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.

DINING OUT: Indian Accent Shows One More Time Why It's Unshakably No. 1

WHERE: Indian Accent, The Manor, 77, Friends Colony (West)

WHEN: 12 noon to 3 p.m.; 7 to 11 p.m.

DIAL: +91-11-43235151; +91-9871117968

AVG MEAL FOR TWO (MINUS ALCOHOL): Rs 6,000+++

STAR RATING: *****

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

WHEN A chef comes visiting from Nairobi, where does one take him out for a meal? I suggested the Cyber Hub, which I regard as a foodie continent that must be replicated in all cities where people have to wrestle with dining-out options, but Karan Suri, whom I have known since the days when he set up Le Cirque and Megu at The Leela Palace in Chanakyapuri, said his wife's dream was to have Manish Mehrotra's warm doda burfi treacle tart at the Indian Accent.

Manish Mehrotra (seated, with a young
colleague behind him) has reasons to be
proud of the dish he's holding -- duck
khurchan and flamed foie gras in a
masala cornetto. It combines a wow
taste with inventiveness. Seated on the
table is the most unusual yet perfect
marriage of seared prawns, churan ka
karela, quinoa puffs and bitter
 melon crisp. Image: Courtesy of
Ramesh Sharma, Mail Today.

The wife's will had to prevail (and who were we to strike down a meal at one of the country's finest restaurants?), so we went to Indian Accent for a lazy lunch over a bottle of Sula Dindori Reserve Shiraz 2010, my favourite red wine, and an at-times disheartening conversation on the state of hospitality education.

The conversation, enlivened by Manish, whom Karan had known from their days on the sets of the India-Pakistan cookery show, Foodistan, was provoked by my observation that the syllabus at hotel management institutes around the country doesn't reflect the vast changes that have taken place in the business of food. New concerns, new ingredients, new techniques and new talent are powering restaurant menus, and age or experience is no longer a barrier to entry, as I realised when I tasted the outstanding spread of Manish's acolyte, 26-year-old Saurabh Udinia, at the Masala Library in the Bandra Kurla Centre (BKC), Mumbai.

It is this newness of thinking that oozes out of every helping of Manish's winter menu executed by his 'other half' -- his old team-mate Shantanu Mehrotra (they're not related). We were privileged to preview it, for Manish was keen to know what we felt about it before unveiling it to Indian Accent's patrons next week.

To give you an idea of the newness of the menu, I must start with the dish that came at the end -- slow-cooked lamb shank in corn malai with pink peppers. It was Manish's reinterpretation of the Kashmiri/Iranian aab gosht, or mutton cooked with milk, saffron and spices, but the replacement of milk with corn malai and the touch of pink peppers gave the preparation a consistency and layers of texture that are missing in the original.

The same inventive jugglery and interplay of textures was evident in the chicken tikka meatballs served on a bed of chopped tomato makhni. You can in fact make the chicken tikka meatballs at home by roughly chopping semi-cooked chicken tikka pieces, rolling them with chicken mince,  and then frying the balls before cooking in a makhni gravy. You'll find these a welcome departure from uni-textured chicken mince balls.

The same degree of thinking out of the box has gone into the Kashmiri morel mussallam (it's indeed a treat to bite into a plum morel!) served with crushed roast walnuts and parmesan papad; duck khurchan and flamed foie gras in a masala cornetto; fish baked with Amritsari masala butter and served on a bed of sarson ka sag and makki ki roti (I'll go back again just for this dish); and pork belly cooked in a gravy of walnuts and prunes. Even the amuse bouche -- mini blue cheese naan with corn shorba shot -- was a mini gastronomic experience.

Indian Accent's guardian angels have retained the old favourites, especially the meetha achar Chilean spare ribs served with sun-dried mango and toasted kalonji seeds; the incredible anar and churan kulfi sorbet; and the unmissable kulchas (especially the one filled with chilli hoisin duck). You can have all of these, or a bit of some, but whatever you do, don't leave without my favourite dessert -- besan laddoo tart, mithai cheesecake and winter fruits. It's a fitting finale to a meal that'll leave you in a state of levitation that's said to be induced by substances of another kind!