Meet Siddharth Mahadik, a ‘crazy’ Pune chef who wants to break the rules of restaurant business

Mahadik’s business model has been developed from instinct. “Stopped being theoretical. Thought from the heart,” he quotes on the first page of a coffee table book on Loco Otro that he is working on.

“Life will throw you challenges. I feel that if you really need to excel, you have to push yourself to see where you can go. You need to create your own challenge and put your goal in front of you. I have never taken the easy way in terms of, you know, doing whatever I wanted to do,” he adds. Incidentally, Loco Otro is Spanish for the crazy other one.

‘The experience includes every thing’

Food inflationary pressures, among other economic causes, create massive stress on a country’s hospitality industry. In Pune, a post-Covid labour shortage has added to the troubles of restaurant owners. Mahadik has set a higher target because he also “has a goal to change the way restaurants look at guests and the way guests look at restaurants”. “India has always had a culture where somebody sitting at a table can be rude to a service staff. Dare they do that here…,” he says.

On the other hand, he tells his staff that every guest who walks through their door must go out smiling. “The experience includes each and every thing. It is not only food but also the presentation, the service, the music and the light that makes a person’s experience,” he says.

He spent 10 years running Le Plaisir, where the menu was written on a blackboard and guests knew they would have to queue for a table. “Whatever mistakes we were making for a decade, we have tried to rectify here,” he says.

‘I made it rigorous for myself’

The idea behind Loco Otro was to serve a tapas menu — but not the way it is served in Spain: tiny plates at a bar. Here, the portions are enough for a couple but will allow them to try a variety of dishes. “If a guest can have 10 things from a menu, which is possible quantity-wise and also price-wise, they are more than happy than if they have to choose only two things on the menu. Here, you can have five or six dishes between two people. Big eaters can have seven or eight. If there is a bigger group— a table of eight — they could, probably, try the entire menu,” he says.

‘I wanted to be in the Army’

Mahadik studied marine engineering because he wanted a job where he could travel. He never raised his hand in any class. He just wanted to fit into the whole system. It was 26/11 — he was in Pune and waiting to start his second job on a ship —which was instrumental in making him introspect about what he really wanted to do. Cheffing, his childhood dream, actually took a while to come to the top of the list.

He took a loan to attend Le Cordon Bleu and worked three jobs, including one where he did not get paid but had an opportunity to learn. “I had to show all those who thought that nobody could cook after engineering what I could do. Le Cordon Bleu was easy, but I made it rigorous for myself,” he says. His plan was never to stay abroad. Back in Pune, he took another loan and opened Le Plaisir with a basic menu, “because I wanted people to celebrate this side of town”. Within two years, he needed a bigger space.

“Once, I wanted to be in the Army to serve my country. A friend told me, ‘Whatever you are doing in life, if you do it properly, you are serving your country’,” says Mahadik.