FOOD SPECIAL... Next course, please

Next course, please 

Despite best efforts by party-poopers, Mumbai’s food and nightlife scene is rumbling. It gets better in 2013

    A modern interpretation of a Chinese teahouse, complete with the Yum cha tradition, albeit with a twist, Ping Pong — UK’s fancy dim sum chain — is getting ready for a big launch at BKC in April. It’s around the same time that Soho House, an ultra-posh members-only club that encompasses hotels, restaurants and spas (exclusively intended for creative minds) hopes to make its advent in Asia with a 38-room hotel on Juhu Tara Road.
    Delhi-based Sommelier Magandeep Singh has some news. The Marriott Hotels are on an expansion spree, and there’s talk that The Leela, Mumbai, may replace its Italian restaurant Stella with a Michelin starred restaurant. A source at The Leela confirmed that talks are on.
    While international players seem determined to seduce Mumbai’s elite, local hospitality biggies are expanding their customer base, adapting mode and method to deliver great food at good prices. A source at Impresario Hospitality headed by Riyaaz Amlani (of Salt Water Café fame)  says they are introducing a “yet to be named brand” shortly, “something fun, that will hold appeal for 24 to 35 year olds”.
    Restaurateur Rahul Akerkar is set to seduce the Gujaratis of Ghatkopar with a delicious, new veggie-centric menu for a coming-soon branch of Indigo Deli.
    At the very least, what this F&B whirlwind will leave in its wake is diversity — a culinary landscape so beautifully transformed that there’ll be absolutely no reason to dine at home.
    Here’s a look at what the year holds for gourmands and foodies.
PING PONG
“It’s a casual, fine-dining restaurant,” is the oxymoron Kersi Marker offers us. He is the man behind the Mumbai arm of the UK dim sum franchise that’s being brought to the city by Gaurav Goenka’s Mirah Hospitality this April. The menu, we hear, is “Chinese food with a twist.” Expect more than 50 dim sum specialities on offer. The BKC outlet will seat 100 guests, and the emphasis will be on food. A team from abroad is set to assemble in Mumbai to get things going. Marker assures that the emphasis will be on healthy food and delicious cocktails that Ping Pong is famous for all over the world. Marker can’t offer details yet, but as far as accommodating the Indian palate goes, he doesn’t believe the menu will need tweaking. In that case, you’d want to try their incredibly popular banana and chocolate spring rolls, spinach and mushroom dumplings and seafood sticky rice. The icing on the cake? An extensive range of fragrant teas. “We will be looking at introducing the Yum Cha tea ceremony eventually,” Marker says. INDIGO’S PRO-VEGGIE DELI
Scheduled to open by the end of January or early February, and designed by Sameep Padora, the 3,500 square feet Indigo deli at Ghatkopar’s R City Mall will have pod-like booths lining the interiors, and tables in the central area. Owner Rahul Akerkar’s trademark open kitchen will however remain, dishing out a veggie-heavy menu to pamper the palates of the predominantly vegetarian neighbours.
BULLDOGS
Not to be confused for the cafés in Amsterdam, Ketan Kadam’s Bulldog is slated to be a chain of well-priced bars, the first of which should open doors near Sterling Cinema, CST, any day now. Oddly enough, the chain makes its debut as Crazy Dog, a small identity crisis that, while speaking to us from Dubai, Kadam explains was born from the insistence of one of the partners involved at this venue. “The bar chain will however be expanded under the name Bulldog,” clarifies Kadam, who’s already planning branches in Malad, Bandra and Colaba. Although it’s an indigenous concept, Kadam does admit, “It will be comparable to New York’s jukebox bars.” Guests will be welcome to enjoy quick bites and retro music all through the day till 1.30am. “We wanted to offer the area’s corporate crowd and college-goers a space to unwind — somewhere they can kick back and dig into simple but lip-smacking food, like sandwiches or fish fingers.”
    Eager to revive the laidback ambience that such spaces afforded when he was in college, Kadam aspires to open a branch of Churchgate’s iconic Sundance Café in Bandra, this year. Considering the success he has seen with the Two One Two All Day at Santa Cruz, he’s looking forward to opening a branch at Phoenix Marketcity Mall, Kurla. OTTO INFINITO KIOSKS
Magandeep Singh says Indian restaurateurs are eager to introduce the layman to exotic food. “While snobs may turn their noses up at the idea, the average person is definitely likely to enjoy an expansion of their culinary horizons,” he says. He offers the example of Bandra’s Kofuku and Delhi’s Futomaki, a fair-priced enterprise run by Japanese entrepreneurs, when he explains how food that was once deemed exotic (and priced accordingly) has already started filtering down past the income brackets.
    Here too, at least one restaurant chain seems eager to reach out to the average Joe — Mediterranean restaurant Otto Infinito whose specialities include novelties like Turkish kababs, truffle tuna carpaccio and kofte tagine. Each dish is based on a traditional family recipe sourced from France, Lebanon, Greece, Tunisia or Morocco, but Otto Infinito is adamant to demystify this cuisine and make it Mumbai’s own. Jeetesh Kaprani, VP-Operations, KA Hospitality, that handles Otto Infinito, Hakkasan and Yauatcha, says, “We’ll be setting up kiosks in malls and perhaps even in other corporate spaces. Yauatcha too is slated to open in Delhi next year.”

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