Hunger Inc The Brutal Reality Of Building Restaurants In India Table 1 With Vir Sanghvi

TITLE: Hunger Inc: The Brutal Reality Of Building Restaurants In India | Table 1 with Vir Sanghvi CHANNEL: Culinary Culture DATE: 2026-04-18 ---TRANSCRIPT--- Chefs take breaks and go and cry in the closet To be very honest, got my ass kicked through and through, like to a point that I almost broke down in month one. It was not okay. I used to cry in the walk-ins, to a point where you’re like, “Okay, I don’t know anything. Please teach me.” There was a strange backlash against Bombay Canteen. -It was soul-crushing, literally. -Yeah. And when you’re, especially in Mumbai [laughs] and opening a restaurant, and especially for the first time, you sadly only remember the bad moments. So there were more people shouting at us for no chicken tikka masalas and butter chicken. He said, as he was getting into his Mercedes, that, “I’ll give it to you in writing, in six months you’re shut down.” And my first thing was, “Why didn’t we -call the cops?” -It was that bad? -Yeah. -Apparently, these guys used to have huge -fights -Oh, we fought a lot -… Roger Federer. -Uh, “Hi, Roger. What do you have for -breakfast?” He’s like, “Bacon and eggs.” I didn’t get that. Let me keep the credit card. I thought about it. What we were serving was so foreign to everyone. Floyd would always say, “Till you don’t take time to understand tradition, you -can’t innovate.” -Yep. Ex-Bollywood person to design our restaurant, and we are done. Let’s open. Let’s throw this party. -Someone had thrown an egg on his face. -Giving a whole new definition to the -phrase, eggs Kejriwal Poolside manager means what? Give out -towels and- -[laughs] -Like- -You’re kidding me. Well, the statistics say that around 1.5 lac clicks in the first minute on the -website. -Or a massive ego trip. Easier to get into -an IIT. [laughs] -It is, Yeah. Who’s your favorite chef? -Rolling. Hello, and welcome to Table 1. 11 years ago, I went to a restaurant in Mumbai that I thought was the future of dining in India. It was called Bombay Canteen, and it was outstanding. And you know what? I think I was right, because it was the first in a whole set of restaurants that have changed how dining in India works. So I’m gonna talk to the three guys behind Bombay Canteen and the other restaurants in their group. We’re gonna talk about how they started, how they expanded, how their food is different, and their backgrounds, because they all came from working in top restaurants all over the world, and how, finally, Indian food has come of age. Do you remember when you first came to see me? I think it was at the bar at the -President Hotel. -Yes. And you told me you had this idea for a restaurant, and you were pretty advanced along the way, but you hadn’t moved into the restaurant yet. You were doing -tastings in somebody else’s kitchen. -Correct. -Tell me about that. -Remember it so cle- -Tell me what the idea was. -I remember so clearly because, uh, I think it was probably at some point in 2014 when I met you. -Yeah, probably. -Uh, and we had just, Yash had just moved back earlier that year, and, uh, along with Chef Floyd, all of us were starting to put together what was going to become the Bombay Canteen. And the idea really was to take the thought of what Indian food could be in our homes and the way we grew up, and sort of bring it to the restaurant world because at that time when Yash and I went to Cornell together, and the idea really was that we wanted to open a restaurant together. And the thought emanated from the fact that we were seeing what was happening in the US where I was, in Southeast Asia where Yash was, and we were seeing local food being reimagined. -Okay. -And none of that kind of existed in India at that time. You either went for North Indian food or you went for South Indian food. Everything in the middle was nonexistent in a restaurant. -Yeah. -And the hope and dream along with Chef Floyd was to bring it to life in the form of Bombay Canteen. And I remember- -How did you know Floyd? From New York? -Uh, he was my… He, I was working for him -in New York. -Okay. All right. Yeah, so that’s how we started working together, and- And you said to me that we want to have a restaurant that’s designed like a Bombay bungalow that has a balcony. So I came to the restaurant, and you had to really sit down and think very hard to imagine it -[laughs] as a Bombay bungalow, but- -It, it was creative liberty. -Yeah. -Creative liberty. In a, old mill, the idea was how does the new and old of India and Bombay come together? So we said up to three and a half feet would be old Bombay, and, uh, juxtaposed on top would be the art deco and glass and steel of new Bombay. But, but now when there are so many restaurants in Bombay, we forget that when you opened, it was really unusual and innovative. Nobody had -opened a restaurant like that. -Yes. It’s 11 years as of today, so it really does feel like, uh, ages ago. But I think, yeah, I agree with you that at, at that moment in time, there was no such thing as modern Indian food, right? Modern Indian meant throwing liquid nitrogen at -something. And- -Well, there was a sort of Vineet Bhatia kind of modern Indian, which was sort of very fancy, Frenchified kind of presentation, and there was the Gaggan kind of a modern Indian, which was a… I will tell him you said that, throwing liquid nitrogen at- -[laughs] -[laughs] Throwing liquid nitrogen at -things. -Modern has lost me. Yeah. And then what you guys did was completely different, no? And it was really sort of, I think some of those original thoughts came from, guardrails came from Chef Floyd. He was like, “If you’re gonna do this, let’s cook the way we cook at home. Let’s cook seasonally. Let’s change it.” At, that point, there was no restaurant in India, I’m pretty sure, that changed its menus every three or four months. You know, like, let’s use ingredients that are only from India, of India. And those became sort of the building blocks to what became, uh, Bombay Canteen. And the idea really was how do you present it in the form of small plates and large plates, chhotas and badas, to keep it really- And there were chintus as well, weren’t there? … familiar. Chintus as well, exactly. Just the way you go to someone’s home and have a snack, and that’s how we kind of, uh, would begin the meal at Bombay Canteen. Remember Raj and I came on what, one of your early days. I, I think you had opened a week or something, and we were completely blown away because nobody in India had ever done a restaurant like that. Was that like a normal reaction, that, “My God, we’ve never seen anything like -this?” -[laughs] I’m trying to, like, jog my -memory. I don’t know if you remember. -I was going through this yesterday because,I feel like you know, hindsight, you can articulate things, right? When you are in that moment, you are just putting out fires. Yeah. Um, and when you’re especially in Mumbai and opening a restaurant, and especially for the first time, you sadly only remember the bad moments. So there were more people shouting at us for no chicken tikka masalas than butter chicken. -Were they really- -Yeah, yeah -…people? Oh, 100%. -Um, actually, the funniest one is, and we did it in our 10-year anniversary, our first TripAdvisor review is the worst -thing you’ll ever read. -Oh, really? What did it say? -Uh- -I’ll see if I can do better, but -[laughs] yeah. -It talks about… I think that person, uh, we know who it was because he gave me that review in person also before leaving. He said as he was getting into his Mercedes that, “I’ll give it to you in writing, in six months you’ll shut down.” And, um, he was having an issue. He had had dinner, he had actually enjoyed his dinner, but he had an issue with the way we were seating people. We do two seatings. And he started asking my history, and I, like we were talking earlier, I was telling him I used to be a waiter at Celini, loved it. So he’s mentioned it there that a waiter has turned owner- -[laughs] -…and doesn’t know what he’s doing. -That’s so Indian, no? -Yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially when you don’t get what you want. -Yeah. -But this guy seemed to have had a good -meal, so- -Yeah …he got what he wanted. He was just complaining that- He was… I still remember this because, he had a shouting match with Yash, and I stepped in. He, he was pissed off that we didn’t give one of his friends a seat because he’d walked in, and we were so, we were really busy. Yeah, people take that kind of thing personally. Yeah, exactly, so he took it really personally and, uh- His friend was the GM of Oberoi’s. -Which one? -And his friend was, is, was a great -industry icon who was going for a movie. -No GM I, in the Oberoi’s ever been in -this- -As in, you know, we’ve all- -[laughs] -Like, he’s grown up at Oberoi’s. At that -point, you always respect them. -Who’s your, who’s GM? I’m trying to say -like- -Anyway, no, no, it was, way, way before my time. But he did not, the, the GM himself. -This is when Bombay Canteen opened. -Yeah. -You were hardly in school at that time. -Yeah. [laughs] -He was in New York. -I was in New York at that point. [laughs] -Oh, I see, okay. -Yeah, so the GM, he had had his dinner already at the bar because he was in a hurry, and he’d had a great and he had left, and this guy had seen his friend not get a table, so that -entitlement max had kicked in. -But you guys couldn’t find a seat for the -GM or what? -I always used to say I keep the carpenter at the back and drop, who drops out tables from the ceiling for us, but [laughs] -couldn’t find a table. -But you fed him at the bar. -Yeah, we did. -Yeah, we did. I think it was a perfectly fine thing. It’s just that this- -He loved it. He loved it -… this, this gentleman decided to take, -uh- -So the GM didn’t object? -No, his friend did. -No, he, he was really nice about it. -Yeah. -It was his friend who took, uh, -as if it was a personal insult to him. -Yeah. Was it, was that the only sort of bad review you got? -Oh, many. -No, I think we got many. I think i- if I, if you, you also know this, and I remember this so clearly, like the idea of what we were serving was so foreign to everyone. I remember dealing with a guest who was like, “You’ve got a tandoor inside, you’ve got chicken, why can’t you give me chicken tikka?” Right? And we were like, “You can get chicken tikka in hundreds of -other restaurants here. We, we-” -Go next door and get some. Yeah. “We are, we are trying to do something different and come enjoy it, and we don’t need you to enjoy everything we do, but this is our point of view to it.” And I think I’m glad we sort of stuck to our guns because I think, uh, we were able to sort of have a point of view which, uh, has evolved again and again, and I think as time has gone on, Hussain has come and added to that point of view in his beautiful way, so… And it’ll continue to happen, so like I think- But see, that’s the food part of it, which everybody talks about. What nobody talks about, and what really impressed me, was the service. Because you were, you had people who were respectful without being obsequious, who understood the food, and that in India in those days was unusual. -Correct, and I think, yeah- -I think that’s the biggest compliment, right? Like, I feel like what differentiated us from day one was the -hospitality. -Exactly, yeah. We were going to get things wrong, the music was gonna be wrong, the level of noise was gonna be wrong, but the way we were taking care of people, and not just guests, I think the way we -were taking care of our teams. -How much of the hospitality was you? -I think it was- -Because you used to work on the- -Yeah, yeah -… floor in India. In India. So for me, I feel like working in the floor in India for three and a half years and then going to Chicago and Singapore and working on the floor there- -You were a waiter at Celini? -Yes. -Yes. -Yes, yes. -Why a waiter, because? -I feel like when you graduate from hotel management [laughs] college, that’s the best job you get. Yeah, but you, when the story is told, it sounds like you were a humble waiter who worked his way -up. -Yeah. But it wasn’t quite like that, no? See, what happens is like, this is like 19 years ago, right? -Yeah. -Hospitality, I’ll tell you how I got -there. -Okay. I’m sitting for campus interviews. I’m studying in a hotel management college in Goa. I go to my career counselor at the college who’s also our principal saying, “We have only four topics, housekeeping, front office, food -production, F&B service.” -Okay. “Okay, sir, I get good marks in these exams, like, but I don’t know, where is my career in this?” And he looks at me and he’s like, “Yash, you are a tall boy, so join the reception of the hotel.” And I was so naive, I did join the reception of the hotel. [laughs] Why a tall boy? Because the counter is high and so you don’t- Because you’ll be see past the desk, the counters are high. [laughs] You would have been in trouble. Thank -God you know how to.. -100%. [laughs] Thank God you know how to cook. They’d put him in the kitchen. [laughs] -Right. So go on then. -So that’s, that’s the kind of advice you were getting, and this was like pre-internet days, so- -Yeah -… um, and in, at the front desk, like it’s something that never really resonated with me as I was extremely an active person. So at the front desk, you’re just standing, obviously doing important work, but you’re most of the times just showing someone to the washroom or the banquets. Am I, am I right? I don’t mean to interrupt you. Am I right in saying in those days, catering colleges specialized in treat- uh, producing people who go and join Taj- -Yeah -… ITC, et cetera? They never even thought of people who’d go and join standalone restaurants. And to be fair to that, at that point, standalone restaurants didn’t exist at -that level, right? To be fair. -No, I have to say that every time I speak to a group of young students or chefs, the biggest criticism of catering colleges -still is they’re too hotel focused. -Yeah. Yeah. -Where the world is changing. -Because I, I think because most colleges are, are judged by the jobs you can get at the end of it, so they solve for that -incentive. -But now you get lots of jobs in -hospitality. -You can, but I think the hotel, the -schools- -At that point -… are still not catching up- -Yeah -… fast enough, I feel. -That’s right. So, so they told you, “You’re very tall, go and be a receptionist.” Yeah, so I’m at that front desk, and like-That time, you know, NASSCOM happens, the biggest convention at that point, so the hotel gets super busy, and the first place that gets busy- This is which hotel? At the Hyatt, the Grand Hyatt. Okay. This is Grand Hyatt. Yeah, and the first place that gets busy is breakfast buffets, right? [laughs] Yeah. So they are like, “Junior most person on the front desk team go help out in restaurants,” and that was, like, my first foray of, like, actually getting into a busy restaurant. And what I loved was that every time you’re doing something, someone’s yelling for a coffee, someone wants a hot dosa. And I went to HR, got a change in departments, and started working at Celini. The great part of Celini was it served breakfast, which is painful. And you used to do the room service at the hotel also, remember? Yes. So they— we moved around a lot. There used to be a celebrated club sandwich that came from the Celini [laughs] kitchen. I remember that. Celini was 24 hours. Yeah. So we had China House, which had just opened, so when people got drunk and done at four at China House, they came to Celini. Extremely nice guests came to have really hot pizzas. Um, so it was a, it was a joy dealing with people. But you had a, like, an Italian chef in those days, right? Yes, Fabio. Yeah, I remember him. Yeah. Yeah, really good guy. [laughs] I don’t know how much I can- how, how much filtered I need to be on this. Yeah, He is not going to see this. Is it? I also [laughs] … [laughs] Say what you want to say. No, I feel, uh, the reason I said it is so Fabio used to be like, “No, you know, sh-” You know, people used to be like, “Margherita, but green chili "" You know, like sliced green chilies or stuff like that, and he used to be like, “No, no, no, [laughs] no we can’t.” So we used to have it on our side stations. We used to cut chilies ourselves [laughs] and put it on the- But, like, what is the problem, no? He’s gonna put chili flakes on it, so what’s- He might not, like- This remind, this remind me of Chef Floyd when I was working with him in North End Grill. Huh. We had, like, this beautiful San Francisco-style sourdough with the best butter you can get. New York guests who will… He wanted olive oil. He used to refuse to give olive oil [laughs] with the bread, so we used to keep olive oil on the side station [laughs] Yeah. And not tell him. North End Grill was what sort of… A grill? It was an American steakhouse, but with, done in a sort of global flair, which Floyd would do. So then he had no special commitment to butter then, no? But he was sourcing- Old world classics? … the best butter from this one particular spot in Brooklyn, so he wanted to- Maybe they didn’t like his butter. [laughs] Yeah. [laughs] But okay, so- What to say with, say about chefs in general versus, uh- Yeah, chefs. Chefs can be a real pain in the ass, right? Hey, hey, hey. Yeah. Oh, you’re gone, so… So yeah, I feel like I did, um, a year and a half, became a team leader- Yeah … which is just, uh, better pay. Team leader is what? Glorified steward or? Yeah, glorified steward. So, like, to give you an example, like, that my… I pulled out my offer letter the other day. My salary was 8,500 rupees, and to what you were saying in catering- And you had gone to catering college for this? Yes. Okay. [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. [laughs] And then? I had two job offers, to be fair. 8,500 at, at Hyatt, and 30,000 for Jet Airways, to be a air host. Steward. Or a steward. Yeah. Air hostess would have been difficult. Yeah. Steward. [laughs] Yeah, yeah. [laughs] So steward, so steward was possible, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So- Why didn’t you take Jet Airways? You would’ve seen the world. Yeah. As in, I feel, like, naive I got this catering job. I’m hearing about this Jet Airways for the first time. I was, yeah, I had zero idea that this was a thing. Heard, heard first on this podcast. I wasn’t greedy at that point. I think it worked out well. You didn’t like the uniform. Yeah. [laughs] I was tall. I was hitting the- [laughs] Tall for a stewardess. Tall for a stewardess. How much imli goli you can have. Yeah, yeah. So you then went and worked in Southeast Asia, you said? Yes. So, um, we… I did Hyatt three and a half years, went to Cornell, New York, met him, spent some time in Chicago working with the Fairmont Hotels. That’s where I learned to bartend. How did you pay for all this if you were, like, a humble waiter? Luckily, my dad’s a doctor. Okay. Yeah. So you weren’t quite a humble waiter, was it? Yeah. Yeah. [laughs] As in, but I paid for, I lived it like, like, like, God, like, it was a difficult life. His, his biography is writing itself, I think. Yeah. Because the story when it’s heard, when you tell the story- Yeah … Eleven Madison Park, this guy worked with Danny Meyer. This guy used to be just a waiter. Yeah. But that’s misleading, right? No, I feel… See, the thing is, uh, I grew up in Pune, um, so coming to Bombay is like, was, like, a big thing for me. My parents are from Bombay, but we moved. Okay. Um, we grew up in a middle income family. So, like, for us, like- Who could send you to Cornell and all? Yeah, but then, like, I feel most people in India who do a, a foreign kind of… You either take a loan from SBI or something and make that happen. That’s true. And become kind. It’s for… See, people, parents often save up and- The thing is, yeah … make sacrifices to educate their kids. The other story, I mean, these guys don’t know, after three years, Hyatt was moving me to Macau because they were starting- That’s a bad deal. Yeah. How was it bad? You didn’t take it. City of Dreams, I had that offer letter, and my dad was like, “This you’re not doing.” [laughs] “Waiter hoga abhi there you’ll go become a gambler of some kind.” [laughs] And he was the one, he said, “Ki like baba just study some more because clearly this 8,500 salary is not taking you anywhere in life.” Um, and that’s when I went to New York, and then I feel like going to New York changed my, like, what you said, right? Like, in hotels you’re like a robot. Yeah. “Yes, sir. No, sir.” Like, service means servitude. And just to be in New York, because my, uh, trip abroad that time before that was only to Singapore. I’d gone to s- my aunt used to live there. So it’s, New York was just like, like- A different world … I’m blown away. Like, you know, like… And even the simplest restaurants, like, just the equality, like, people talking to you as an equal. Um, and when we studied at Cornell, what I think for me, the three years at Hyatt taught me discipline, which our team members, I think in terms of grit and like… But their product knowledge, like at the Hyatt, if we served a good buffalo mozzarella and someone asked me, “Why this milk and not cow’s milk?” I would have no idea. No idea, yeah. We were never asked to ask questions or never, like, encouraged to ask questions. So I think do, after that one-year course, like, most of our batch mates got, be- because it’s a master’s, so you get a good corporate job in the hotel and stuff like that. Um, we decided to go back into operations, because for me it, I was like, the operations I have learnt, it’s just taught me discipline. It’s not taught me the bigger picture. Started working with Fairmont Hotels, um, -which was? In Chicago. Um, so they had a nice program for me where they wanted me to get into beverages. So they had a wine bar and a cocktail bar. Um, really, really enjoyed that, and after six months they moved me to Singapore to manage a jazz bar. -That’s fun. -Yeah. -That’s not bad. -Yeah. I still don’t understand jazz music. -[laughs] -[laughs] But no, a bar is a bar, no? Yeah, part of a bar. Um, and I feel like to what you said about M-Grill earlier- -Yeah -… we used to have maybe two, three -guests only attending the- -Oh, true -… jazz every night. -A standard hotel bar. -Hotel bar, yeah. -Yeah, okay. So I think, like, I did a year and a half of that, but I think that was important for me because I’d never bartended before. Um, so learned a lot through that. Um, then I became a poolside manager, [laughs] um, because- -What do they just give you crappy jobs- -Yeah. [laughs] … all your life? Yeah. I think that’s why. Then people ask me, like, you know, “Are you happy?” or -things like- -Poolside manager means what? Like, give out -towels and- -[laughs] -[laughs] Like- -You’re kidding me. -Yeah. But like- -Yeah, you- -… you know, it’s kind of- -Someone can I rub lotion on your back sort -of thing? -No, that, that I had someone else do. -[laughs] -That’s not even wearable gear -by the way. [laughs] -[laughs] -Not quite. Okay. -Um, Great like, some…I’ll tell you the best stories come from that, that stint. Like, of my biggest TripAdvisor problem there was birds, because we used to serve breakfast at poolside and birds used to come eat people’s bacon. -Which will all- -Yeah. There’s nothing you can ever do about that. Yeah. So those are the funniest things we’ve done to keep the birds away. Um, yeah, and ended up spending, like, a good three and a half years at that hotel, but I ended up in a much more managerial position looking after… So the Swiss hotel, um, Fairmont are together. So we have in total, we used to have around 14 restaurants in that complex, and we had done food and beverage revenue management. -This is where exactly? -At, uh, City Hall, so right next to the Raffles. -Yeah, yeah. This is- -Singapore … this is the one that has compass rose at the top. The- -This has Equinox and has Jaan. -Yeah, it- -Yeah. -Yeah. -Julian. -That’s right. Okay, yeah. Yeah. Uh, when I was there, Julian was the chef at Jan. -It used to be a Westin. -Yes. -Yes, okay. -It used to be a Westin. You’re right. -I remember that time, yeah. -So yeah. And yeah, did that for th- and ended up in a… So we had done food and beverage revenue management in Cornell. Ended up taking up a role in that place where we used to look the quality- So how many years was all this after the Celini experience before you came back? Three and a half, four years. You did a lot in those three and a half, four years. -Yeah, yeah. -Yeah. Again, like- like, I feel as Indians the good thing is you are just, like, you know, you’re alone. Like, you’re just like, might as well work hard and learn something. -True. -Money was better there in Singapore. -[laughs] -Yeah, that I can believe. So you were at -this, uh, Westin S- -Yeah … which was not a Westin by the time you was there. Yeah. Okay, and anything exciting happened while you were there? So we used to have— We worked at one point- -You were a very tall building, right? -We were a very tall building, yeah. To go with the tall boy. -Sadly- -That’s right, yeah, which is- So I, uh, one of my… I used to, like I was saying, manage the poolside breakfast- Yeah … which opened at 7:00. And I had a friend, Canadian friend, she used to manage the breakfast for the other hotel, which was at 6:00 in the morning, and we used to -share an apartment. -It’s now become a friend in the- -Yeah. [laughs] -The first time I went on with this girl who was work. -Never mind. Never mind. Go on. Yeah. -[laughs] -Go on what? -Yeah. Um, so she calls me at 5:30 in the -morning saying, you know- -This friend? -Yeah. -Okay. Yeah. Saying, “You need to come into work earlier. We are shutting down breakfast at our coffee shop, so your restaurant’s gonna get busy.” I was like, “Why?” She’s like, “Sadly, someone committed suicide, and this coffee shop used to have a beautiful glass atrium, and that poor person landed right through it.” -Oh my God. -So while people were having breakfast. -That’s really scary, you know? -It is scary. I feel like we, later on when I grew in this hotel, we used to have the GM meeting, which, you -know, like this morning ExCom meeting. -Yeah. So the duty manager reads that report. So he used to have the duty manager read, because we were also a luxury hotel on one side and the business. -Yeah. -So she’ll be like, “Sadly, room number X, so and so, someone jumped.” And then, like, turn the page, “X sheikh from Dubai came to the airport. The wrong Lamborghini was there for pickup, so refused to get in the car.” [laughs] Therefore, he will also now jump through the… -[laughs] -So that’s the priorities of things. Like, -when you’re at hotels- -But that’s bizarre, no? … there’s just so many war, war stories that, you know, like, it’s just, -um, you laugh at it. -So you had a lot of international -experience before- -Yes -… you came back. -Yes. And you, of course, were famously in New York, right? -I was in New York, so right after we- -There’s a dark secret that nobody ever talks about when they write about you, is that you, you were manager of Shalom. -Manager of Shalom. -In- That’s where I started right after Citibank, so. Yeah, that’s right. So just tell us the story. It’s not even a dark secret. Like, I prob- I, I think I- It’s never in your bio. I’ve never read anywhere from managing Shalom he went to -start Bombay Canteen. [laughs] -Well, to be fair, I was in the finance and -marketing side of things. -Yeah, sure. -I was less in the- -But tell, tell us how you started. -[laughs] -[laughs] No getting past you. -Yeah, yeah. Okay. [laughs] -Uh, the… I think, so right after I finished banking, uh, wanted to always do something- -Why did you become a banker? -It was the right thing to do, uh, I think. Okay, so it was that kind of thing. -It was that kind of thing. -Family expectations. I went, went to undergrad, did chemistry, went to, uh, did an MBA right after and -joined Citibank. -So you were really well educated in this. IIM. He doesn’t say it. He’s an IIM boy. He went to- -IIM Kozhikode. -So he’s- -You’re an IIM? -Yeah. -Really? Kozhikode. -Yeah. Long way from catering girl in Goa. -[laughs] -Yeah. [laughs] Definitely not an 8,000 rupee salary. -[laughs] -So then? Little more, little more. Uh, my first job was in Bombay actually, and that’s kind of when I fell in love with the city, but I think it took one bad boss later in Delhi to say that I wanna go do my own thing, and fortunately knew the guys at Shalom and they gave me my first break. Opened three restaurants with them in six -months and shut seven over two years. -But have you not said, do any of them -still exist? The Shalom still exists? -They do under different names. They, the -group is- -Shalom still exists? -No, it doesn’t. It, I, it- -You ever went to Shalom? -Nope. -Good. Now go on. [laughs] -[laughs] -I went. It was fun. -It was fun. -You ever -gone? -Yeah. -Yeah. All right. -Yeah, I think back in the day I feel Dheeraj who started it, as well as, uh, Shalom and it was Smoke House and Olive, these three kind of ruled Delhi at that -point in the early 2000s in terms of- -Olive was one restaurant in Mehrauli or -somewhere. -Yeah, but I think these were the ones that really, as in, at the, that was the moment of the lounge bars- -Yes -… which really sort of took off. -Shalom was a lounge bar- -Lounge bar … which served Mediterranean, Lebanese food. -Mediterranean, Lebanese food. -And Sufi nights. -Sufi nights. -And the Sufi nights. -Exactly. -Okay. So then? Opened three restaurants with them, shut seven over two years. Learned a lot. -How can you open three and shut seven? -He was in finance. [laughs] -I mean, there was some- -Okay. [laughs] There were a lot of other people doing the opening and shutting as well. -Okay. [laughs] -Yeah. But I think I, yeah, at that point realized I wanted to do my own thing, but didn’t quite know what to do, and again, got some good advice at that point from a mentor of mine to go to Cornell, and that turned out to be really great. And I think- Further to that advice was go b- go into operations. I had not done operations at that time. So right after Cornell, I went to New York, first worked with Daniel -Boulud, and then with, uh- -At…? -At, at Bar Boulud. At Bar Boulud. -Okay. -And- -Which must have been the first Bar Boulud, -right? -Yeah, it was the first one, exactly. And then, uh, ended up at, I had interviewed with Chef Floyd, but that project had gotten delayed, so luckily a little bit, little less than a year later, the project was back online and I was able to join that team, and that’s how I joined Union Square Hospitality to open North End Grill with him. So I think- And, and you came back to India directly from North End Grill? -Yes. So 2013 is when I came back. -So you had a sort, sort of Danny Meyer connection, though he may not have owned Eleven Madison by the time you got there. -At the time, yeah. -Yeah? -Yeah, yeah. -So tell me about yourself. So, I mean, I was cooking at the Oberoi back in the day, at the Oberoi in the Trident at Nariman Point, actually. I ran Frangipani for them, which was their -coffee shop downstairs. -Yeah. It, it still exists, doesn’t it? -It still exists. -Yeah. -It still exists. -That was a buffet restaurant at lunch. -Y- yes. -Yeah. -So the funny story is I started- -And it was, and it was meant for foreigners mainly, and it used to be called Firangi Pani within the hotel. -Little bit of a joke. -Yeah, I remember that. [laughs] -Yeah, little bit of a joke, yes. -Yeah. Yeah. Um, but what I started off with was when I, uh, graduated from OCLD, I started off as the chef of banquets at the Trident, which ran the biggest banquets, and I probably not, I wasn’t enjoy- not probably, I wasn’t enjoying myself. So my boss then, Joy Bhattacharya, then moved me to Frangipani, and I ran Frangi for three, two, two and a half years. Uh, when I realized that hotels was not what I wanted to do, it, it didn’t have relevance in the field that I wanted to cook in. Uh, there was a sort of formula, there was a sort of monotony in it. -Yeah. -And I kind of happened to chance upon the EMP cookbook. My mom gifted it to me for my birthday. -Okay. -And I emailed the reservations ID, the -info- -But were you in those days what was known -as a conty chef, or were you like- -Yeah, I mean- -… all-purpose? -Yeah. It’s, it’s more like all-purpose, kind of. They, Oberois makes you a manager of, a kitchen manager more, more than anything else. You learn every part of the trade, but then you’re not a master at anything. -Anything, yeah. -Anything, really. And then you find your calling a little bit, and then you kind of, kind of, if you’re, um, you know, proactive, you learn, but otherwise nothing. Um, so, and I was, I was just coming to a point where I was not enjoying what I was doing because we made just versions of tomato soups on every menu, right? -Yeah. -And, um, I saw the book, I read the em- I mean, I… The first thing you do when you get a cookbook of that stature is that you, like, glance through all of the pictures. That’s, like, the first thing I wanna do. And I looked at it and the food looked amazingly beautiful, right? And I was like, “Oh my God,” like, “This is what’s out there, and here is where I am.” So I kind of emailed it on one night shift. I was sitting there, I was glancing through the book, and I saw this info ID, and I just cold emailed saying, “Hey, I’m so and so, and I’d like an internship.” Because I was nervous, I was scared. You know, I didn’t know life beyond hotels. I didn’t, I felt like job security was all we needed. That’s all everybody said. So yeah, I was nervous, so I said, “I’ll ask for an internship. Let’s see how that goes for me.” I asked, three days later, there was an email from the HR department of EMP, which till today I thank my lucky stars that that email from the info ID traveled all the way to their HR. So there was somebody who was- -Who was looking at things and kind, yeah -… kind enough to direct it their way, right? And yeah, because , for some people it’s just an email, and that email changed my life. So I, I was really thankful and grateful. Uh, but they sent back an email saying that, “Hey, listen, um, internship not happening. Wanna look for a permanent job, -let us know.” And I was like- -Wow -… hell broke loose. -Oh, that’s great. -[laughs] I mean- -Which year was this? -This is 2013. -So they’re, they were the two stars or -three stars by then? They were- -They were three stars by then. -They were three stars already, right? -They were three stars, four stars by the -New York Times. -Yeah. I think they were number four on the World’s 50 Best List. 50 Best, yeah, so it was… So them to just say you can apply for a job is quite -something, no? -Yeah, it was quite something, and I was v- to be honest, I was very scared because I didn’t know what, what was going to come next, right? Um, and they said that you have to come and stage, and I didn’t know what a stage meant, so I Googled it, didn’t find anything. Called up a few people, asked them [laughs] like, “What is, what are these guys trying to say?” So they said, “Oh, they mean you need to come and give a trade test.” So I was like, “Oh. You mean go to New York and give a trade test? I’m sitting in India.” So I called her up very naively and I’m like, “Can this be done over a call?” -[laughs] -“Because I’m not going to s- I won’t fly all the way to New York not knowing I don’t have a job.” Like, you, you do, you, you, I mean, I wouldn’t, I wasn’t willing to take the risk. But then I thought about it, went back home, spoke to my mom. I was like, “Hey, listen, this is what’s up and this is what’s happened.” I was like- -Home was Chennai. -Chennai. -Yeah. -But I went back home to Bombay, called my mom up, and then as I said what I said. And then she’s like, “Hey, listen. Go.” -I was like- -Why? … “No, I don’t have a visa.” She’s like, “Okay. So ask for time, get one.” Um, okay. So this was happening somewhere around 12th of August. My stage date was 12th of September, one day after 9/11, like 10-year anniversary of 9/11. First time I were entering, uh, New York. I didn’t have an American visa. I somehow or the other got one of my friends in New York to kind of send me a letter saying I’m there, coming there for his son’s whatever, whatever. Got a visa very quickly. US Embassy is in Chennai, and then you have a permanent residency address of Chennai, so it kind of, kind of smooths things out a little bit. Um, so I went, did all of that, got it. Um, booked myself into a YMCA without knowing that I had a job or not. Lied to my boss then, said my mom’s unwell, I’m heading back to Chennai, and I flew out to New York that night. -Uh- -I hope when other chefs who work under you lie to you in similar circumstances, [laughs] you’re as forgiving. Uh, no, now it’s a lot more open. They’ll just walk up to me and be like, “I want to -work at EMP,” and I hook it up. -Yeah, okay. -You know? -Sounds good. -Or, “I, I want to go elsewhere.” -But- Because you are like, ” You wont get a visa”.

• I was like, uh- -Ah, apply very early. -Yeah. [laughs] -[laughs] Trump is sitting. So then? And then, um, I landed up in New York not knowing a thing about it. Um, just landed -in- -You’d never been to America. -Never been to America before. -You’d done Europe. -Nothing. -Nothing? Yeah. -Nothing. Nothing. -Wow. Literally nothing. Like, the only country out- outside of India I’d seen was Dubai and Singapore, uh, back then. And-Landed up JFK, figured out everything on my own. Went to YMCA, booked myself in. Um, walked from 54th Street all the way to 23rd just to kind of see where EMP was. Stood outside there mesmerized, looked at it for a couple of minutes. -How amazing. -And then I was like, “Okay, this is beautiful.” -I walk back [chuckles] to the hotel- -Okay … to say that now I know how to get here, so half the battle won. [chuckles] So I’ve gone back. I’ve gone and got myself a Luke’s Lobster because I read about it, so I wanted to get my Luke’s Lobster also. I went and got Lu- found out a Luke’s Lobster and got one. Went home, slept, whatever, got rid of the jet lag. A day later was my stage day at 2, 2, 2:00 PM. Walked into the kitchen. Uh, there’s a chef that all of us know, Jamal James Kent- -Yeah, sure -… who was there. -The late Jamal James Kent. -The late Jamal James Kent. He was in the kitchen. Uh, Chef Daniel wasn’t. First thing, put me on carrots. They have the carrot tartare course at that point- -Yeah -… in their menu. Remember that. So I’m like, “Okay, what am I supposed to do? I have my kid. Like, what am I doing?” And then he like, “Okay, peel carrots.” So I was hanging in the back with the commis peeling carrots all the way. That’s my first thing. Just looking at people around, the way they’re moving, the way they’re working, the precision with which they were doing things, like it- it’s unheard of in Indian kitchens. Like at that point you don’t know anything. You probably read about all these herbs in books. You’ve never seen them in real life. I walk in there, it’s like kid in a candy store. Um, into the stage a couple of hours later, James comes up to me. He’s like, “Hey, um, I’d like you to cook me a plate of food.” Like that’s my trade test, so I was like, “I’d like you to cook me a plate of food.” Gives me a piece of dry aged, um, -rib eye. It was a Angus 180 days aged. -Okay. And so somebody from back, behind said, “Oh, he’s from India, he doesn’t cook beef.” And, uh, James looked at me, “Okay.” I, “Yeah, no, I got this.” Uh, so then he… I, I just asked him, I was like, “How would you like it cooked?” And he was like, “Medium.” I was like, “Fair.” Takes me to the walk-in, shows me a bunch of things. These are, we are in the midst of summer, whatever. I go back, I cook him a plate of food in an hour’s time. I’ve never cooked such a good piece of beef in my life ever before. As you all say, that’s an expensive ingredient to give somebody for a test, -no? -For a test, and, um, I was just hoping I don’t screw it up. And, um, I cooked it. When I sliced into it, it… I must say now that it was the book definition of medium. So- -He says modestly. [chuckles] -Yeah. [chuckles] -Uh, and that time I was shitting bricks- -Yeah … to be absolutely honest. Because like the knife in my hand was like, if this is wrong, this is done, like -New York is taken away. -The whole trip is a- Yeah, New York is taken away from me, right? And m- my idea was more like EMP, yes, but like also New York, like the city was accessible to me because of that. And, um, I put, put up the plate. Uh, I still remember what I cooked for him. It was a -puree of chanterelle mushrooms with, uh- -Had you ever cooked with chanterelles -before? -Never. I, I, I mean, I knew how to make a mushroom puree, so I applied principles to that. Frankly, it’s a waste to chanterelles to do- -Waste, exactly -… a puree with itself. [chuckles] -[chuckles] Waste on it, yeah. -Yeah. -Yeah. -I’d cooked down all the chanterelles and pureed them out. [chuckles] And it was a puree of chanterelle mushrooms. I remember some glazed beets, um, confit shallots, uh, green beans, and steak with a sauce. Um, but I think I did a rosemary sauce. And I brought it up to him, and was like, “Here, this is w- w- you know what I’ve cooked in an hour.” And he tasted it. He loved it. He said co- He didn’t say anything then. I figured later. So yeah, he ate everything, called me back to the office. He’s like, “Come.” He’s like, “Where are you from?” Spoke to me for a bit. He’s like, “You have the job. Go back to India. Figure out your visa.” -That’s it? -Yeah. He’s like, “I checked with the guys on the line. You cook really well, uh, you move really fast.” So he’s like, “Go back, find, get yourself a visa, and come back. I’ll leave you an offer letter from Megan and whatever.” So we spoke little specifics, and I, I left. I went outside. I mean, I was super happy. It was, um, it was night here. Uh, sorry, it was day, like almost daybreak. Night, I had nobody to celebrate with. I walked up to a 7-Eleven, bought myself a Coors Light, sat in the park, looked at EMP, drank that, celebrated a little bit. -Very dream come true, no? -Very dream come true. I mean, I told myself when I walked in through those doors that if I don’t get this, in any circumstance, if it doesn’t happen, at least I’ll be happy that I walked through the walls of a three-Michelin star restaurant once in my life, and I’ll, -uh, we’ll come back and try again. -And most people dream of eating at a three-Michelin star restaurant. You were cooking at a three-Michelin star -restaurant. -Yes. -Yeah. -And I never thought it would happen. Uh, th- that’s, that’s the part of it. And when it did, I mean, I just thanked my lucky stars. I was grateful that it did. Um, I left my mom a text, went back to bed, woke up the next morning. She knew [chuckles] that I’d gotten the job. I spent the next day eating at, celebrating at Katz’s by getting my first pastrami sandwich, and was happy. -Wow. -Yeah. And your first job in India when you came back was with these guys, or? Yes. Yes. He was Roger Federer’s private chef. He’s not doing that. -In the middle. Really? -Yes. Yes. -Just for a- -I was -… few months. How do you get- -So I was at EMP, so my journey at EMP was also a little rough. Uh, I started off as a line cook at EMP at the back as a commis first. Then they had the famous deli course that they did sodas in. I was the -guy shaking the sodas. -Oh, really? Okay. So I started there at, at the absolute bottom, shaking sodas. And two days in, James came… Uh, not James, but James had left to run the Nomad Hotel. Chris Flint was my CDC. He walked up to me, -said, “Hey, um, so you-” -Were you like on a station or whatever, or -when- -Yeah, so I went from there to going on a station. So I went, I started as a commis in the back just doing menial jobs for everyone. Uh, and then from there, Chris walked up to me, said that, “You look like you can do this. There’s a cook leaving the Garde Manger station tomorrow. I want you to take his spot.” The cook that was leaving was actually the chef today of, uh, Tatiana in DC, uh, Kwame. -Oh, so yeah. -Yeah, so Kwame was leaving. -I didn’t know he’d worked at EMP. -He’d worked at EMP. -Okay. -Um, so Kwame was moving. I took Kwame’s spot, and Kwame taught me everything that I needed to learn on the station in a day. -Wow. -He took me to William Sonoma in the evening. And I, because in Indian kitchens, you’re given equipment. You’re given tools. -Yeah. -In an American kitchen, you bring that. Act- I was, that was gonna be my question, that when you went in, did you have a -knife, or they gave you a knife? -No, I had a knife. You had a knife. So you knew you’d have to go with a knife. Yeah, but I didn’t know that I had to go with a weighing scale, and a tweezer, and a cake tester, and-You know, the, the rest of the stuff. So he took me to William Sonoma in the evening. He’s like, “Buy. Buy this, buy this, buy this. Buy a salad spinner ‘cause they have only one. Everyone wants to rush to get it. If you wanna get your job done, buy a salad spinner.” So I bought a salad spinner. So every day I have to walk into work with a salad spinner- -Why? -… ‘cause my station had salad on it. -[laughs] So yeah, I mean- -Was, uh, Daniel actually much in the kitchen? He was back then. Back then, Will and Daniel both actively would be in the kitchen because they were climbing from four to one. Uh, the push was genuinely -very- -Yeah … very real, and they were focused on everything that was happening and everything that they were doing, right? Uh, so yeah, and then I move… Like, I started moving. Then I started graduating stations, right? Like, the first station was absolutely tough, worked on the garde manger. To be very honest, got my ass kicked through and through, like to a point that I almost broke down in month one. It was not okay. I used to cry in the walk-ins, -uh, because at one- -So that’s true about the pressure in three-Michelin-star kitchens that the chefs take breaks and go and cry in the -closet? -Yeah. -Yeah? Okay. -I think that’s true. Uh, because they break you down to a point where they want you to unlearn and then -learn. -Yeah. So, like, you just become so vulnerable to a point where you’re like, “Okay, I don’t know anything. Please teach me.” Unless you… Like, I mean, I’d come with prior experience of cooking, gone through the Oberoi, gone through OCLD, learnt a certain set of things. But then I just s-stood in that kitchen and thought I knew nothing, and that was tough. To kind of make peace with that where you’re at a point of rock bottom was not okay, and I said, “I have nothing to prove to anyone. I’m just going back to India. This is okay. It’s fine. I’ll, I’ll tell Mom whatever happened, happened. It’s fine.” Um, but I was like, “No,” and I stuck it out. And when I stuck it out, Dimitri, -who’s now the head chef- -Ma-Mago what was it? -Dimitri- -Uh, Dimi- uh, Dimitri Magi. -Oh, Ma- Magi. Yeah. -Yeah, Magi. -Okay, yeah. -He- -He’s back. He’s back in- -He’s back. Yes, he’s back. Well, he’s like my, kind of my, uh, -godfather there. -Okay. So he kind of came up to me, “I’ll show you how to cook.” And that was, like, that turning point what made me stay. I walked up to him every single day. Anything that Dima would say was what I would do. If anybody who tasted anything on my station would always be Dima. My salt, my seasoning was Dima. I didn’t give a fuck [laughs] about anybody else in that kitchen at that point. Um, and was, it was normal, like, you know- But that’s an amazing training ground, no? The best, I would say. It pushes you to a point where you realize how good you are, -or you realize how much you can put in- -Oh, okay. Yeah. No. -Or how bad, rather. -I’m gonna stop you and ask you, did you… Did something like that happen to you at North End Grill that you realized- Not at North End Grill, but actually brought back memories of, uh, starting at Daniel Boulud. I’d never been in restaurant ops before and literally started from the bottom. Um, they had two concepts at that time. They had, uh, Epicerie Boulud, which was their marketplace, and next to Bar Boulud. So I used to go to Epicerie Boulud in the -morning to be- -And it was that same Bar Boulud formula where you did -charcuterie and burgers- -Yeah. Exactly -… and all that stuff. -And then would work in- -And frozen chips- -Yeah … which he claimed were hand-cut and all that. Yeah. [laughs] They were… There was Bar Boulud at night, and I remember walking in and not realizing. I’d never even, like, held a tray before, so his version of Dimitri was Javier for me. He was one of the back servers who literally taught me step by step. And the kitchen used to be in the basement, so you had to walk up with the steak frites, with, like, the fish, with whatever else. Three plates minimum for everyone walking up, and you could not walk up and down the stairs. Either you brought back dirty dishes or you walked up with food. That was the written rule. So, like, pretty much had to learn that on the fly and really fast, and I think it’s so true, though, like, it really breaks your self-confidence breaks so fast when, like, you don’t know what you’re doing and how you’re doing it, and… But also, when you come out on the other side of it, you feel that, “Oh my God,” like, “I can take on the world.” Like, uh, would go home and try to carry three plates. I’d never done that before, and practice so that I could actually carry three plates over there and not break something and make a fool of myself, so- That’s very French thing, the waiters with the- -Yeah -… I’ve always wondered, just get a fucking lift. Why are you bothering with three plates with… [laughs] It’s, uh, for some odd servers are taught that it’s- … it’s important to, like, yeah. That’s right, and the servers are taught that I am piling, I am piling the fries up so high that they will tip over this is really important. I’ve never understood it, but that’s the logic of classical French. You on the other, on the other hand never had a, “I’m going to -weep and go back,” moment, clearly. -Mm, I don’t think so. I feel like for me, like, I, we always say it like he would’ve been a batch younger to me. Um, he went -to Akshaya, I went to IHM Goa. -Yeah. Um, I feel like we had n-nasty seniors. Like, I don’t think I, I really wanna remember -their names. -But that you do to India also. Yeah. I think, no, and that was, like, for me and my things started in India itself where people were just mean to you, but, like, you were like, “This is life.” Like, like, I always say it now we can, like, we have generations who can articulate mental health. And I, remember if you 20 years ago went to someone saying, “I’m taking a mental day off,” they’ll give you another slap and make your mental health worse. -Yeah. -Um, for me it was, like, simpler things. I remember one day I, I was… I had to go into banquets to help, and you know. And like, like, still I can’t grow facial hair, I feel like. And this person, like, in the briefing just mocked me for, like, for not having a mustache and made me, -like, go- -You have a sort of- -Yeah, like, I have, like- -Like a 14-year-old right -here [laughs] -… upper lip fuzz. Yeah. -Upper lip. [laughs] -So yeah, I feel like for me, like, by the time I re- I did Chicago and Singapore, like, I wa- I feel Cornell gave me a lot of confidence, like, being like, you know, you have that education and, like, the good thing with hotel management in Goa Catering College is, like, the thing about holding plates. I think that was one thing at least they, like, made us do in the [laughs] practice restaurants. So I think for me, I just wasn’t confident on product knowledge. Like, I would like, you know, wines and stuff like that. But I just was an extremely social person, so I was good at, like, just having conversations, taking care of people, so- Of the two of you, which of, which of you is a better people person? -I don’t know. -I think that’s a me question. -In the moment- -Huh? -I think that’s a me question. -Yeah. [laughs] -Go for it. -Yeah. -Do I get stuck in between? -Yeah. [laughs] Like you chose to be stuck -there. -I fucking just did, just- -No, try me. -I think, uh, if there is a fire to be put out, -Sam. -Yeah. Like, can … process it better. If there is somebody to be wooed, I would say I’ll -take Yash. -Really? You’re the most seductive one of -the two. -[laughs] -It’s, uh, like it’s- -Being wooed, uh- I feel it’s just the age. Like, I’m just younger [laughs] than he is, th-that -helps. But- -But apparently these guys used to have -huge fights on the floor and- -Yeah … Floyd used to have to come and separate them. -That time he wasn’t there. -I wasn’t there. -Yeah. -But it, that’s not part of the legend then. -They used to- -But- … like, fight in front of customers and stuff like that. -I haven’t seen that happen ever. -In front of the team. In front of the team -apparently. -In front of the team, but I’ve never seen that happen, because this happened before my time, I’ve heard of it. -Yeah. -To be honest, I have heard. -It was a serious reason. -It was, it was, it was week one of Bombay -Canteen. -It was week, yeah. And after that I’ve -never seen that happen. -It never happened after week one? Oh, we fought a lot, but I, not in front of the team. -Not in front. Yeah. -But what do you guys fight about? So it was, you know, what had happened was I, because I had a much more grounding of how ops in India works, the good thing was him and Floyd, um, had the more New York hospitality, first Danny Meyer part of it, right? So when you’re opening a restaurant, there’s certain things for me were like, I remember Floyd taking me aside and saying, “In briefings you say no a lot.” I didn’t realize that, you know, thing. But, um- -What do you mean briefings? -Like, he would say, “Let’s do this,” and I -used to be like, “No.” Like, you know? -[laughs] Like, but it’s a hotel thing because it’s like- -Yeah. Yeah -… just like you’re, like, you know? -Yeah, sure. -And but there was one thing that Sam wanted to do is in, we do it in the restaurants, we call an important guest a PX guest. You don’t wanna use the word VIP because that, everyone knows the guest, -so we use the word PX. -What does PX stand for? -I think it came from the- -I think person of importance. I think it just came from the sort of French style. So the system’s known as the Soigner -system. -Okay. -Soigner means to take care of. -Okay. And most restaurants will have that where, especially back in the day, this is what I learned at, um, Bloud and then even at Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality, if you were walking in and you were a guest from before, we would have details on you, and four slips would go out. One would go to the server, one would go to the bar, one would go to the kitchen, one would go to the manager, so that everyone was aware, allergies, preferences, dietaries, et cetera, et cetera. It was a communication system more than anything else that- -Okay -… and I came in all like, “We,” like, “we’ve come back from New York, we have to do this, we have to do that.” So he wanted a printer at every, like a side station, which made sense that as soon someone walks in, you print, and that side station prints like, “Mr. Sanghvi’s walked in, sparkling water,” this, this, this. Not his order, but what he wants, like, you know, like, -and I’m like- -So you can preempt him. Preempt him. And at that point, like, you know, the team is, like, in total 35 people, including chefs and stuff. And here we are, because we were such a new company, like, we had people used to ask, “What is the name of the company?” We didn’t have, like, like, we used to sit in a Cafe Coffee Day as our office. So the teams were, like, all freshers, right? So I, I was trying to get through to him to say that right now I’m trying to get them to explain the menu we want, to take care of people. Now for them to understand this PX system and for them to all coordinate four places, it’s not going to happen, and it just, I, I put my foot down, and he started saying, and then we just started, no, the, -the, the. I think it was just like- -And they say hindsight is 20/20, and I -will say Yash was absolutely right. -Yeah. Right. It’s, intuitively it seems he -was right. [laughs] -Correct. Um- There’s some things you can translate from New York- -Yeah -… and some things you can’t. -No, we do have the system today. -Yeah. -It just, it needed time. -That day, yeah. You have a system what? The guy walks in, you know if he wants sparkling water or -still water? -Yes. Yeah. -Right? Absolutely. -So, so it’s a- Anybody who goes there, if they don’t know what kind of water you want, second time -the- -It, yeah -… system’s failed, yeah? -Second time, yeah. -Second time, system’s failed. -I feel, like you said, right now we do it, and we still do it manual. So there’s no printer. We just have a triplicate, like a KOT pad. You, the hostess writes it out, gives one to the bar, gives one to the desk. And it’s very simple things, right? Because there’ll be someone who comes and always has the kejriwal, right? But the server’s gonna be different every time. So just when you’re taking the order to just say, “Last, you always have a kejriwal.” So, and I think now there’s technology to do things better, but that time, you know, for me it was, like, consistency. Like, how do we just get the simple things right? But the trouble with that is that you’ve got to get it right, no? -Yeah. -I remember hotels have this guest history system, and my guest history at the Taj used to always say, “Loves Beaujolais,” which is the one wine I wouldn’t drink. So they would always -[laughs] come and offer me Beaujolais. -Did someone eavesdrop on your -conversation? -I don’t know from where it came from, -because I’ve never drunk it. So… -Your guest history at Motorster is also very long. You know, the problem, what happens is every manager puts in one -thing, right? And- -Usually wrong, yeah. -Yeah. -Usually. [laughs] Because, like, it, it’s, it becomes, like, because as, as we all grow older, tastes also evolve, right? I think we also become simpler as we grow older, right? And you need to just take one thing. So, like, with our PX note, it won’t have, like, sparkling water for most people, because in India there are very few people who love spark- But it would say, for example, X guest is, uh, Nykaa or X. You know, just for the servers to know a bit more about our teams, right? Um, it just gives them that added confidence of taking care of people, right? So there, it would also say, like, most important is allergic, right? Like gluten-free. So even if they’re only ordering food, but it goes to the bar just to be, like, careful that something goes out to this table, you are very careful about it. And more than anything else, this system is foundational to what you were referring to earlier, we were talking about earlier, about hospitality being the differential. And that really for us, that learning for both Yash and me started from outside India. I, I still remember at Bar Bloud being absolutely shocked at the briefing where India here at Shalom, et cetera, when you did briefings, you were like, “Are your nails cut? Are you -well-groomed? Is your cigarette- -And what would it be in New York? New York, you sat down, you ate the specials of the day, you drank the s- wines of the day, you actually spoke about it. It was an educational master class every day for 30 to 45 minutes. And I think that thinking is what we brought -here to Yash- -But I mean, I will not name the restaurant, but we went to a restaurant yesterday, Raaj and I, fancy restaurant. The food was outstanding. The server refused to write the order. So I said, “Write it down.” He wrote it down. Then the chef sent out some things. And all the things that we had ordered, they didn’t have, they didn’t serve. So I said, “What about the stuff we ordered?” They looked totally confused. So I said, “Check the slips.”No, they said the slip is lost. So it’s, -service is still a problem in India. -100%, and I think Yash made a point about consistency. I think that’s what people forget. Like, eventually you can be as creative as you want. You serve me two ma- serve someone two bad meals in a row or have two bad incidents like that, they’re not gonna come back. -They’re never gonna come back. Yeah. -You’re not gonna come back. It is actually the foundations of building that consistency is what is most important, and I think that translates both in the kitchen as well as the front of the house -from day one. -The kitchens I find are better. It’s the service, perhaps because there’s a higher turnover where the problems are. I feel like more than turnover, I feel like it’s, -I, I feel service is taken for granted. -It is, no? Right. Like, I feel like, Culinary Culture are one of the few people who talks about GMs or general managers, right? Um, I feel still service gets taken for granted because people think service is ambience and it’s not. -It’s not. -Like, you know, everyone will invest in the greatest celebrity designers to design their restaurant, but if you don’t have someone taking care of front of house- -Yeah -… um, I feel it is, you know, there is a, like chefs I, I admire because of also the physical environment, a hot kitchen. FOH in India, the problem is obviously it’s better environments, but Indians are entitled. You know, you are, it’s not easy, and like, I think for men it’s to even easy in front of house. Like, some of our GMs in, in Bombay Canteen are Pedro are women, it’s like still today the amount of entitlement that gets thrown around. -So I feel like- -Entitlement what? So don’t you know who I -am kind of entitlement? -Yeah, and just being pushy and, like, not keeping that boundary. Um, and I feel at our thing, I think Sameer did this very early on, is we remember, you know, when any restaurant in Bombay opens, I call it the honeymoon period, right? The first two months is just, like, every celebrity and everyone is ordering bottles and, like, there are parties happening, X, Y, Z. So we were also having our honeymoon period. It was a busy night. And one of the things Sam had said in the briefing always was that if any guest disrespects you, and he was also very articulate to say what I mean disrespect, if they say, “Fuck this,” or like, you know, like, use language that, come to me. I, if, don’t feel bad about just coming to me because we know it’ll be difficult for you to handle it, and you don’t need to take it, but don’t reply. Like you don’t, you don’t, because sometimes you lose your… And I remember the guest, the guy’s name also Soumil, who went on to become Izumi’s manager in Goa right now. Um, Soumil was just out of IHM Goa. He was a captain with us. So imagine, like, you’ve, like, been like eight months working in the restaurant, in the industry I think it was for him. Very young. He had come to us from Indigo. And, um, -some guest who was a bit- -Indigo the restaurant or the airline? -The restaurant. -Yeah, okay. -The restaurant, sorry. -This guest was abusive. I remember this so -clearly when it happened. -Abusive. So Sam went up, and this table had consumed a lot, and just asked them to leave. And the guest was like, “I won’t pay.” And Sam was like, “Yeah, that’s fine.” -Is that the only time you’ve done that? -No. There, there has been more than a few times. -You guys have? -Yeah. -More than a few times. -And I feel like- -What, what is the red line? -Red line is abuse. -Abuse. Uh- -Verbal or- -Verbal -… just being aggressively abusive. -Yeah. -That’s the red line. And I feel we don’t do it enough. Like, I feel like- -Yeah, I agree -… I, I, I know there are instances now also where, like, Damini who, who’s the GM of Bombay Canteen recently was telling me, and my first thing was, “Why didn’t we call the cops?” -Like, you know, like- -For that part. Yeah. Right? Like, w- and why are we even, like, encouraging this? Why didn’t someone else step up in, in… And it disturbs you, right? Like, it mentally disturbs you. So I feel like, like, that’s why with service, like, th- there are those things which have, like, scarred the entire industry to a certain level. But I don’t think owners know that there is a service department. Like, there is, like, restaurant Want to start a restaurant? Get a celebrity chef, we will get someone from Europe We will get X Bollywood person to design our restaurant. We are done. Let’s open. Let’s throw a party. I think now there are mixologists. Um. So then you have a celebrity mixologist. Um, nitrogen will be moved from the kitchen. Me, Mr. I’m sure you will end up being called a cookologist or something. -[laughs] It is useless. -Yeah. Yeah. I find one of the problems with service, which is pretty basic, is that people will spend money, as you say, on these fancy interior designers, but the welcome, which is so important at every restaurant abroad, will be completely screwed up. Something that standalones usually get right, but hotels -get wrong. -Yeah. I, don’t know how even standalones today still use a book. Like, you know, that big register and write -reservations- -Yeah … when technology is so easily available. And now technology is not that -expensive. Like, Android tablets- -No, it’s, yeah, it’s easy -… are like 5,000. -And, and the word you used was training, -right? Like, I think- -Yeah … not enough time is spent or money is invested in that. Before opening any restaurant for us, it’s critical to have those mock services, critical to have friends and family. It’s critical to do all the basics to actually get people… You’re moving into a new home, like, there’s no chance everyone’s gonna be comfortable on day one, but it’s a, you have to spend time on it for it to actually become good. -Yeah. -And it’s like anything else. But the notion of a greeter who makes you feel welcome or whatever is unknown in -most Indian restaurants. -Yeah. No? And it’s as simple as just, like, I feel we are, um, as people, like, if you welcome someone into a home, we do it so naturally, right? Like, even if the postman comes in, you’re like- -Yeah -… “How are you? Would you like some water?” You know? Like, I don’t know what happens in the restaurant, like, there’s -just like a- -Yeah. It’s… So, Roger Federer. -Mm-hmm. -Tell us. So it was my last month at EMP. I, I was leaving. I had met Floyd by then, um, at his restaurant in Tribeca called White Street. Um, so I spoke to Daniel, Chef Daniel, and I was like, um- Well, this is what I’m planning to do, to go back to India, yadi, yadi, yada. He’s like… And I said I want to use the last month of my visa to go travel. This is- Daniel had never been to India at this stage? No, I don’t think he had ever. But, but he heard Floyd’s name, and he was like, “Oh, yeah. Great.” He was exci- like he, he was okay. Um, and he knew my visa was coming up anyways, so like the team knew it. Uh, they were talking about extending it, but like I was in two minds. But anyways, that being said, I said I want to use the last month to travel. And he said, “What do you, what if you get to travel and get paid for it?” I was like, “What do you mean?” Uh, he’s like, “There’s a gig in, uh, India Wells in, um, uh… And would you go for it?” I said, “Tell me more.” And he’s like, “I can’t tell you more, but like one of the sous chefs will come speak to you.” So I said, “Okay, cool.” Go back doing my thing. The sous chef called, uh, Danny DiStefano, he’s Italian-American. He comes up to me and he’s like, “I’m going for it. Uh, it’s a gig for Roger.” And again, still not telling me who it is, [laughs] -okay? -Roger Rabbit. [laughs] It’s like, “Oh, oh.” I was like, “Oh.” And I’m like literally line cook mentality, I’m like, “Dude, uh, how, what am I getting paid? Like, what’s up?” So he says, um, “$2,000.” I said, “How many days?” He said, “Uh, 14 days.” I’m like- -Let’s go. [laughs] -… “Sounds about right. Let’s go.” So I’m like, in my head, I was like, “Oh, I can book Per Se. I, I want to eat at Boulud.” So I’m like, [laughs] “This is sorted.” Right? So I’m like, calculated it. I’m like, “Yeah, this sounds it.” So I’m like, “Danny, when we going?” And he’s like, “Whatever.” So we land in India -Wells and, um- -So you still didn’t know? -No. Uh- -You mean they- -No, on the flight. -On the flight they broke it to you? Yeah, so he broke it to me. He’s like, “Oh, we’re going to cook for Roger Federer.” I’m, “So what do you mean, bro?” And I’m like very excited, right? Like land, they c- like come to pick us up and all of that. We go to this house, it’s Sylvester Stallone’s home -that he’s rented out [laughs]- -Wow … for the, whatever, that period. Because he’s playing the ATP World Tour i- in India Wells. And obviously he’d reached out to Chef Daniel, Chef Daniel said, “Yeah, I’ll send you two cooks from EMP,” which was the both of us. So we go, it’s him, his family, his doubles partner, his physio, um, uh, who else was there? At so, at some point, uh, Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale show up, so they come with, uh, a bunch of things. And he has kids, so every kid has a nanny. So it was an entourage of like 24 people that we were cooking for. Um, and that, we, I did that for like 14 days. -So- -What did they eat? I think everything under the sun, actually. He was very easy. First day I go to Whole Foods to shop, and I’m like, uh, picking up all the healthy shit, almond butter, chia seeds and all of that. So I’ve come, stocked up the pantry, and I’m like, “This is probably gonna be enough,” right? The next morning he walks in, I’m like, “Uh, hi Roger, what’ll you have for breakfast?” He’s like, “Bacon and eggs.” -[laughs] -[laughs] -What is all this organic shit? [laughs] -No, he’s not even looked at it. I’m like, “I din’t get that” [laughs] Like you wouldn’t imagine if having [laughs] eggs alone I had, but bacon, I’m like, “Mm-mm.” So I’m like, “All right, cool.” On the fly we figure something out. We, we, we cook breakfast, we make pancakes for the kids or whatever, we give him all right now. And every day he ate like everything -from burgers to salmon to ribeyes to- -But the view that they all have to eat lots of carbs is not true. That they all have to live on pasta. He eats… No, so he would, he, his ritual was that he would eat spaghetti made by his mum, uh, just before the, before the game. So it was simple olive oil Parmesan spaghetti, and only his mom had to make it. So we would prep it, but- -He’s Swiss or what is he? -Yeah. Yeah, so, so there’s no cuisine there to speak of, yeah. -[laughs] -Which is probably why Daniel Humm recommended him on the Swiss network. [laughs] -Yeah. [laughs] -Add a little masala. [laughs] And like we literally, we were cooking everything and anything under the sun. We would just go to Whole Foods. We had a, we had the credit card. They gave us a car. [laughs] They gave us everything. We were like living in the mansion. They gave us a room in the mansion. -How wonderful. Dream gig, no? -Dream gig. Like, listen, like he was so easy. He would leave tickets for us every day for the game. So we would have tickets to the game. Uh, we would have, uh, we could use anything and everything in the home. So from the billiards table to like the pool, everything was just accessible. There was a tennis court in there that we felt like, -“Well, this is great.” -So like when you went to play tennis with Roger. So when he went off to play tennis you could just get into the pool and- -Yeah, yeah, yeah, and he- -… have martinis by the side of the pool. -Not a bad day. -Everything. Everything. So he was like, “Do whatever you want.” Uh, cases of Moët would show up every morning. So th- they, they were really kind. And they were- -Well, they’re classy people then, no? -Yes. And, and- Unlike many of the guests you referred to. [laughs] -They would help us wash dishes. -Very different lifestyles. Like e- everything was different because we were cooking and washing dishes, but they would come give us a hand. Like the entire family would come give us a hand while we did dishes. So I think that shows that they were just- -They’re just classy -… kind, generous people. -Yeah. -Um, and then the last day when he did not win the tour also, he was like, “Oh, let me make you a plate of food. Come sit down, eat with us.” And I, I think that kind of generosity is, is, is- -That’s, it shows class, huh? -… amazing. Shows class, yeah. Uh, it was amazing. So then on the last day, um, like when we were parting ways, it was just great, and I, I felt sad a little bit. [laughs] I’m like, “Oh shit.” Yes, right. [laughs] -“I’m gonna miss this gig.” [laughs] -Let me keep the credit card. Just- -Yeah. [laughs] -[laughs] I thought about it. No. -[laughs] -We’ve talked a lot about service and ambiance and all that. Floyd was, of course, the greatest Indian chef to work abroad of his generation. But when you guys looked at the food, was there a lot -of tasting and rejecting and all that? -Yeah, so I think we, when you started this story, we, we spoke about when we came back in 2014, it took us a long time to find a space where we wanted to do this. Um, and we used to do a lot of trials of the food. Uh, Floyd used to write the recipes in New York. Um, we used to… Thomas used to try them here. Um, in Thomas’ home we had set up like a mini kitchen to cook. But then we started doing these like secret suppers, um, where it was in someone’s home and 24 strangers were eating. And they, at that time, no one w- there wasn’t like a chef cooking or something. It was just this is the theme of the menu. And it was a great time for us to trial different things. Um, and because they didn’t know who was cooking, the feedback was also honest. Like, you know, they’re just talking, [laughs] and we used to run the bar. Well, also you guys were not well-known. I mean- The initiative was run by someone else, so we were like working as volunteers there. So Sam and me used to run the bar. And, uh, so we tried our… And i- it was the best way to get feedback. So I think we did some three, four dinners that way. -Um- -It is also this thing that sometimes as owners, and I hate that word owner, but as a founder, you like something- -Owner, owner, owner is honest. -Yeah. [laughs] Um, but the guest is not gonna really… it’s something they don’t enjoy, right? And you, you fantasize on things too much, but you need to let your ego aside and just evolve the menu -consistently. -If they want olive oil rather than -expensive butter, they get the olive oil. -Yeah. [laughs] So we, I think, struggled at the start with our vegetarian part of our menu. -Okay. -Um, because honestly, I think it was more an afterthought. I think it was veg versions of the non-veg things we were doing, and I think in the first six months, like if you look at our Zomato and TripAdvisor reviews, that would have been the common trend, the, the vegetarian part. And I think then we just focused a lot more on it. And there also, in our first rendition of trying to make the veg menu much more glamorous, we made the biggest mistakes again. Like, so chef, remember in, in the US, used to make a really good watermelon curry. Uh, he used to use fri- So we made a- -Vikas Khanna still makes it, by the way. -Yeah. So he, we- -One of his specialties -… we tried doing that. Then we tried -doing- -Oh, he makes a pineapple curry. Same idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. -Same idea, no? -Yeah. So we- -Except we did it with paneer. -We did it with paneer. -Instead of daal. -I think we- I used to cringe to make it. I think we were, like, -trying to- -But, you know, vegetarians are always at a disadvantage because no good chef or restaurant manager worth his salt is a vegetarian. So you, you can’t really make the stuff you really enjoy. So you have to put -yourselves in their minds- -Exactly … and try and figure out what they like. And to be fair, I feel for vegetarians, India is a great place to be. -Yeah. -You know what though? Much of- -So much option -… the fact that our first seasonal change came in the summer, because we opened in February, and what do you have in the summer? Kaddu and, uh, lauki, [laughs] and we tried to put that on the- Shades of kaddu on that menu. It was crazy. Like, it was all the watery vegetables. But you s- but you guys got pretty good reviews to the extent that there were reviews. -Yeah. -There wasn’t that much social… From the -day you opened. -Yes. -Yes. -That is true. That is true. Uh… You had no difficulty at all winning public approval. You were full quite soon. Yes. Yeah, I feel like to the nuanced, like, eater, like, people who, like, travel the world, what they liked is what you said, is that, “For once we’ve walked into a restaurant where people are taking -care of us, but leaving us alone also.” -Yeah. Yeah. You know, like, not too much like someone just pouring water every five seconds, like letting you -have- -Yeah -… your own conversations. -That’s right. And then the food was, like, food of flavors that they remember, they appreciate, but obviously the formats were different. So that nostalgia played a huge part to it. So but to people, like, if we were having a conversation and so and so, “Bombay Canteen has opened,” Indian restaurant. And when someone says that and you go walk into the restaurant, there is already an expectation that there is a palak paneer on the menu. So that’s why for those kind of people, it was like a slight education process, and we didn’t want to be the ones saying that, “Oh, we have this amazing methi arugula salad. This, the methi comes from here,” that. No, we don’t. Like, this is it. And people are like, “Oh, it’s too bitter. I don’t eat an Indian salad.” So you couldn’t change that, I feel. But I, hated using the word modern Indian. Like, I, I still don’t feel. Like, I -always say it- -But even this whole farm to table -provenance stuff has gone too far. -Yeah. -Exactly. -A very crap meal, the guy says, “You know, these carrots come from a farm we have near Pune.” -Yeah. -Go to the farm, just give me a bloody -carrot, yeah? -Yeah, exactly. -It just, it just goes too far. -Yeah. I feel like, um, I always like to describe it as like in anything we’ve done- Well, you may not even look on your face, but we leave it at that. [laughs] -Yeah. -Okay. [laughs] I think it was the Indian, Indian -of today that we do. -My loved carrot. My loved carrot. -Yeah. -[laughs] -There is carrots on the menu. [laughs] -There is carrots on the menu currently. -And so I’m like- -Oh, you’re, you’re a man who trained on -carrot top. -Yeah, exactly. Yeah. -That carrot is delicious. -I, I, yeah, I, I think we do justice to -carrots. -Yeah. Correct. Okay, so you had Thomas as your opening chef, and he apparently had something to do with Eggs Kejriwal, which was your big breakout hit in a way, no? The Willingdon Club had served it for years, and except for a few old Parsis, nobody noticed it. So tell us -how you guys put it on the menu. -I think it was, [laughs] literally remember this so clearly. I think it was 9th or 10th of February that Arvind Kejriwal won, uh, the elections in Delhi at that point, and someone had thrown an egg on his face during that, uh, campaign. -And- -Giving a whole new definition to the -phrase Eggs Kejriwal. [laughs] -Eggs Kejriwal, so that’s what we called it. So and that’s kind of the reason why it went on the menu as a special where we had this chutney, which is the Kejriwal chutney as we call it now, for another- -But that is your chutney, right? -That, that’s the one, Thomas- -The Willingdon Club, that was, that was- -That was Thomas’s- The reason it worked was because Thomas did this chutney. Ex- exactly. Otherwise, it’s Amul cheese, egg, and brioche bread. -Yeah, that’s right. And we- -Actually, the dish was, so we had a Bunny Chow we used to make. Um, and we used to have a big bread, and we used to cut the tops of this bread. So we used to use the brioche part of it, dig out, then put. We used to have lots of tops left, like, you know, like, like these. [laughs] -So for staff- -Now the truth comes out. -Yeah. [laughs] -That’s why it’s made with brioche. -Yeah. [laughs] -And that’s why it’s still round. -Round. Yeah. -Why would we make a round brioche? So we had a round, like these tops. So for, like, staff meals, for family meals, we had that with a fried egg and cheese on top. And I think Sam had asked Thomas, “Can you put some chutney on, like, like make this interesting for me?” And then this, like, we— It was just a great curiosity conversation. And I think you had it on one of your first trips, and you wrote about it, and it just went viral -after that. Like, it’s like, um- -And on everybody. The Willingdon Club it’s -every years. -Yeah. -Now it crops up on all kinds of menus- -Yeah. -Yeah -… and various people take credit saying, -“We introduced it.” No. -Yeah. -It was Bombay Canteen, no? -Yeah. -That introduced it to the world. -And we’ve met that Mr. Kejriwal. -Yeah. -His family. -His family’s come into- -Yeah … Bombay Canteen as well. What is this mariadi chutney? -[laughs] -[laughs] -[laughs] -But when you joined, Bombay Canteen was already up and running, right? Yeah? Yes. And so you joined first as a sous chef to Thomas? -Yes, I did. -Yeah. -Yeah. -And then your moment of glory, at least in my eyes, because I had no clue who you were, comes with O Pedro, which was just a spectacular restaurant. So how did you think of that menu? Well, I had very little to do with it. Floyd had a lot to do [chuckles] with it, -let me just put it that way. -No, but to put it in perspective, Floyd -took his Goan food very seriously. -Yes. The success of O Pedro was you didn’t take it that seriously. You played around with it, you did funny things. Even that message you got on the phone when you -tried to book a table was funny. -Yeah. So from the moment you entered O Pedro, there was a sense of joy to it, no? Yes, and we still all of us call it our happy place because- -It is a very happy place -… that exactly is a very happy place for all of us. And like with every restaurant, right, like you can’t just build a restaurant all by yourself. There’s a village that helps you build it. Um, and I had that village in Sameer, Yash, and Floyd, and including Chef Thomas at that point. Uh, because I was setting out for the first time from being a sous chef to a chef, and that transition is very hard because now you don’t have anybody above you to kind of validate your decisions. Your decisions are yours. Um, that menu came through eight, nine months of real hard work and research, and like going into homes in Goa trying to understand the food, because I knew very little. When Floyd presented the idea and said that, “Oh, okay, two years from now we’re gonna do a restaurant,” and when he said it’s Goan, I first frowned on the idea because I said, “Hey, listen, there’s a swimming pool here with the Bombay canteen, and now you give me a bucket in terms of Goa. How am I going to… Like, what am I going to do with this?” Um, but as I started eating my way through Goa, as we started like doing our food trips, our research trips, and all of that, I realized that there was great -depth here. And- -But you guys have done a lot of research, because I remember going to Goa, and Sameer sent me a list of places where we could go to eat, and they were all unusual places. They were none of the standard -places. -Yes. And through those places did we understand that, well, there is a l- lot of depth here. So that made us come to a conclusion that we need to go to Portugal to find out what and how colonization, -uh, the effects that it had on- -This was really necessary? You guys just -wanted a trip abroad. -Well- -Even I ask the question. -[laughs] -Yeah. [laughs] -Because he had to stay back and open the -restaurant. -Because he [laughs] -Yeah. Yeah. -And he still asked the question. You came, you came back with one egg tart. -[laughs] -[laughs] -Yeah. And lots of funny stories. -And a lot of funny stories. [laughs] -Yeah. [laughs] -Uh, so yeah, we made that trip. Uh, I worked in kitchens there, um, uh, to be honest, uh, with Jose Avillez. I worked in Jose Avillez’s kitchen over there trying to understand. Uh, working in his kitchens, I kind of understood a little bit about what they were doing. And the, the point that you brought up, I had very little emotional connect with the -cuisine. -That- that’s why it worked. -And that’s why it worked. -That’s why it worked. Because I did not fear questioning the whys of what was happening. And I was- None of this, “This is my mom’s cafreal,” nonsense, eh? It was- -It wasn’t. -Yeah. It wasn’t. And I knew that I was not cooking out there to kind of, you know, compete with anyone’s grandma’s cafreal or vindaloo. I knew what we were trying to do was that we were trying to put Goan food for Bombay. We were trying to be a Goan-inspired bar and restaurant, and I knew that that dialogue or that narrative was absolutely important to me because that gave me the liberty to kind of play around with everything that existed there. And, um, truly to say the least, um, from the second menu at O Pedro is when I truly believe I found my voice of -how I wanted to cook in India. -Yeah. I actually think that the Papa’s and Co. is a very different thing, but that sense of fun with very high-quality cooking which pervades all your cuisine, I first saw it, -uh, O Pedro. -Thank you. Yeah. And I think… And I, and I, and I truly believe so. And I was actually… We were eating a meal at O Pedro last weekend, uh, both Samir and I. And, uh, the Pedro’s ceviche, which is not really a ceviche, but it’s like a version of a tiradito that came on the… And I was like- Which you found on a trip to Brazil or somewhere or… [laughs] -Well, I don’t have a, I don’t have a- -[laughs] It can’t relate it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not, not that charming story, but, uh, that was something that I was -trying to do to kind of fight the fact- -But no Goan would have done that, you -realize. -Yeah. -Yeah. -I was trying to… I don’t know what I was trying to fight at that point in my mind because I was like, “Okay, this me- we’ve done one, uh, ceviche before, um, but I need to break the mold. I need to…” The, the fight was that I need to -be my own. -Yeah. And to be that, this was my… Like, this ceviche was the answer because it gave me answers to as to how I wanted to cook and what I wanted to do. Um, I remember Chef Floyd fighting me to it [chuckles] a lot. Yeah, he took all this stuff very seriously, which he should as a great Go- but he’s a Bombay Goan, but a Goan all the same, no? Yeah. Because, I mean, he was also looking at it from, like sitting in New York trying to understand what I was trying to say. But when he came here, he tasted it, he understood what I was trying to do. I mean, it— after that, it also gives him the confidence to let me do what I wanted to do, right? Because at the end of the day, the buck also at that point stopped with him, so if the food wasn’t right, -then, well- -But the reflection -But, but O Pedro- -It was a reflection … was also a success from the word go. -I, I would like to believe so. -Yeah. I remember I tried to get in in the second week, and it was full every day, and then I had to ask Thomas to try and find me a table, and he did. It was that difficult to get a table. I think the menu at Pedro was very ballsy to begin with initially. -Yeah. -Because, I mean, in 2015, or 20, sorry, 2016, ‘17, trying to feed people raw fish, trying to feed people buff tongue, or trying to kind of do, uh, different things on the menu that was not kind of heard of because we were not doing the regular vindaloos and xacutis yet. -Yeah. -So that, that was, that was difficult to explain to them as to what part of this is really Goan. And, uh, I feel till today that that was a pretty ballsy menu for 2017, and that changed the way people looked at Goan -food, and also changed- -I think I, I would say that. I would say that all these Goans get very agitated with their idea of modern Goan food. But frankly, you should have a bit of distance from a cuisine. Uh, love it, but not take it too seriously. Which if you think about it is what -Gaggan is doing with, uh, his food. -His food, yeah. I mean, it’s not classic Indian either. It’s not like throwing liquid nitrogen at -something either- -Yeah … but it’s, uh, something very different, but still Indian, no? -100%. -Yeah. 100%. And after… I mean, now that I’ve eaten there, I understand what it is. I’d never eaten there until -two years ago. -Where, Gaggan? -Yeah. -You were supposed to come and cook there. -Do you remember? -At Wet. -At Wet, which was- -Yes -… uh, ni- next door to Gaggan. -Yes. And then Gaggan fought with his partners and closed the restaurant down [laughs] in anticipation of your coming. [laughs] No doubt, I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. [laughs] Okay, thanks. I’m getting a Muslim chef to come and cook -Goan food. -[laughs] Okay, we shut the restaurant. Not happening. But like, uh, when I brought that whole Gaggan team to come and eat at O Pedro. -Yes. Yes. -And there was Fabio.Who’s Portuguese. -True. -Yeah? -Yes. -And he loved the food. -Yes. -Yeah? -Yes. -So you really— there was something internationally appealing about your food. Agreed. I mean, we always speak amongst ourselves about form versus flavor, and we always talk about that one thing that kind of defines the food, wherein if you are extending the form of the dish, then you keep the flavor something that is reminiscent to you or something that can strike a chord. And if you’re stretching the flavor, then you keep the form as something that is recognizable. Because those two things, if you try and stretch them and you say that you’re trying to push the envelope, then it becomes alien. -Exactly. -you don’t connect to your audience. And, uh, like I always say, that there’s a time and place for everything. Sometimes some dishes make sense in 2015, and some dishes make sense in 2020, and not necessarily the other way around. Uh, so you just need to be aware of it. You need -to be cognizant. -But also, if you’re a very good chef, which without wishing to unduly flatter you, you are, if you have some fun, uh, idea of a cuisine and you experiment with it, something good will almost eve- inevitably result from it, no? I believe so, yes. It will, and I think that you need to… I mean, the, the first thing for why it’ll happen or why it should happen is because you are secure in what you want to do and what you want to put out there. Like, you, I mean, for a lot of chefs out there, like, you just need to be secure in your- secure enough in your craft to put your head down and just be able to do what you want to do, rather than kind of look over your shoulder and look around and see what’s -happening. -But also it takes chefs a little bit of time to find their own voice in a restaurant, and I think you- you’re right. With the, the second menu also, when you knew Pedro was working, you didn’t bother about what purists were saying or whatever, and you just did the kind of -food you enjoyed making, no? -Yeah. And I think that’s the secret here, right? Like, if you, you, you cook what you wish to eat or what you think you enjoy eating, and that’s about all there is. Because if the emotion wa- Which is why the vegetarian food is b- always bad, huh? You don’t wish to eat -paneer curry. [laughs] -Yeah, but I, I mean, I, I, I wouldn’t ever hold myself guilty to that, ‘cause I believe that we come up with great vegetarian menus, and I, I can say this very honestly today, is that I always -think- -I’ve never eaten any of your vegetarian -food, so- -You sh- I, I would highly recommend. We, we’ll do a whole veg tour for you in Bombay next time. [laughs] What? How? [laughs] He’s like, “What have I done to you for you to do this to me?” [laughs] But, okay, so you— let’s, uh, continue with this chronologically. You guys all have some connection -generally with America. -Yes. You come back, you start this new kind of restaurant. Well, they start this new kind, and you join them for the first one, but the second one you’re pretty much involved with from the beginning, and you’re like the most, the toast of the town. You’re like the hottest -restaurateurs. So what happens next? -What happens next is we get really tired of opening three, 4,000 square feet spaces. -Yeah. -I’m being a little flippant about that. I think it was more that I think all of us were very ambitious as a group, but what became obvious to us were a couple of things. One, finding these large spaces is an expensive affair, and they’re f- far and few between. Number two, just because you put one of the s- same thing you do 10 kilometers -away doesn’t make it special. -Yeah. I think we recognized that there was a certain uniqueness to the style of service, to the food, to everything we were doing there, and that really doesn’t lend itself to scale. And I think that’s where there was a really honest conversation amongst us, that if we wanted to do something, I think it would look like a product. I think we— I’d be lying to say that if we, all of us didn’t see what was happening in America, whether with Shake Shack or with other companies, where, yeah, there was a version of something which was more process driven that was, that would eventually drive scale. The restaurants were still the jewels in the crown, and then eventually something showed up which could scale. And I think that, I think the, one of the first things we tried to do was bottle the -Kejriwal sauce. [laughs] -Yeah. We definitely tried to do that. But we also was realizing that the sauces, chutneys, pickles, all of this was so commoditized, and our brains didn’t work in that way. And that’s when Yash took one very lovely trip, which he’ll tell you about. -I- -This is the Istanbul trip. -Yes. -Yes. Tell me about it. I wrote about it, so I remember it. [laughs] Yeah. [laughs] Um, actually it’s funny because I’ve n- not been to Turkey. I was at the airport. [laughs] They don’t, clearly, -clearly don’t take me seriously. -You were changing planes. -Yeah, I was changing planes. -And scarring the duty-free shop up. -[laughs] -Yeah. So I was changing planes. I was flying to New York because Floyd had opened Paowalla. -Yeah. -And, um, I was helping him with operations there. And, um, I was changing planes, and what really struck me, I, I always say it’s simple. Like, just this person saying, like, “Try the baklava. Don’t buy it, like, just try it.” And that sense of passion came through, and I tried it, and I just stood there for a moment, and I was looking at people buying, like, Turkish delights and, like, baklava. And you’ve flown from this Mumbai airport where we are selling Swiss chocolates like we’ve made, like farm to table kinds. Um, and it like, I remember coming back from the trip and taking… We went to Phoenix Mill. I took Sam and made a presentation of an idea I wanted to present to him, saying that, “If we were able to, in 2015, take a different look at what Indian food looks like, why can’t we do that with Indian sweets?” So that was, like, the, just the genesis of that idea. And yeah, they came, and Floyd, um, loved it, and we said [laughs] we definitely don’t know how to make Indian sweets. So I remember we started eating a lot of Indian sweets. Like, we used to order Indian sweets from all over India and just try them. And honestly, after that much sugar, we used to be sick at the end of it and realize that, okay, there is something here. And what stood out for us is the same, like, form versus flavors. Like, there are forms of mithai we’ve grown up on, right? And, like, as simple as a kaju katli, right? Like, you’ve grown up on it, but in terms of flavor, it’s never really enhanced over time, like, in terms of the ingredients they were using or the technique they’ve been using. And in the last 10 years, at that time, I, I looked at it from the point that just we grew up on instead of we went from dairy milk to kaju katlis to directly, -like, a- -… cupcake macaron, right? Because Indian sweets never really got aspirational. And yeah, we started working with it, and I feel like just finding Chef Girish, who -again was Hussain’s batchmate at- -Not my batchmate. Senior -… shop. -Senior. Thomas’ batchmate. -And, um- -Thomas’ batchmate. Actually, all of this happened now that I, now that you mentioned it- -While we were building O Pedro -… while we were building O Pedro. -Yeah. -Oh, really? -Yeah. -Yeah. -Okay. -So it was in parallel happening. We were having these conversations as we were building out O Pedro, and we knew we had to build. I still remember we met Chef Girish for the first time two or three weeks after O Pedro opened, and I think he also happened to be at that crossroads in his life. He was working in Bangalore at that time, and he had grown up in Manipal, and he’d wanted to always— He’d had this one stint before sort of going on to sort of more continental French kitchens. He’d worked in a local mithai shop, and he’d always thought, “What if I combine French technique with, -uh, Indian sweets or Iyengar b-” -That’s Iyengar Bakery. His dream at that time was to open a reimagined version of an Iyengar bakery. -I remember this. -So I think it was the right time at the right place. And again, none of us knew how to— He came on board, but um, none of, all of us, we— the reason we were tasting so many sweets, none of us knew how to make Indian sweets. So, and Floyd would always say, “Till you don’t take time to understand tradition, you can’t innovate.” So we literally spent the next two years then, -and more Girish than any of us tra- -That, that long, really? -That long. -Yeah. Traveling the length and breadth of India. He’s got some amazing stories of, like, going to Coimbatore for the first time to learn from a halwai. [chuckles] From day one, the guy was like, “You sit there and watch.” Then slowly he made his way to the kadhai and was taught, et cetera. So it was a proper process, was— We joined him on some of the trips, uh, um, and it was amazing. I remember going to Jaipur with him and seeing ghevar made for the first time, and it is, it’s almost like this, like beau-beauty to it, the way he’s dropping the batter in that hot oil and how it’s, uh, being built little by little. So, and that’s what we wanted to bring back and kind of led to, like Ash was saying, the genesis of Bombay Sweet Shop. Why did you choose such a dodgy location for the first one? -Cheap rent. -Okay. So, so it was an experimental thing. It was experiment. We knew we needed a production facility, and we knew we couldn’t open it in a sort of— Actually, funny enough, we debated. We almost signed a space in Phoenix Mills at that time. -Thank God we didn’t. And- -We also wanted to be an experience center. Like, if you go to Switzerland, you go to a chocolate factory, right? If you go to France, you want to stand outside a bakery, see a croissant. When was the last time anyone saw a boondi laddu being made? And doing that on expensive rent with an idea which we thought, so it made sense at that point to do it in Byculla. -Again, it was an instant success, right? -For 10 days. For, for 10 days till COVID hit in full form. -Yeah. -Yeah, I was gonna say that. The— I came, what, on the eve of COVID hitting the full form. -Yeah. -And I remember having this long conversation with Floyd and saying bye to him, and he said, “I’m leaving tonight for New York.” And then, of course, he got COVID, and it didn’t work well. And all of us worried if he’d been infected. In fact, he didn’t infect any of us- -Any of us -… I have to say that. -Correct. -We were all fine. And I was sitting like -this across- -Yeah. -Yeah -… him, so- I remember we were all sitting together in that corner. So I don’t know, so I don’t know what happened. But after that, after the tragedy, which unexpectedly sure destroyed all of you, uh, even though all of us who didn’t know him so well were so upset for you, it must have been devastating. There was a strange backlash against Bombay Canteen, that, “Why didn’t you tell us that Floyd had COVID?” And, “Why didn’t you take measures,” et cetera. And I— it was never clear to me what the logic of that campaign was or where it came from. -But you guys were upset, right? -I think you used the right word, -devastated. -Yeah. And I think all I can think back and say is that s- people knew so little about the disease- -Yeah -… that I think the smallest iota of information became something to hold on to. And it was soul-crushing, literally, to have you— have people, like, accuse us of doing something which we clearly didn’t, which we clearly didn’t. But that’s the day and age of social media, unfortunately. It takes a life of its own. I remember people saying that, “I went and ate at Bombay Canteen, and Floyd wasn’t even there, and I didn’t realize I was putting my life in danger.” And I responded saying, “You know, I sat across the table [chuckles] from him, and he didn’t put my life in danger. How could -you possibly have been in danger?” -Correct. So- But it, it lasted for a while, and I never understood where it came from. I feel it was, like, now we can talk about it. In that point, I think we were just -so emotionally stressed, um, that, um- -I remember, I remember you were saying he -was very upset -… and then when we found out Chef Floyd had passed away, like, all of that didn’t matter, right? Like, we were more- -And it was very quick, no? -Yeah. -From the time we heard he had it. -Yeah. So yeah, it wasn’t— I feel like, and you were, we were emotionally in a bad place, but you were angry at what was happening. -And at the same time- -But at the injustice of it all. Wouldn’t that anger you? -It did. -Yeah. -That, that’s exactly what anger does. -But like, it- -Yeah -… at that point, there were three things, right? Like, there’s Chef Floyd and his family, then this anger, and then there is, like, business is done. You know, you’re like— So your, your, our team strength that time used to be, like, 240 people. So I think it’s— we were angry, to be fair. Like, I, I can imagine, and I think it took a lot of people to just say, like, “Just stay quiet.” Like, “Keep your heads down and-” -Which is the right thing to do. -The right thing to do. -And then it faded away- -Yeah -… as quickly as it had come and as- -Yeah -… unreasonably. -Yeah. And Bombay Sweet Shop then, as this tragedy, has become like a byword for modern versions of Indian sweets. I don’t know if you guys realized that it was -gonna be so revolutionary. -I feel like we— No, we didn’t. I feel, but, you know, if for any other restauranteur to say, I feel any business owner in COVID, we were all in the same boat, right? Like, you couldn’t ask for advice to anyone -because no one had seen- -Yeah, nobody knew … something like that, right? -Yeah. -So we reopened Sweet Shop in July just for deliveries. Again, 11 of us that we used to do at O Pedro. Chef Girish used to be the dishwasher because we didn’t have— like, so he used to help, so he used to make, like, a small chocolate cake. He used to be— So then we were like, “Okay, let’s open Sweet Shop.” And we were like, “Let’s make maybe 50 boxes a day and see how we can sell it online.” We figured out e-commerce. We figured out D2C, Shopify ourselves. And- I feel it was that goodwill of Bombay Canteen and O Pedro that we had created that people trusted a new mithai brand online. -But also the product was very good. -Yeah. Yeah. I do feel like— And our first Raksha Bandhan, we like, like sold out. Like, we had never thought that Indian festival, I don’t know why [chuckles] we didn’t- -Yeah -… figure this out, but the Indian festivals would be so big for us. And, um, we had made the most amazing kaju roll. It was covered in chocolate and different colors, but when it sat in a box, it looked like a rakhi, and we were so happy with ourselves. Yeah, unlike Bombay Canteen, [chuckles] but- Yeah, yeah. And, uh, didn’t realize that India, it gets really hot in the monsoons. By the time this thing was reaching people, it was like a flat chocolate cake, like, [chuckles] and not a beautiful rakhi-looking one. So like there, there were these huge ups and downs we’ve had. Um, and we’ve kept— I think that brand kept us also honest, because for me and Sam, we had to also unlearn a lot of things. We used to— We, I think after two years, sat with each other, Sweet Shop, and said, “This is not a restaurant. We can’t run this as a restaurant. This has a product. This needs separate teams. This needs a very different way of thinking of form versus flavor. This needs to be thought of how they open the box at home and stuff like that.” So, um, it’s been fun. As my director has written in the question she gave me, this is the way you’re going to scale up and get lots of new investment. Is that accurate? Well, we just did raise [chuckles] a institutional- -So she’s, so she’s not wrong. -No. We just did raise an institutional round, but I think it— I think not, not because of Bombay Sweet Shop, but because I think we realized where Hunger Inc. is now going. I think since then, we’ve also opened Veronica’s -and Papa’s. But- -Veronica’s came after that. -After, yeah. -And Papa’s is the last thing you’ve done. -Last one. -Okay. Two years ago. And for us, it became, like two years ago, again, we— I think what, I think the beauty of all our, all of us working together is we have a way of keeping each other honest, and we have really honest conversations with each other. We were touching 400 odd people, and we were realizing that to take the next steps, we had all the big company problems, but none [chuckles] of the big company resources. So, which is when it kind of started to make sense to finally take institutional money, not for any other reason. Because— And there was a reason why we didn’t, never took it earlier, was because if you’re making single restaurants, taking growth capital makes no sense. Like, money wants to make more money, so they’ll be like, “Next, next, next,” and those incentives are completely misaligned. But with Sweet Shop now, we have that ability because today, Bombay Sweet Shop is making its seventh, sixth and seventh store in Bombay. -Yeah. -Uh, we have about 20 dark stores. We ship all over the country. We have a, a really robust institutional business, so all of -that allows for- -It’s ultimately gonna become your Shake Shack, no? -As in that’s the hope and dream? -Yeah. -Exactly. -That’s, oh, that is it. [chuckles] -Yeah. I know. Why not? -Okay. So then after Bombay Sweet Shop comes Veronica’s, which is a sandwich shop, which is interesting, but I’m not gonna talk about. And then comes Papa’s, which is either with five stars, the best restaurant in India, or a massive ego trip. So tell us about it. It is not. I mean, it is anything but an ego trip. Uh- Okay. You sit there and people sit around you, and you make thing, they tell you -you’re a genius. It sounds- -[laughs] -… it sounds like an ego trip to me. -Uh, well, one way of putting it, for sure. [laughs] -I bet you haven’t thought of it that way. -I’ve never thought of it that. [laughs] -He’s still making bacon and egg- -Yeah. -Bacon and eggs for Roger. -For Roger Federer, yeah. Yeah. [laughs] I think, uh, the way I look at Papa’s is that, um, I, I believe, and I, I always say this, that it is a, some collaboration of all our dreams put together because, uh… And by all our dreams, I mean all of us. Uh, ‘cause when I moved back from New York, um, when, like you can take a person out of fine dining, but you really can’t take fine dining out of that person, right? I was bored of, you know, b- like 16 people being bent over a plate with dots and stuff like that. So Bombay Canteen made absolute sense. But always, that, that instinct of being in, in an EMP and being in that environment really never left me, and I would always talk to Sam and Yash about it to be like, “Okay, what if someday there was a version of it?” Floyd had a buy-in on it as well. He wanted a small, like a brilliant, uh, you know, restaurant that did, like he did in at Atomix, and he said that that’s what we should do, fine food. So things like that, the conversations would al-always pop up, and what a lot of people don’t know is that pre-COVID, there was a small space behind the Bombay Sweet Shop in Byculla that was supposed to be -that. -Oh, really? Ah. -Yeah. Nobody knows that because- -Yeah, actually this, the, exactly, the- -We make namkeen there -… sweet factory was, we were convinced no one is gonna come to that location. So hidden in there, meant to open a few -months later, was a space- -Potential Papa’s … potential Papa’s, and it was also, we had actually got, uh, we were speaking to Momofuku to come and do the first sort of collaboration there at that time, and then COVID happened, and let’s just say plans changed. I’ve only been once to Papa’s. I think just before you opened, right? -Yeah. -Yeah? -Yeah, yeah. -But my son, who practically lives there, -says it’s really the- [chuckles] -Probably, yeah, um, highest number of -times. -Because it’s actually quite difficult to -get a booking, right? -I wouldn’t say it’s difficult to get a booking. I feel like we have 190 seats to go out every month, and if diligent- How many people try and book? Well, the statistics say that around 1.5 lakh clicks in the first minute on the -website. -Correct, and you have 190 seats to give -out. -Yes. So the odds- -So it’s not difficult to get into? -Easier to get into an IIT. [laughs] -It is, yes. Yeah. -You know, um, so, so we never really, um, l- Let’s be honest. We didn’t set out to create… We created a restaurant. We -wanted to just create a good restaurant- -You created a counter. You created a -counter -… and create a counter, and given that the s- the way the cards were dealt to us and the space that we had, we did the best that we could within that space, um, because it made sense there for us. Uh, and, uh, well, that was what we were d- given, and we chose to do it a certain way. We wanted to do it four nights a week because you’ve been there, you know that it’s, -it’s, it’s a proper production. -Yeah. It’s, it’s an entire production, and I wish to want to do it as opposed to have to do it, and four nights felt like the right… amount of time to be able to do that so that you come in every day energized enough to want to do it. Um, and, uh, the fifth service never made sense. So that gives us a certain inventory, and that creates a certain scarcity, but that’s not what we intended -to create. It, it just- -Yes, there’s… If you’re going to do it -yourself most days, which you do- -Yeah … and there’s only one of you in that space, I think it’s you have no choice but -to do it that way. -Yeah. And, and we’re coming- Also, I don’t think it would work if you did more covers given the kind of food you -do, no? -Correct. And, and it creates a certain sense, there’s a certain sense of intimacy that that space creates, there’s a certain sense of warmth that that space has, and it wouldn’t be the same, like you rightly mentioned, with more people. And, like, on the 16th, by, on this Sunday, we come up on two years. We’re coming up on two years. -Really? It’s been that long, yeah? -Yes, it has been that long. And it just -feels like yesterday. -And for people who don’t know what it is, which is most of the world because you won’t let them in, just explain what it -is. -It’s his fault. He doesn’t let them in. -He doesn’t let them in, yeah. -Yeah. Yeah. -Yeah. -It’s, it’s all me. Um- Only 12 people at a time allowed to tell him he’s a genius. [laughing] [laughing] I’m the gatekeeper. -But tell us, uh, what the concept is. -So Papa’s is a 12-seater chef’s counter, uh, which is built on the concept of a shop, a Singaporean shop house, where there’s Veronica’s downstairs, which is the chef’s restaurant, and upstairs is the chef’s home where he cooks or throws a dinner party four nights a week. So that was the thought that we led with to build Papa’s. And the way Papa’s is designed is that imagine if Wes Anderson had a home in ’80s Bandra. What would that look like? So if you look at the way the tiles are laid or you look at the way the colors are, you look at the symmetry over there, you’ll understand that it means- It’s the Grand B- it’s the Grand Bandra Hotel. Yeah. -It’s [laughs] not the Grand Bandra. -[laughs] Okay, okay. And, you know, and, um, that, that was the thought with which we led. And the kind of food that, you know, the canvas was really blank when I was trying to con- you know, make the food for Papa’s because I’m very confident to say that today, that this has been one of the menus that I’ve failed at the most in the eight months that we ate. We ate decent food, [laughs] but not good enough for Papa’s, you know. Um, because, I mean, the doubt was… I mean, I doubted myself a couple of times in those eight months to be like, “Okay, do I really now know how to cook, or am I, am I not cooking the right thing?” Because I just didn’t know where to start and where to end. And then, uh, when we were trying to put dishes into it, he ate the first ever rendition of the Papa’s menu entirely with Nicolina, and it was a 17 course, four and a half hour long meal, and I wanted to shoot myself at the end of it. -Yeah. -Because- While they were, like, screwing, like, like, putting the wallpaper next to us. -They were- -Okay. So they were putting the wallpaper up, and we did our first service in there, and I was literally wanting to kill myself because -that was not what I wanted to do. -Right. That was not the experience that I wanted to deliver. And we, we were all in, in sync that that was not working. And we can say that we all grew up in fine dining restaurants, so there’s a part of it that we really loved, but there are also parts -that we kind of- -But four and a half hours and 17 courses, -you’re a chef, not an alchemist, no? -Correct. [laughs] True. So I th- I think I had to reel it back in a couple of notches. And, um, when we did, we found our sweet spot. And, um, today- And there’s no logic to the menu. It’s just what you like cooking, right? Yes. It is, is based on a true sense of who we are as people. Uh, the idea of the menu kind of motivates you to think a little bit- Who’s we as people? These guys don’t do the food. You do the food. -No. We, by we, I mean the team. -He’s being nice. -He’s being nice, huh? -Yeah. -Okay. All right. -We the team. -We the team. -We the team. -Okay, go on. Yeah. -And largely also, like, um, I lost my train of thought. -[laughing] -[laughing] Good. -You know, but what I want- -But basically it’s just dishes you want to cook, ingredients that you’ve found that you think are interesting- -Yeah, yeah -… that will… And you turn them into -dishes that people like. -Like, yeah. And it would not be successful whether you had 200 seats or 12 seats if the food -wasn’t so good, no? -But I think you said something earlier. You said as a chef he learnt at O Pedro not to take himself too seriously. -He doesn’t. -I think. And that, I think that’s what -shows eventually. And- -But I mean, the, yeah, thi- I think about… Pretend you’re not here. The thing about his food is that there’s joy in it. Yeah, exactly. And how do you bring that out? And I think the joy also comes up in conversation, right? Like, our, the creative process is such, I learn… I was sitting there, like, a first rendition of the rabbit dish came out, and he, Yash bit into it, and we were doing the trials at O Pedro. And Yash being Yash, he was like, “Imagine if there were some bugs on it. It would be Bugs Bunny.” -[laughing] -And that led to a certain thought process. That, that, just that one joke in that moment led to a thought process which has now, uh, taken its fourth avatar on the -menu, right? -What is the current version of the rab- -rabbit dish? -Uh, so we do an à la Kiev with the rabbit, uh, which is in the form of a Indian shami kebab meets a Spanish croquette but an à la Kiev. -But like breaded and fried? -Uh, yeah, cr- uh, breaded with vermicelli and fried like you would a shami kebab, but when you break into it, it’s- -What spurts out when you break into it? -Uh, so we do a butter made with, uh, red -weaver ants and smoked tomatoes. -With… Butter made with? -Red weaver ants and smoked tomatoes. -So just for people watching it who aren’t -revolted by the idea of eating a rabbit- -Yeah … you can tell them there are ants in it as well. -Yes. -Yes? And, and- -If, if the rabbit wasn’t enough- -And bugs but- -… there’s still Bugs Bunny -… there’s still Bugs and Bunny. -Bunny, yeah. -What, any other dishes from there that -you’re pleased with or happy with? -A lot of them, actually. We do, um, since we cook in Jude Bakery, which is an 80-year-old bakery- -Yeah -… I’ll, I’ll- I know it when Gresham used to cook there. Yes, exactly. That’s very true. And I think that has a rich baking tradition, right? And we always try and do, like, either a version of a Wellington or a pithivier or an en croute. And currently on our menu is a pithivier of lamb, uh, that we do, uh, which is inspired by my mom’s nihari. -Um- -Oh, that’s interesting … it talk- it talk- it talks a lot about my classical upbringing or my upbringing -and- -You know, it, it merges both, your -classical training and your origins. -Exactly. -Yeah. -So I, I think that’s exactly what the food at Papa’s is, right? Because it kind of borrows from my heritage of growing up in a Bohri Muslim household. I start the meal with desserts. I end the meal with, say, a reference to me eating, uh, vanilla soft serve and salted french fries from McDonald’s. But it’s, it’s as playful, but at the same time, it also kind of ties in a little bit of your origin. And I think I like that. Yeah, I think it’s spectacular food. Okay, what else do you guys like to eat when you’re not eating at your own restaurants? Is there anywhere you’d go to? -Yeah. -Yeah. Where would you go? I mean, I’m a absolute dosa fan. -So are- -So I like… I, I think a better dosa in Bombay today is Benne. -Uh- -Yeah … even though I eat a South Indian… I mean, I grew up in Chennai and I ghee -dose- -But Benne has nothing to do with you. It’s -Karnataka, no? -Correct, but I, I prefer a Davangere Benne -dosa more than I do a- -Okay. You really turned your back on -Chennai. -I, haven’t, but, like, that dosa always kind of hurts the crown of my mouth ‘cause it’s very crispy and it’s, it’s, -it’s meant to be. -Uh, but you like the fattiness and the, -and the butter. -I, love it. I compare it to pork -crackling always. The Benne- -Apart from Benne Dosa? Uh, apart from Benne Dosa, I think, um, there’s this, um, other restaurant that I go for nihari quite a bit. It is, uh, called Chinese and Grill. It’s a very unassuming place for a nihari, but I think it’s- -Where is it? -It’s in Mohammed Ali Road, opposite Minara Masjid. The best nihari in my opinion. And then there is another hole in the wall place that I think is guaranteed good food. It’s called Canara in Fort, and it has a great, um… You know, they do small boat catch, so great fish fry and, um, the, the works that you would get in a Shetty hotel restaurant. So -really good. -Oh, yeah. Wonderful recommendations. Interesting that you not recommended anybody who competes with you, but these -are some nice restaurants. -Uh, yeah. I- -[laughs] -… I just feel that that’s- -Yeah, yeah -… that’s my, my take on- -So that’s your… Okay. -Yeah. Where, where would you go? I think, uh, after a while, we went to Trishna last week. I hadn’t been there in -a long time, so I think we- -Do you like it? -I love it. -I- I think there are certain… I’ve never eaten the tandoori- We, we ate in Varun Totlani’s kitchen the other day, and he’s a Trishna fan. He does a crab, tan- tandoori crab, which is a tribute to Trishna. Better than Trishna has ever cooked, but he’s always humble enough to say- So funnily enough, we’d never eaten the tandoori crab, and because of Varun, we -ate the tandoori crab that last week. -We ate the tandoori crab then. But everybody else just eats the butter garlic, but he says tandoori is better. -It’s, it’s actually quite good. -Yeah. Then? -Uh, I am a fan of Americano and- -Oh, good. Somebody recommending it -compared to the… Okay, great. -Yeah. [laughs] -He lo- he loves Americano more than- -No, I didn’t know I had to do that. I was looking at, like, hole in the wall, obscure places. -Yeah. -So you can recommend now. Who, who of -your- -Yeah. Let him finish, and then I’ll do it. Oh, okay. He loves Americano. He loves Americano more than our restaurants. He got engaged there. I got engaged. I proposed to my- -So then it’s more, more important. -Yeah. -[laughs] -Uh, yeah, I think those two come to mind -right now. Those two mind. -Your turn. -I feel like- -You can say Celini if you want. -[laughs] -Oh, yeah. [laughs] -Celini the best pizza still. -Yeah. But, um, I do like Highway Gomantak. Have you been? Like, I feel like that Kala Nagar -spot hits. -Okay. Yeah. That’s great. I agree. Um, then I feel like I eat a lot of Indian Chinese. It gets delivered home. I love -Indian Chinese food. -Where do you deliver? -I get it from House of Mandarin -… Mandarin. -Oh, solid. Bandra Born if it’s, like, late night or something. -Yeah. Ooh. My favorite actually. -Um, I think Gresham’s food always hits the- He’s now regretting not having mentioned -it, but he- -Yeah. -No, it’s good. -Actually, delivery, like- -That’s fair -… we live very close to Seefah.. I think -the food, like… And Khao Man Gai. -Oh, Common Guy. -Khao Man Gai, yeah. -Yeah. Yeah. -So good. -Yeah. -Both of them. -The Khao Man Gai particularly is much -better. -Yeah. -Then what else? -What Yash is not telling you- -Yeah -… what he actually does, the fried rice comes from House of Mandarin, and the butter chicken comes -from- -From- -… Mini Punjab- -Oh, yes -… and both are put together. -Yeah. -Well, why not? -Why not? -Why not? -Exactly. That’s what I- -They just know what they want. -No, no, no. No, -I think- -Diversity is good … he’s just not, he’s just not being his honest true self right now. -They grew up on French food, so- -Yeah. -Okay. Great. -No. Fair. -Thank you very much. -Thank you. -Thank you for having us. -You can, you can ask me who my favorite -chef is if you want. -Who’s your favorite chef? -Hussain Shahzad. -Oh. -Oh. -Fair enough. Okay. [laughs] On that cheerful note, thank you. [laughs] -Thank you. -Thank you very much. -Thank you. -Thank you.