High Priest of Pastry Chefs Takes Delhi on a Guided Tour of His Magical World of Flavours

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

Pierre Herme explaining the finer points of a
macaroon at his tete-a-tete with the city's leading
chefs, restaurateurs and bloggers at Le Cirque,
The Leela Palace New Delhi, Chanakyapuri.
Picture: Courtesy of Rupali Dean

WHEN Chumki Bharadwaj, Associate Editor, India Today Spice, informed us that more than 90 invitees had confirmed their attendance for the 'High Tea with Pierre Herme' organised on Monday jointly by her publication and The Leela Palace New Delhi, Chanakyapuri, I expected all hell to break loose. But Rajesh Namby, the hotel's Executive Assistant Manager (F&B), did not bat an eyelid. With clockwork efficiency and dazzling speed, he re-arranged the seating at Le Cirque, the appropriately chosen venue of the event, and inspired the equally even-tempered Executive Chef Christophe Gillino to make food for a gathering of 100-plus leading chefs, restaurateurs and bloggers of the city. It is not for nothing that Namby has been named Delhi's Best F&B Manager not once but on several occasions by top critics, including Vir Sanghvi, and leading publications.

Herme, universally hailed as 'The Picasso of Pastry', was having a quite lunch at Megu, the hotel's Japanese restaurant, when all this action was happening. When he came up to Le Cirque with his charming wife and his company's president, Charles Znaty, after what seemed like a soul-satisfying meal, he looked a little apprehensive. To unwind him, I asked him how his Sunday visit to Agra was and he instantly broke into a sunny smile, and said, "It was beautiful! It was too beautiful!"

France's most celebrated patissier, whose macaroons and chocolates are in a league of their own, dispensed with the services of the interpreter and connected effortlessly with the audience, whose questions were as well-researched as the answers were well thought out. The session was studded with profound one-liners from Herme.

Herme sketches out the macaroons he conceives
and then writes detailed recipes below. Here's his
sketch of his best-known macaroon, Ispahan.
Picture: Courtesy of Rupali Dean

"If there are no flavours to invent, I would be dead," said the man who reinvented macaroons (or macarons, as he insisted on calling them, in the way a true-blue Frenchman would call these confections). "There's no conflict between tradition and creativity," he said when asked about how he viewed the contributions of molecular gastronomy to the pastry chef's craft. "When you're in pastry school, keep asking questions, keep demanding more. Don't just accept what your teachers tell you. I was known as the guy who asks too many questions," said the former student of Lenotre, which Sabyasachi Gorai described as "the Harvard of pastry chefs", in response to a question on how a newbie could aspire to become like him.

He also shared with us his personal gold standard. "A macaron should be slightly crunchy when you bite into it and then it must be soft, not chewy," he said, laying down the definition of perfection, which The Oberoi New Delhi's talented pastry chef, Vikas Vibhuti, hopes to follow to the last letter when he unveils his own line of these delicious little temptations that Herme has made us fall in love with.

At the India Today Conclave, Herme, who draws inspiration from around the world, did not say anything categorical about how India has influenced him, but on Monday, he talked about his love for Alphonso mangoes and his interest in mustard oil. "I have always wanted to taste mustard oil to be able to understand its flavours and I got to do it during my present visit," he said, without divulging more, in response to MasterChef India co-host and The Leela Gurgaon's Executive Sous Chef Kunal Kapur's suggestion that he should not leave the country without having Dal Makhni and Butter Chicken. Well, one of his famous macaroons, inspired by a visit to an olive oil press in Italy, has among its ingredients the green first-press olive oil, vanilla and individual green olives sliced by hand into three pieces.

Herme dazzled us with the array of ingredients that he uses in his macaroons and chocolates. Of course, we didn't get to bite into the ones with foie gras, white and black truffles, which Herme rolls out only during Christmas, but we did get to taste combinations of vanilla from Mexico, Madagascar and Tahiti, hazelnut from Piedmont, cinnamon from Sri Lanka, lemon from Sicily, and single-origin chocolate from, among other places, a Venezuelan village named Chuao, which has no proper road, but whose 122 cocoa farmers produce a magical ingredient for the patissier's repertoire.

"We always have 18 different kinds of chocolates on our menu," Hermes said -- and the point to note is that he never repeats a collection from one season to another. What about the rose-litchi-raspberry combination that has immortalised Ispahan, his most famous macaroon? "We have 42 recipes with this combination," said the man who revels in the fine art of "the management of combinations of flavours".

Herme was only 14 years old when he got interested in macaroons. That was the year 1976 and a macaroon then meant, to quote Herme, "two biscuits with just four different types of fillings". By now, Herme must have left a trail of several hundred flavour combinations, but he's constantly seeking out more. I now wonder when we'll get to savour a hint of mustard oil in his macaroons.

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.