbai have savoured the creative repertoire of Zorawar's team, but at Cyber Hub, sadly, he's invariably measured by the day's lunch buffet at Made in Punjab, which not only is a steadily popular restaurant, but also has an a la carte menu studded with gems. Farzi Cafe, I hope, will allow him to be judged for what he and his young, talented and turbo-charged team are really worth.

Riyaaz Amlani's Eyes $20m Funding As He Targets Entrepreneurial Youth With 'Social' Brand

Either scale up or be prepared to
get copied by cheap imitators,
says restaurant mogul
Riyaaz Amlani of Impresario
Entertainment & Hospitality

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

"Starbucks positions itself as the 'third place' between work and home, but for me, Social is the 'second place' -- a place to work and to unwind for entrepreneurial young people who are setting themselves up."

ONE OF India's biggest self-made entrepreneurial success stories in the restaurant business, Riyaaz Amlani, is all set to raise another $20 million (Rs 120 crore at present exchange rates) to finance the ambitious growth targets that he has set for his hospitality company, Impresario Entertainment & Hospitality Pvt. Ltd.

Impresario has already received two rounds of private equity funding from Beacon India, the local arm of Baer Partners that has invested in entities as diverse as the National Stock Exchange, Ratnakar Bank, Saffronart and Delhi's Bhayana Builders, and Gaurav Goenka's Mirah Hospitality, whose showpiece brands include Citrus Hotels and Khandani Rajdhani.

After selling shoes when he was a teenager, getting an MBA in Entertainment Management at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), and working for media mogul and former Rajya Sabha MP Pritish Nandy, Amlani launched Mocha: Coffees and Conversations, a bold experiment to bring the culture of five-star coffee shops to young people like him, at a 500 sq. ft. location at Churchgate, Mumbai, in 2001.

Today, 13 years on, Amlani presides over a restaurant business that spans 39 outlets in 12 cities, and concepts as diverse as his star chef Gresham Fernandes's Gypsy Kitchen pop-up dinners at St Jude's Bakery in the quaint East Indian village of Ranwar in Bandra, Mumbai, to his newest (and most exciting) brand, Social, which has been conceptualised as a quirky work and party space for "young bootstrapping entrepreneurs".

The view from Hauz Khas Social, the latest
addition to Amlani's expanding restaurant
empire of 39 outlets in 12 cities

Having put his foot on the accelerator of expansion, Amlani plans to open 50-60 Smoke House Deli outlets in the seven major metros (Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata and Pune), and at least two or three each of the more fine dining-focused Salt Water Cafe in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, apart from taking Mocha to Tier-II towns because "Tier-I rental are driving us to them".

But at the core of this ambitious growth strategy is Amlani's belief that the 'cafe bars' catering to the young in metropolitan cities will drive his business. He spells out three reasons for his thrust on cafe bars. One, the audience is bigger, more loyal and much more appreciative of his concepts. Two, in this age of spiralling rentals, restaurateurs have got to sweat their assets by creating all-day dining spaces. "You no longer have the luxury to be a nights- or weekends-only, or fine dining-centric business," reasons Amlani. Three, and perhaps most important, "the battle now is for the customer's watch, not for his wallet." People's leisure time is "shrinking", so the restaurant of the future, such as Social, has to blur the dividing line between work and leisure spaces.

"Starbucks positions itself as the 'third place' between work and home, but for me, Social is the 'second place' -- a place to work and to unwind for entrepreneurial young people who are setting themselves up," says Amlani, as I dig the Pakistani street food delicacy, Anda Shammi, in a sea activity on the pre-opening afternoon of Hauz Khas Social.

Amlani got the idea of Social by watching people armed with laptops conducting business meetings at Barista or Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) outlets. He was quick to realise that coffee shops are becoming business hubs for young entrepreneurs, but there is an awkwardness in the equation, because people using these spaces for work have this feeling in the back of their mind that they are taking unfair advantage of the hospitality of a Barista or a CCD.

To end this awkwardness and give the people using the space a sense of ownership, Amlani has worked out a business model that allows a start-up the right to use Social for a nominal monthly payment of Rs 5,000 per person -- redeemable against food and drink vouchers. That's so much cheaper than owning an office space anywhere in Delhi-NCR and in this case, the 'office' comes with raw entrepreneurial energy all around it, decently priced food (as you'd expect from your workplace cafeteria), effective air-conditioning, working loos and, more importantly, a view to die for (and on a rainy day, a steady cool gust to keep you inspired).

With naked walls, recycled furniture, a work-in-process look and the hand-painted signs of street art pioneer Hanif Kureshi (better known by his brand name 'Daku', which is the abbreviated form of Design, Art and Culture), Hauz Khas Social, which sprawls across 8,500 sq. ft., also has fully equipped conference rooms that participating startups can use for free. And just in case you are tired of ordering the sumptuous all-day breakfast options (priced between Rs 250 and Rs 300), or the other offbeat menu items created by the brilliant trio of food and beverages head Sid Mathur, and chefs Gaurav Gidwani and Shamsul Wahid, you could ask for the Rs 150 daal-chaawal-sabzi combination of the Social Staff Meal Du Jour.

Is Amlani under pressure from his PE fund investors to expand at a breakneck pace? He answers the question in parts. "PE funds invest in you because of your ability to scale up," Amlani says at first, but then he admits: "Scale is the enemy of soul." But then he says that if he doesn't scale up a concept, others would roll out cheap copies and make a mockery of the original idea.

"I learnt this lesson from my Mocha experience," he reminisces. As soon as the original Mocha in Mumbai started gaining attention, others started copying the idea and before you could say Jack Robinson, as many as 2,200 Mocha copies came up around the country in less than a year. The challenge before Amlani, therefore, is to balance scale with soul -- not the McDonald's or Domino's way. And he does it successfully at Social, whose food and beverage offerings come with a refreshingly new twist (which will be the subject of my next Dining Out review). Restaurateurs like Amlani scaling up is good news for diners who are hungry for more.

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.

Riyaz Amlani and Zorawar Kalra team up for global tandoor restaurant

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

THE hospitality world is abuzz with talk about the new projects that are to be unveiled in the next couple of months and the whispers are loudest about the grand alliance of restaurant operator Riyaz Amlani, CEO and Managing Director of Impresario Entertainment & Hospitality (www.impresario.in), and Zorawar Kalra, who sold his Punjab Grill stake to Amit Burman to be able to roll out new cuisine concepts.

With the blessings of strategic investor and brand builder Gaurav Goenka of Mirah Hospitality (www.mirahhospitality.com), Amlani, creator of the successful Smoke House Deli and Mocha franchises, and Kalra are working together to turn the top floor and rooftop of what used to be Suresh Kalmadi’s Village Bistro Restaurant Complex at Hauz Khas Village into a global tandoor restaurant. The restaurant overlooks the 13th-century Hauz Khas reservoir, whose water has turned green because of evident lack of care, and the well-maintained madrasa built by the mid-14th century Delhi Sultanate ruler, Firuz Shah Tughlaq.

The view from the rooftop of the Village Bistro Restaurant Complex, where the global tandoor restaurant of Riyaz Amlani and Zorawar Kalra is set to come up within months. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The buzz is that the restaurant will be named Tinur, after the Akkadian word for tandoor (Akkadian, incidentally, is an extinct language) found in the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, and it will trace the journey of the clay oven from our sub-continent to Iran and Central Asia, and thereafter to the rest of the world. Of course, the restaurant is at present a scooped-out shell and before it takes off, Kalra will open the Masala Library, a new concept restaurant offering a cutting-edge pan-Indian menu with touches of molecular gastronomy, at Mumbai’s Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC), the workplace of over 400,000 people.

After Mumbai, Kalra will open the second Masala Library in Bangalore, and the more value-for-money Made in Punjab at The Hub, India’s first restaurant mall in the DLF Cyber Park in Gurgaon. Amlani, who started life as a shoe salesman and studied entertainment management in America, is launching three more Smoke House Delis in the months ahead, which will lift the number of this accessible fine-dining brand to seven. These are busy days for successful restaurateurs.