Starters ’n’ More

They aren’t the only ones. The restaurant business in Delhi is being redefined by newbies, 20-somethings with heads full of ideas, appetites for risk and tongues that can tell what will work—and junk the rest. No hotel management degrees, no F&B experience, not even the clichéd ‘‘I’ve always been a foodie’’ spiel.

Look past his diminutive stature, and the big daddy of them all is Dhiraj Arora. At 30, he has launched four restaurants, seen one stumble (No Escape, in Connaught Place), one skyrocket (Shalom, in GK-I) and one stabilise (Italic, Vasant Vihar). The fourth, Laidbackwaters at Qutub Hotel, is his most ambitious project. ‘‘Good restaurants in Delhi are happy if they do business of Rs 20 lakh a month. At Laidback, we have to do Rs 22 lakh just to break even,’’ says Arora.

Already a talking point because of its cunning decor and stunning prices, Laidback is as far as it gets from the Arora family’s packaging business. ‘‘I picked up the hospitality bug from Bangalore, where I spent a lot of time in the mid-1990s. Delhi had nothing like it.’’

The idea was on slow-burn through the late ’90s while Arora dabbled in the family business, got married and had two kids. Then, in 2001, things came together with No Escape. ‘‘The wrong kind of crowd’’ ensured it folded up pretty quickly, but by then Arora had moved on to Shalom, a Mediterranean lounge bar.

‘‘My happiest memories are of acting as a doorman at Shalom, just to make sure the right kind of people got in. It was the first bar in the city to restrict entry—I got plenty of negative feedback for that, but we were drafting the rules,’’ says Arora.

Sanjay Munjal knows something about writing the rules as he goes along. Having balanced a passion for food with a head for figures all his life, the 44-year-old CA decided to quit waiting after he spotted the perfect site for his dream restaurant at Sainik Farms in south Delhi one morning while out on his regular walk.

‘‘I knew my restaurant would have to be different, I didn’t want to be straitjacketed into a particular cuisine,’’ says Munjal. ‘‘I’d travelled widely, eaten wildly, and wanted my restaurant to represent all that.’’

So Art Chilli’s multi-cuisine menu is an assortment of two dishes each from sundry countries. Cognac prawns from St Tropez rub shoulders with Singapore Mee, Cajun fish fingers flirt with French roast chicken. ‘‘Art Chilli is all my own,’’ laughs Munjal, ‘‘because no one agreed with my concept for an international menu!’’

Having sunk around Rs 2 crore into the project, Munjal says the returns are prompting him into considering two to three more outlets. ‘‘I want to do a Balti place—not Balti as in the North-West Frontier Province, but Indian food served in England.’’

Well, that would be a first! And if there are no guffaws yet, it’s because the competition is also busy pushing the envelope. Consider Saurabh Khanijo and Manish Ahluwalia, who stymied their initial impulse for a Med atmosphere in favour of an Oriental lounge, the first of its kind in the city. Their baby Kylin—the name denotes a mythical Chinese animal sighted before a momentous event—is just a couple of months old.

‘‘But it’s hard work,’’ groans Khanijo, 32. ‘‘It’s not as rosy as it looks.’’

Drawn to restaurants as an extension of their travel business—‘‘and also,’’ adds Ahluwalia, ‘‘because we’d spent so much partying, we decided it was time to get some of our money back’’—the two now spend most of their time at the lounge bar. ‘‘I’m here every day between noon and 5 pm, Manish comes in at 7.30 pm and is around as long as people are here,’’ says Khanijo.

Partly because of the novelty factor, partly because of location—Kylin is one of the many watering holes in Basant Lok that hope to hive off business from multiplex crowds—the lounge pulls in expat families in the afternoons, besides the work crowd after hours. And though it’s far too early to talk money, the pair’s already dreaming of taking the Kylin brand across the country.

Just like Grover and his pals. ‘‘Deepak was the first one to think of Greek, it’s really big in the West, and Australia,’’ says Sood, who flies with British Airways when he’s not in the backrooms of It’s Greek To Me.

Adds Grover, whose main business is software development, ‘‘We’re basically into hospitality as a business venture. The gamble has worked here, now we are looking at taking it to Bangalore or Goa—not Mumbai, the costs would be prohibitive.’’

That doesn’t deter Arora, though. ‘‘Four in Mumbai, two each in Goa and Rajasthan and five in Delhi-NCR, that’s my plan for the next three to five years,’’ ticks off the budding tycoon. ‘‘I want to replicate Shalom and Italic all over the country.’’

Just then, one of Arora’s two phones rings. ‘‘My one and only wife,’’ he says, and then transfers his attention to the instrument. ‘‘Good morning, darling,’’ he says. It’s going on 12.30 pm. But for Arora and his ilk, a new day is just beginning.

IF food is the new sex, then Manu Mohindra is the 21st century Kama Sutra. Together with wife Sonia, Mohindra, 33, is almost single-handedly responsible for the boom in mid-level dining that hit Delhi at the turn of the millennium. Most of his business comes from first-timers, but a few—like Dhiraj Arora—are already serial clients. ‘‘Of course, only initiates need consultants,’’ says Sonia, 29.
Beginning with just the two of them—both the Mohindras are former hotel professionals—their Under One Roof consultancy today employs 15 people, and has ventured beyond Delhi-NCR to Chandigarh, Mumbai, Goa, Bangalore. ‘‘And possibly Australia and New Zealand,’’ says Manu. Over seven years, they have honed the hassles of the hospitality business into a fine art. ‘‘We demystify the restaurant business,’’ says Sonia. ‘‘Once a client can answer why he wants to set up a restaurant—the most important part—we move into conceptualising, financial feasibility, operations, interior architecture, etc. From start to finish, it takes 100 days, 120 at most.’’
Working for a flat fee, the Mohindras are currently involved with 60 projects, 30 in Delhi and as many elsewhere. And with son Amar, 2, already heading straight for his toy kitchen set, Delhi’s bellies are in safe hands.