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.

Zorawar Kalra Presents Farzi Cafe Sneak Preview at Delhi Gourmet Club's Gourmet Passport 2014-15 Launch

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

Zorawar Kalra, Managing Director, Massive
Restaurants (Made in Punjab/Masala Library),
raises a toast to the Gourmet Passport 2014-15.
Others in the picture: (From left) Varun Duggal
of Massive Restaurants, Atul Sikand of the
Delhi Gourmet Club (DGC), yours truly, Aditya
Soni of Citibank, Sandeep Tandon of Old World
Hospitality and DGC's Rocky Mohan.

WHERE else can the humble karela be turned into a gourmet statement than at a Zorawar Kalra restaurant? And what can be a better forum to showcase the talented young chef Himanshu Saini's 'bitter gourd tempura' with sweet and sour raw mango chutney than the launch of the Gourmet Passport 2014-15? The smartly designed book of 402 'buy one main course, get one free' discount coupons from 134 restaurants in Delhi and Mumbai was presented by the Delhi Gourmet Club in partnership with Citibank at a free-flowing launch party on May 1 attended by all the supporters of the project.

SURPRISE PACKAGE OF THE EVENING:
Karela has never tasted better than in the
Bitter Gourd Tempura with sweet and sour
mango chutney served at the Gourmet
Passport 2014-15 launch party at Made
in Punjab on Thursday, May 1, 2014.
Of course, this was just one of the star
items on the 12-course menu.

The venue was Made in Punjab at Gurgaon's Cyber Hub; the finger-licking good food was from the menu of the upcoming Farzi Cafe next door ("it's not even 10 per cent of what we have in mind," Zorawar assured us, making us wonder, "what next?"); and the guests seen enjoying Himanshu's goodies included industry leaders Sandeep Tandon (Old World Hospitality), AD Singh (Olive Bar & Kitchen) and Pankaj Mathur (The Suryaa); restaurant powerhouses Janti Duggal (Mamagoto), Atul Kapur (QBA and The China House), Rajeev Aneja (Rara Avis) and Prashant Narula (Kwality Group); some of Delhi/NCR's most talented chefs -- Soumya Goswami, Ravitej Nath, Vikas Vibhuti and Sandeep Kalra (The Oberoi), Rajiv Malhotra and Pradeep Khullar (Old World Hospitality), Arun Kumar TR (Zambar/Lite Bite Foods), Vikram Khatri, Sujan Sarkar and Vaibhav Bhargava (Olive Bar & Kitchen and Guppy by Ai); F&B hotshots Ravindra Kumar (The Lalit's most durable pillar of excellence), Rajesh Namby (The Leela Palace New Delhi), Mohit Balachandran (Sodabottleopenerwala), Suveer Sodhi (The Lodhi), Sid Mathur (Impresario/Smoke House Deli), Yogendra Negi (DLF Restaurants/Set'z) and Sohan Bohra (Kylin Premier); and my partners in journalistic crimes -- Neeta Raheja (Very Truly Yours), Mukta Kapoor (Old World Hospitality), Deepica Sarma and Mallika Gowda (The Oberoi), Pallavi Singh (Crowne Plaza Okhla), Nidhi Verma (The Leela Ambience Gurgaon), Madhur Madaan (Kempinski Ambience), Nidhi Budhia (Crowne Plaza Rohini) and Manita Asija Tuteja (Kylin Premier/Sartoria).

But the star of the evening was the spread planned by Zorawar and his multi-talented deputy Varun Duggal with Himanshu. Just back from America, where he had presented a talk on the trends defining contemporary Indian cuisine in the august company of Grand Master Chef Hemant Oberoi of The Taj Hotels, Zorawar said the Farzi Cafe, which is coming up right next door to Made in Punjab at the ground level of the Cyber Hub, would take 'Modernist' Indian cuisine to a level that is a notch higher than his other baby, Masala Library at the Bandra Kurla Complex. Now, that's a very serious challenge to set for oneself -- Masala Library, after all, has won nine prestigious awards in the seven months that it has been around! I am sure he must have picked up ideas from his recent visit to Alinea in Chicago, where the American guru of molecular gastronomy, Grant Achatz, gave him a guided tour of the kitchen (a rare honour).

AD Singh, who's unfailing in his praise for restaurants (even if they have the potential of becoming his competition), couldn't stop praising the papad-crusted dal chawal arancini with achari crème cheese and onion chutney. It was a brilliant reconstruction of the Sicilian classic with an Indian twist. My personal favourites were the tandoori portobello mushrooms with truffle walnut herb crust, bhoot jolokia lamb chops with tempered coriander seeds, and the chilli duck samosa served with roasted plum chutney. Each dish came with a twist and the presentations showed the Zorawar Kalra eye for detailing. As one of the guests said, "The food tasted as good as the discount coupons inside the book." Well, you have a year to check out each one of the 134 restaurants that have participated in the book that has stirred the pot of Delhi's imagination.

Italian Tops Home Delivery Food Choices; Pizza Hut, Yo! China & Nirula's Hot Favourites in Foodpanda.in Survey

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

MAMA MIA, North India is

Rohit Chadda, Co-Founder and Managing Director,
Foodpanda.in, says the survey results reflect the
cosmopolitan food choices of the website's
youth market-driven demographic 

saying 'bye, bye' to Chinese and going 'bhai, bhai' with Italian. Sounds impossible? You may have thought Indian and Chinese are the hottest favourites of the North Indian dining market, but 44.8 per cent of those who order home-delivered meals through Foodpanda.in, a Rocket Internet-incubated website operating in 40 countries across four continents, prefer Italian over Chinese, Punjabi and fast food.

Surprisingly, though, Chinese has a 27.6 per cent following, but Punjabi has slipped to as low as 6.2 per cent. The survey report doesn't give the percentage for fast food, but if you do the math, it ranks a healthy third with 21.4 per cent.

That seems highly likely in the light of the fact that Nirula's is the restaurant franchise that ranks third in popularity among Foodpanda.in users after Pizza Hut (whose thin crust and cheesy pizzas top the list of favourites) and Yo! China, a chain of popular Chinese restaurants with a strong takeaway business promoted by Ashish Kapur, Ajay Saini and Joydeep Singh.

Finding the survey results a bit hard to stomach, for they flew in the face of conventional wisdom, I called up Rohit Chadda, the young co-founder and managing director of Foodpanda.in. He was quick to point that 60 per cent of 50,000-60,000 unique visitors that the website belong to the 25-35 age group, and an equal percentage of them are from Delhi-NCR, Mumbai and Bangalore. He did not divulge the actual number of orders placed by these visitors to the website.

"Our survey results reflect the cosmopolitan nature of the taste buds of our demographic, which is essentially the youth market in the three big metros," Chadda said. Pizzas are most popular, he added, because they are "faster to deliver and easier to eat". Yo! China's Yo Boxes are also "very popular" because they are "very affordable" and offer "very good quality". The Foodpanda.in demographic clearly seeks out both affordability and quality.

With a sizeable segment of urban India, especially the young, living away from home, the takeaway and home delivery market is booming. Chadda said that whereas organised food retail grew by 20-25 per cent in 2012, the takeaway and home delivery segment rose by 40 per cent. He estimated that the segment has grown to become a Rs 1,000-crore business nationally and is poised to expand to up to Rs 6,000 crore by 2017.

"The takeaway and home delivery model offers convenience to customers because the food comes cheaper and 5-6 per cent higher margins to restaurant chains because of the reduced overhead costs," Chadda said. Unsurprisingly, significant players in the industry such as Anjan Chatterjee's Speciality Restaurants (the holding company of Mainland China) and Amit Burman and Rohit Aggarwal-promoted Lite Bite Foods are driving their takeaway and home delivery business. Even an established brand such as Kabir Advani's Berco's is popularising a hybrid growth model -- smaller restaurants with 40-50 covers and a sharp focus on home delivery. For long, we have been accustomed to a 'ghar bhijwa dena' relationship with our friendly neighbourhood kirana store. Restaurants are now getting to hear these familiar words and it's music to their ears.

Punjab Grill's Gurpreet Singh Gehdu Says Chak De and Reinvents the Indian Bar Menu

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

I BECAME an admirer of Gurpreet Singh Gehdu after I sampled his Winter Menu some months back at Punjab Grill, Select Citywalk, Saket, in the highly entertaining company of Rohit Aggarwal of Lite Bite Foods (LBF). That was before Aggarwal disappeared into Mumbai's cavernous new T2 terminal to set up one food outlet after another and then vamoozed off to Bhutan, via Darjeeling and Sikkim, with his motorbike buddies.

So, I got tempted when Sonali Priy Kapoor, LBF's marketing communications head, reminded me about the launch of the restaurant's Chakhna (Tasting) Menu this past Friday. I was initially in two minds about going for it because I wanted to sample the Gua Baos being served at the opening of i-kandy on the same night at Pullman Central Park Gurgaon, but Sonali's power of persuasion prevailed over my reluctance. I thank Sonali for it. I got one more opportunity to eat out of the hands of the incredibly talented Mr Gehdu and also spend a delightful evening in the company of Vivek Vaid (Tiger's Gyaan), Avininder Singh (Foodie Surdie), Maneesh Srivastava (former HR professional, photographer and blogger at Mystic Foodie Mantra) and Gurpreet Singh Tikku.

The incredibly talented Gurpreet Singh Gehdu at
work at the Punjab Grill kitchen. (Below) The
quartet of vodka-laced flavoured chuskis is a
part of the Saket restaurant's Chakhna menu.

My faith in Gehdu, who was with Old World Hospitality before he moved on to LBF, was reinforced by the ingenious way in which he raised the commonplace matthi into the realm of the sublime by serving a platter with a fondue, where he added Old Monk rum in place of the white wine and kirsch (cherry brandy), which are used traditionally in the Swiss favourite. The other accompaniment was a mildly hot imli (tamarind) chutney. The combination was brilliant because of the ease with which it transformed an everyday experience into a novelty.

The accompanying drinks had a similar magical effect on me. I couldn't decide, in fact, which one was better -- the Rasbhari Margarita (the au naturel cape gooseberry sorbet, I thought, was an idea that needed to be popularised at once), or the Gannewali Margarita (the sugarcane juice in this drink was tempered with mint, black salt, ginger and lemon juice).

Giving them heady competition were the vodka-laced chuski in different flavours, though I can't say I was as enthused by the Old Monk RimZim. The cocktail may have revived memories of RimZim, the popular 'masala cola' that Coke recently brought out of the cold storage after canning it following the acquisition of Ramesh Chauhan's Parle Agro portfolio in 1993, but it lacked character. I still prefer my Old Monk with either honey and warm water, or Coke and soda in equal measure.

My favourites of the evening were the Sunny Side Up Tuk Tuk in a Khameeri Roti (a kheema patty crowned by a fried egg, sunny side up, in a khameeri roti packet), melt-in-the-mouth Amritsari Machchhi served innovatively with crunchy old-fashioned potato chips, addictive Tandoori Kukkad Wings and imli chutney, and the unforgettable Tawa Chicken Keema with Fryums (the fry-and-eat tube-shaped snack items produced by the TTK Group). It was like a marriage procession of many textures and tastes brought together by the brilliance of an adventurous chef who pushes his creative boundaries without diluting the innate strengths of timeless recipes. Without doubt, Gehdu has raised the bar for Indian bar food and given birth to a new genre of Indian tapas.

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.

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.