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Journalism of Courage
In 1993, a young boy from Bihar decided to pursue hotel management. It wasn’t a deep-rooted passion but an escape from either choosing a graduation programme that would demand intensive study or joining his father’s business. “He owned a petrol pump, and I didn’t want to take care of it. I wasn’t studious either. Some of my cousins were studying hotel management, so I thought of pursuing that.”
That young boy was Manish Mehrotra, who moved to Mumbai to pursue graduation from Dadar Catering College (now IHM Mumbai). The rest, as they say, is history.
Mehrotra went on to establish himself as a force to reckon with in modern Indian cuisine globally with multiple award-winning restaurants like Indian Accent and Comorin. The former being synonymous with his name, which is why his departure — announced earlier this week by EHV International, the hospitality company behind them — was a surprise.
“It was a completely mutual decision, nobody forced me. It had been 24 years,” Mehrotra tells us on Thursday afternoon over a Zoom call from his home in Delhi. In between, he asks us to excuse him for a minute as he goes into the kitchen to check on his lunch, Yakhni Pulao. “Ab ghar pe baithke kuch kaam nahi hai toh yahi karta hai aadmi,” he says as he bursts into laughter, adding, “Cooking at home with my daughter feels so good.”
While the press statement was issued on Monday evening, his last day at work was at the end of June. The decision was taken earlier this year to spend some time with his daughter Adah before she leaves for the US this September to pursue her graduation from The Culinary Institute of America. Earlier this week, the father-daughter duo had returned from a two-week holiday in Tokyo.
Going back to how it all started, he recalls: “There’s always a person in catering college whose caramel custard turns out to be perfect at the very beginning of the college? The same happened to me. I did well in the first few practical classes and that gave me a boost, and soon I was labeled as someone who would be good in the kitchen.”
Post graduation, Mehrotra was hired by the Taj Group of Hotels, where he worked for three years at Thai Pavilion as part of chef Ananda Solomon’s team, a time he describes as “career-shaping.” In 2000, Mehrotra left for Delhi without a job. “Settling down in Mumbai wasn’t feasible. You either have to commute for two hours a day or have a lot of money to buy a house closer to work. In Delhi, we had a home, and it was also close to Bihar and my family there,” he shares.
A few months later, he met Rohit Khattar, founder of Old World Hospitality (OWH; EHV is a group company of OWH), and they entered a work relationship that lasted a quarter of a century and saw them creating brands that changed the culinary landscape of India.
“I was first hired for Oriental Octopus at India Habitat Centre, where I expanded my horizon as a South Asian chef and later as a Pan Asian chef,” he shares. In 2006, he was in London working at a Pan Asian restaurant for OWH when Khattar, who had set his eyes on a property at The Manor in Friends Colony, Delhi, shared his vision for Indian Accent. “Though I didn’t have any formal training in Indian cuisine, I had grown up around it and so I asked him to give me a chance. We did trials in London, which he liked,” he notes, adding, “We were set to open Indian Accent at the end of 2008 but then the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks happened and it didn’t seem like the right time.”
The restaurant that proved to be a turning point in Mehrotra’s career opened its doors on March 9, 2009, offering delicacies like blue cheese naan, pulled-pork phulka tacos, rice-crusted John Dory (fish) moilee, galautis stuffed with foie gras, and duck khurchan cornetto, available as both a la carte and tasting menus with wine pairings. “Indian Accent is perhaps the only restaurant using this much blue cheese,” he shares, estimating it to be about 15-20 kgs a month.
But it wasn’t an overnight success. “We struggled the first two-three years as people did not understand the concept of a modern, progressive Indian restaurant,” he shares. What made him hold his own during those years were returning customers. “I had full faith in the brand and our offerings, but business-wise, we weren’t doing well. But Rohit Khattar didn’t put any pressure. He would always say, ‘Don’t worry,’ and backed it up. Slowly, the word spread. In 2012, I participated in the TV show Foodistan, which showed what we do, and things turned around.”
Since then, Indian Accent has spread its branches to New York and Mumbai, been a constant name in Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list since 2015 (currently at rank 26), made it to Time’s 100 Best Places to Visit in 2018, and more recently, to the extended list of World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2024, all of which Mehrotra describes, as emotional moments.
In the Instagram reel he posted to announce his departure, we see glimpses of his time at OWH, and one of the pictures sees him with megastar Amitabh Bachchan. “Many celebrities have dined at our restaurant, but being a shy person, I would never walk up to them asking for a photo. But when Mr. Bachchan came, I knew I couldn’t miss this moment (smiles). I went to his daughter Shweta (Bachchan Nanda) and asked if I could take a photo with her father, and she said, ‘He is at the same table, why don’t you ask him?’ Jaya Bachchan kindly took over the camera and volunteered to take our photo,” he reminisces, adding that another milestone was having renowned chefs like Daniel Humm and Heston Blumenthal in his restaurant and putting the naan inside the tandoor.
When asked what led him to take the decision now, he notes: “I have been working for 28 years and was in the kitchen for three years before that during culinary school. Overall, it has been 32 years. I wanted to take a break.”
The reel also saw him thanking his late wife Vindhya and his “lifeline,” Adah. When asked about their bond, he shares, “After my wife’s demise, we came even closer. Although she is only 17 and a half, she is very mature and whatever decision I take, I always involve her. She was also a part of this decision and supported it fully.” When asked if we will see them working together, he says, “Let’s see! Although she is mature, she is still a teenager who asks me ‘What do you want?’ when I spend more than five minutes in her room. But I have told her, whatever you do, do it with full conviction. I believe that if a person gives his/her first five years with their whole heart and no distraction to the kitchen, they will be successful because there is a real shortage of good chefs.”
Ever since the news came out, everybody has had one question: “What’s next?” And nobody is accepting that he doesn’t have an offer in hand already. When we tell him this, he laughs, adding that he really has nothing planned. “I am going to accompany my daughter to the US in September. I am going to celebrate Dussehra, Diwali and attend every card party this year, something that I never could do. After that, I will consider new opportunities. I am not retiring.”
