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Among the many memories I have of childhood, there are memories of food.
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Some of it is the food my mother used to cook.
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In that generation, alas, you won't find many fathers who did.
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I loved her short shebata match, and I also loved her fishala keev and the fish pulao
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she sometimes packed in my school tiffin box.
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I can almost taste them as I say these words.
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Like any good Bengali boy, I was not a big fan of vegetables, but I did like the aloo
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I hated potol and kathaal do, and developed a taste for begoon only later in life.
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I remember being a child in Chandigarh in the 1980s, and once in a while, my dad would
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go to empire stores and pick up some packets of salami.
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My god, what a treat that was.
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My college years were in Pune, and I remember the special masala dosa of Aishali and the
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banwara of the Ferguson College Canteen, and the million cups of cutting chai at the katta.
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It carries such memories with it, and it's part of our emotional selves.
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That's why we have a phrase like comfort food.
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There is food that gives us comfort, and it does so because it takes us to a special place,
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an earlier place, maybe when we were different people, or lived simpler lives uncomplicated
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What's your comfort food?
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What food is there in your happy memories?
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Welcome to the Seen and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics, and behavioral
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Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
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Welcome to the Seen and the Unseen.
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My guests today are Sameer Seth and Yash Banage, who created waves in Mumbai a few years ago
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when they started the cult restaurant Bombay Canteen.
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They also went on to start my favorite restaurant in Mumbai, O'Pedro, as well as Bombay Sweet
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Shop, which takes a modern look at Indian sweets, and it is so, so good.
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Their partner and mentor, the great chef Floyd Cardoz, passed away in the early days of COVID,
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but Sameer and Yash kept it together and kept it going.
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Sameer got in touch with me earlier this year to discuss their project Enthu Cutlet, a bi-monthly
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food magazine that has just launched the link is in the show notes.
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Meeting him, I realized that all his projects originated from a place of passion.
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Sure, he turned his restaurants into successful businesses, but they began out of a love for
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food and an appreciation for the role that food plays in our lives.
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And he was now looking to trace a connection between food and stories, food and identity,
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That's why Enthu Cutlet began.
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I thought Sameer and Yash have had a fascinating journey.
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I invited them on the show and here they are.
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We spoke about how the culture of dining out has changed in India, how it's different
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from the West, where both of them have worked, why service should not be confused with servitude,
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why entrepreneurs should not obsess about scaling, what the food industry has in common
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with the creator economy, and just their personal journeys, which I found so fascinating and
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When Sameer left his corporate job to get into this business, his grandmother told him,
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My response to that is, no banker has ever been on the scene in the unseen.
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Before we begin this conversation though, let's take a quick commercial break.
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Do you want to read more?
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I've put in a lot of work in recent years in building a reading habit.
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This means that I read more books, but I also read more long-form articles and essays.
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There's a world of knowledge available through the internet, but the problem we all face
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is how do we navigate this knowledge?
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How do we know what to read?
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How do we put the right incentives in place?
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Well, I discovered one way.
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A couple of friends of mine run this awesome company called CTQ Compounds at CTQCompounds.com,
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which aims to help people up-level themselves by reading more.
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A few months ago, I signed up for one of their programs called The Daily Reader.
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Every day for six months, they sent me a long-form article to read.
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The subjects covered went from machine learning to mythology to mental models and marmalade.
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This helped me build a habit of reading.
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At the end of every day, I understood the world a little better than I did before.
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So if you want to build your reading habit, head on over to CTQCompounds and check out
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New batches start every month.
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They also have a great program called Future Stack, which helps you stay up-to-date with
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ideas, skills, and mental models that will help you stay relevant in the future.
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Future Stack batches start every Saturday.
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What's more, you get a discount of a whopping 2,500 rupees, 2,500 if you use the discount
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So head on over to CTQCompounds at CTQCompounds.com and use the code Unseen.
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Samir and Yash, welcome to The Scene and The Unseen.
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Thank you for having us.
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You know, I've got to say this is almost like a second take.
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I'll inform my listeners because I just started a couple of minutes ago and we are recording
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in my home studio and the cable wasn't attached to Samir's mic.
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So we've kind of had to start again.
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And my first question is no longer a surprise, but it's still going to be my first question.
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Before we started, Yash, you mentioned that, you know, I should ask you anything.
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You have nothing to hide, right?
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So I'm going to take you up on that.
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Could each of you tell me one thing about yourself which the other doesn't know?
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Yash, you want to go first this time?
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I honestly have nothing to hide.
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And I think being a true co-founder, I've shared everything with you.
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So if you have something, then it's going to hurt my, break my heart.
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Truly set it up for all the drama.
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You sound like a married couple.
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As in we are worse than a married couple.
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I think the one tick of mine, which I was sharing with you before we discovered the
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lack of a wire was that I have to do everything in even numbers.
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So like when I'm having a bite of something, like it has to be two bites or four bites.
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And obviously Yash is finding this hilarious right now with jokes brewing through his brain,
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which he will keep to himself.
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So many legal problems if I crack that joke.
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You do have two great restaurants, but yeah.
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And one great sweet company, you'll have to start another one.
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But is that why you didn't want to do anything on your own and you found me?
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My life has been meaningless all because of one OCD.
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So how did this habit come about?
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Were you always like this or?
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As long as I can remember.
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And there's no OCD element otherwise.
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What is the weirdest thing you've done twice?
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That I don't know, but you're leading into his jokes, I'm sure.
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But like, I don't think there's anything.
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It's just the simple everyday things that just need to be done in twos.
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So even if you taste something and it's shitty, you'll still taste it again.
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So I'm curious to find out about sort of both of your childhoods and your journeys and whatever.
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Who should we start with first?
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Let's go with Yash this time.
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When I was a week old, my parents thought we should move to Pune.
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And just a quick background, my father is a neurosurgeon.
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Who's told you not to mess this up and you already have.
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Who's messed my head up before.
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But yeah, he was one year older to me.
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It was a beautiful city to grow up in.
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And being the younger son out of the two, my brother took the easy way out and decided
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to do chemical engineering.
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So there was a lot of pressure to be a doctor.
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And I think I took the easiest way out and told people I want to do hotel management.
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And everyone now asks me this question, like, why did I do it?
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And this is pre-internet where you could make a wiser decision.
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And I think it was some book I read, you know, like a career counselor book, which just told
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And I know my mom at that time had already signed me up for medical entrance exam classes.
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And it wasn't her fault because I also hadn't said that I don't want to do it.
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So yeah, but as lucky both my parents were very understanding to let me go into this.
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This was pre when restaurants were sexy and glamorous.
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I did a three year course on hotel management out of Goa.
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And post that I started working at the reception of a hotel in Bombay for a month, got bored
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doing that, then moved to restaurants.
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And I never worked in a restaurant, a lively restaurant.
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And it just like the hustle and bustle just was something I really enjoyed.
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So I worked as a server for a good year and a half, became a supervisor, did that for
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a year and then went to Cornell to do my masters.
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Post that I think being in the US like changed the way I was looking at hospitality and how
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I was treated like a robot in India, like you were working long hours and just yes sir,
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And it just like, I'd never traveled abroad and it was my first outing and it just changed
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the way you looked at restaurants, the way they were looking at restaurants.
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So I decided I wanted to go back into the industry.
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So after my masters, I started working as a bartender in Chicago, the same company we
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They moved me to Singapore to work as a jazz bar manager.
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So your 25 years old managing a jazz bar was quite glamorous.
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You know who else managed a jazz bar when he was 25, Haruki Murakami, before he became
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a novelist in the late 1970s, he owned a jazz bar and he ran it.
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But yeah, so you're in good company there.
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And I had no idea what jazz music is.
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So I think he was, he did better.
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I worked with this hotel group for another three years.
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In this time, I've been a jazz bar manager, I've been a poolside manager, I've been a
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quality assurance manager, I did a lot and it was great experience and I have some really
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really funny stories from the hotel ecosystem from figuring out what systems to use to keep
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birds away from eating bircher muesli off a buffet to why we had to kill honeybees.
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So it's great, great stories over drinks, but did that and I think it was one point
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that Sameer and me were just tired and exhausted of working these long hours but doing it for
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And it was one tired call that he called me saying, and I still remember it was like kuch
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And I was like, yeah, sure.
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And that's how the journey started.
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So just to sort of double click on a few of those, it struck me when I was thinking about
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food and your journeys, that for a lot of us, obviously, you get drawn to a particular
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thing because you fall in love with some aspect of it.
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And then you realize that there's a lot of hard work and it's not so glamorous and all
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But most things still have basically one dimension, you know, people might want to be a writer
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and then they find writing is hard work and that's fine, right.
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But in this particular hospitality industry, there are so many aspects to it.
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You could fall in love with cooking and decide to become a chef and then you find out that
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shit it's not what you thought it would be.
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Or you could fall in love with cooking and come towards hotel management and then find
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out that hey, the hospitality business is a whole different thing, as you must have
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found out when you were serving in Bombay and all of that.
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What made you do hotel management in the first place?
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And did you want to cook?
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Did you just like that whole sense of building a hospitality ecosystem environment, whatever?
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Again, like this question gets asked a lot.
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And there's a couple of memories I had, so we have a very small family in Pune and so
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it was a good occasion that you went to a restaurant, like a good restaurant to eat.
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And our father used to take us to this hotel, which later became the Taj, which in Pune
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is called the Blue Diamond.
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And they had a coffee shop.
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I still remember we used to go there for the chicken sesame fingers.
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And there used to be this manager there wearing a suit and was always orchestrating the team.
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And I feel I always looked up to him being like, you know, seems like a guy knows what
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And like, that's one memory I have, to be honest.
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And apart from that, like, unlike when I look at Sam's family and the way they eat every
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meal talking about the next meal, it wasn't the same.
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We had great Maharashtrian food, like great fish fry, great chicken curry.
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But I was never a foodie as such.
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So I don't know if it was that image of that person that really inspired me.
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I'm going to give a 10 second gap for your editor to tell you a funny story on that because
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I feel you might have to edit it out.
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No, I'm not editing it out.
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So my first or second day of hotel management, like you said, you know, in a lot of government
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colleges, ragging still continues and there were different forms of it happening.
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But we were served food.
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So as a part of our curriculum, as you go when you're senior, you have to cook food
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So instead of just throwing it away, you serve that in the cafeteria, right?
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So your seniors used to serve you food.
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So if you were a junior, you used to get a lot of rice and like one drop of dal.
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And now to get the sabzi, you would have had to answer a question, right?
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So generally it was just nonsense questions, but I remember this one because I know this
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guy and I still know he's in the industry.
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And he asked me, why did you join the hotel industry?
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And I was like, I love interacting with people.
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That's why and he's like, toh chinal banate the.
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I mean, I love because I knew it was funny.
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And here's the one fact I didn't know, which is demeaning to prostitutes, honestly, because
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it's an honest profession.
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And like, yeah, so that's like, it's been a like, for me, it's been a very heartwarming
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journey since since then, it couldn't have gotten any lower.
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But I still I in whatever we do, I know a lot of us, I spend a lot of time now in ideation
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and like behind the scenes.
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But when we are in our restaurants and like just the drama unfolding and operations going
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on, food going out, it's just that energy, I think that keeps me going.
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I think that's what drove me towards it as well.
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And was there also an element of then learning how to get along with people, figuring out
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all of those dynamics, because it's one thing to an abstract say right here, like hanging
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with people and like coordinating things.
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But when you're like, what was the reality like when you actually got into the industry
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here and in the US, for example?
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So reality here is it's in a nonsensical way, it was very, very difficult.
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I also think as I joined, started to work when I was 20.
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I was a very naive 20 year old.
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So when I was working, and I'm not kidding, when I was working 16 hours a day, I still
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was energetic after 16 hours a day, and I was just enjoying it.
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Now what happens is a lot of hotels in India, especially come from international brand standards.
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So there is someone in Canada saying cappuccino needs to be served in four minutes, fine.
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But if I'm serving breakfast to 500 people, and the Indian owner decided that this restaurant
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of 100 covers, or 100 seats for everyone can have only one cappuccino maker.
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And in India, cappuccino is the one common coffee order.
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So you have to be on roller skates.
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That hustle of you know, we, for me at that time, I was like a horse in a race with those
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And my target was five minutes my cappuccino, like those things got instilled in me in the
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Indian restaurant system was standard, you have to follow it.
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There's no idea why it was we've never saw the bigger picture.
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We used to have a white asparagus festival, Italian festival, we never tasted that white
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asparagus, we never got to taste the food to explain it.
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So if I'm explaining it to a guest at the restaurant, then I would use to say, this
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pizza is going to have cheese and going to have white asparagus, I'm not going to tell
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him that the texture is going to be it's going to be nice and crunchy, the white asparagus
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will be a little bit sour.
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All those things never came to your mind because you never tasted the food.
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But then, and I feel now it's changed a lot.
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There was no respect given to you from team members and from guests.
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In team members, there was always that we've come up the ranks the hard way, so you have
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I feel that's there in every industry in India.
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But I honestly feel that's changed a lot.
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But from the guests also, it was the same.
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There's a slight, like you are a lower entitlement and like the sense of entitlement.
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I remember serving someone a bowl of French fries and this is that like one in the morning.
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So definitely that person was also nursing a hangover or drunk.
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And you know, there's one fry which will have that one dark brown end to it and it was right
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And the first thing he points out and he says, it's burnt.
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And the first thing you're taught is just to apologize and I was like, I'm sorry.
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So he stood up and he didn't slap me, but he moved his arm and he's like, if I slap
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you right now and say sorry, that's fine, right?
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And like you again say sorry and just like, you know, take it away.
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As in the instances like that for me in that moment didn't mean anything like I was obviously
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a bit nervous and when I start thinking back into it, like if it was someone who was a
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bit more sensitive to that situation could have thrown him out of the industry.
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And it's happened to 90% of my classmates.
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In the first year of us graduating, I feel 50% of them would have joined a call center
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or maybe the airline industry.
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But within the next two, three years, I would say 90% of them were out of the industry.
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So sort of related question to both of you, like one thing that people often say quite
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correctly is that if you want to understand, like one way to figure out the real character
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of a person is to see how he or she treats people lower in status to them, like the wait
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And in India, honestly, most people would fail that test, right?
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And there is, and I'm just wondering about why, you know, of all people you'd imagine
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that we would be the, we are a desperately poor country, you know, we would be the most
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sensitive to that and the most empathetic to that.
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And yet we are the most rudest, most entitled bunch of, I mean, I'm sorry for generalizing
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and it's on my limited experience of what I've seen you guys no doubt have a far bigger
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sample size to judge from.
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But why do you think that is and is it generally the case that Indians do tend to be more entitled
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and you know, the class and status plays such a big part in this?
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We've spoken about this so much over the last eight years that we've been running Hunger
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Inc, which is the company.
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We always say in India, like service equals servitude.
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And that is what you've been taught up to do, right?
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Like the thought that someone's serving you is beneath you in some, in a certain way,
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just because of the class distinctions we've all grown up with around us.
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That's the model we've always seen.
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And that is so ingrained that it's very hard to break and one of the biggest things which
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we have, I feel, worked on is like, how do you instill that confidence in whoever is
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serving you or making you your drink or cooking that dish for you to have that conversation
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It's not easy to sort of break years and years of conditioning to someone walks into a restaurant.
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They're obviously of a different socioeconomic class.
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You know your life and it's a confidence gap there in having the conversation.
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And funnily enough, it's the same people who go abroad and like, wow, the service and like,
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oh my God, like these guys showed me such a great time.
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They treated me like an equal.
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They gave us their recommendation lists, et cetera, et cetera, because it's a conversation
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And that so often doesn't happen here because of just the conditioning we've all gone through.
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Like I remember when I switched out of banking and was joining the hospitality world, like
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it or not, my grandmom said, bank chorke parathe beshne ja rahe ho.
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And that is the, and she said it in the sweetest possible way, but it's that same conditioning
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And that's just the reality of it, right?
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Like you can't read title for your biography also, bank chorke parathe beshne ja rahe ho.
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Monk is sold as Ferrari.
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So, and I think it's so true.
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You can make out so much of a person in seeing them sort of deal with someone in a restaurant.
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It says more than any conversation does, in my opinion.
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And how do you train your guys to deal with the exact kind of situation that you just
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described, Yash, that you have someone and you can't even, if you even politely tell
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him, please don't talk like that, he'll lose it even more.
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I think it's one of the things, and I completely agree with what Sam said.
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And Sam's always been the much more calmer, level-headed, mature person in it.
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And it's on the record.
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The worry is it's happened, and I say it's improved a lot.
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Like I see a drastic change in the way all of us interact.
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But I still remember one of the early incidents which scarred me.
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When I was 28, 29, and it was at Bombay Canteen, but the girl who was working with us standing
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next to me was her first job, so she must have been 20.
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And we were both at the desk, and this guest just went at me.
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And he wasn't going at her, he was going at me.
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And it was about us not giving a table to one of his friends who didn't have a reservation,
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but someone else got it.
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And he looked at that person's socioeconomic class and said, you need to realize in life
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some people you need to be given better treatment to.
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And he was using words like that.
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And when you look at these people, these are people who are well-educated, who've grown
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up in a great family, and that's the least expected thing from their mouth.
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But what I'm more worried about is this girl who's just got into the industry, and she's
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going to be scarred for life.
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So there are some instances, to be honest, where it then needs us to counsel the employees
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But before it, we always say, there's something that industry leaders or hospitality leaders
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called Danny Meyer, Sameer worked with him, said, and he's written a book, it's called
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Setting the Table, which is the first book I tell people when they want to join the industry.
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And he came about this about hospitality first, is treat your team how you would like to be
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treated or treat their employees how you would be treated.
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And his whole thing was as an owner, if you treat them with respect, they will treat your
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So it starts with us, and it starts with as simple as if we are having lunch or if you're
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having dinner with them, pick up your own plate and go and keep it in the back area.
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You can't, we are all sitting together.
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Everything is a signal.
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Everything is a signal, and it needs to start from there.
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I also, we say this a lot, our restaurant team today, don't see us as often helping
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them out because there's so many things on our book.
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But first two years of Bombay Canteen, like we were there every day, we used to take the,
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we had a phone, like a thing, we used to take it home one day and with the book, so at night
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if anyone called, we used to take reservations, like people were calling at odd times, we
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And seeing you in the trenches with them, the way we are talking to guests, and we used
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to always tell them, at any point you feel that there's a sense of abuse or something
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that is unfair, come to us.
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And we've had, and they've seen us telling guests to politely leave the restaurant being
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like, it's not how it is.
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And that incident that Yash referred to was the start of our blacklist.
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Like if you are rude to anyone, we don't want your business and you're definitely not welcome
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And you've actually kicked people out of the restaurant.
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You've actually told people to leave.
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You've told people to leave.
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And especially like it, you know, when you're starting off as your own business, you're
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unsure about so many things.
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Like I think it took us two, three incidents, especially in the early days of Bombay canteen.
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It was mayhem, like in a good way for us.
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Like it was, everyone wanted to be there and everyone wanted to come in and, but we realized
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very quickly, like if we didn't draw a line in the sand at that point, like the signal
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it would send to our teams that we don't stand by them was far worse in the long run.
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And for the culture we were hoping to build than anything else.
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And that's something like we just took a conscious decision to sort of follow through on.
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And so, and every, every, every situation is different.
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So you have to treat it as such, but I think it's something we've tried to stand by at
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every given point, that especially if you are, if you have a right to, if you've done
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something wrong, a hundred percent, we should make amends, but that does not give you the
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It does not give you the right to be rude at all.
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There's nothing you've done or bought to the restaurant that gives you that entitlement
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But you know, that same thing you spoke about, like there's that saying that the way someone
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treats someone at a restaurant, I think in today's day and age, today's day and age
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in India, it should be about how we treat the delivery guy, right?
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The Amazon guy when they call.
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So we've, both of us have done, we do a lot of deliveries, especially, especially when
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Bombay Sweet Shop opened during COVID, like we just didn't have people, right?
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So as in orders needed to go out, they needed to go out.
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So obviously like I have a car.
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So then I used to be sitting and then he used to be the navigator.
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And like we did like 25 deliveries a day.
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So it was painful, but we had the luxury of sitting in a car and going.
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So most security guards, when they saw the car, used to think I'm a guest.
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And then when I said, no, I've come for a delivery, the tone also changes right now.
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I was just, we used to always discuss this, that imagine we are sitting in a car still,
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but complete difference in like even the simpler things, like even the way that because that's
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such a big industry now, right?
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The way delivery guys are treated.
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We've changed a lot of things on our side.
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Once we started doing deliveries on how do you make their lives a bit easier?
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Because first even we used to think that, you know, why can't they do more deliveries
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How do you make the load lighter for them?
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Because once we did it and we are like, this is not easy at all.
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And we've done like every peak festival, maybe Raksha Bandhan, Diwali, we have to do it.
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So now we do it in separate cars because it's better to have him with a driver and a navigator
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But even the way like when you pick up the phone and call someone and say, hi, I have
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a delivery from Bombay sweet shop and they are just like, haa, chodh do security ke
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Like, so I think that same thing is like for me changed the way even I started like when
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Amazon calls me being like, I can't find your address because Indians can't write addresses.
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Honestly, I don't know why it's so.
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We don't put it as per that the Google way of putting it.
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So we'll write opposite peetal ka jaad.
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Google doesn't pick that up on our automatic system, right?
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So it's changed my perception on when Amazon will call me saying address nahi mein rahe
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So I think that's the next learning for us is like, how do we get better at that as well?
#
That's a fantastic learning for me as well.
#
And I'm guessing there are like a few hundred people listening to this thinking, fuck, my
#
delivery was brought by those guys.
#
No wonder I thought he looked familiar.
#
Like, especially first two years of Bombay canteen, as Yash was saying, like when he and
#
I would walk up with like the plates or take an order and even now in the last two years
#
at the sweet shop and we show up with the delivery, like it's funny, right?
#
It goes back to the same conditioning that we were talking about.
#
Like you're just, you're the owner.
#
His business not doing well.
#
So and I think it's just culturally ingrained in us, unfortunately.
#
And so as in the hope and dream is that slowly but surely like that evolves.
#
So let's, let's talk about your journey now, Sam, and you weren't even, you took a very
#
different route to getting into this business.
#
So tell me a little bit about that and what you did before you sold parathas.
#
I think life started with like being around food as Yash was talking about earlier, like
#
I come from a family that spends every meal talking about the next meal.
#
I was born in Lucknow, but grew up a little bit all over Bangalore, Calcutta and, but
#
mostly in Delhi and come from a large family that's obsessed with food.
#
And I think I had always seen that, but also I think came from a family that was, my dad
#
was in the corporate side of things in the tech industry.
#
My mom was a teacher and it was always expected that you would do certain things to progress
#
So I did an undergrad in chemistry and then went on to do an MBA from I am Cozy Code two
#
years in Kerala were amazing, but as a 22 year old doing an MBA, like I didn't know
#
the O of organized OB, which was organizational behavior, what it meant.
#
I'd never worked before, like, so we are theoretically learning all this, but you have no idea.
#
And then you did the next logical thing.
#
You apply to all these companies.
#
I was fortunate enough to get a job with Citibank and came to Bombay in 2005.
#
And I think around then I like loved working in Bombay with Citibank.
#
And like, at that point, like I was in the mortgage division over here.
#
And funnily enough, my life has always revolved around real estate as a result, whether in
#
banking or in restaurants.
#
But at that time also realized that as I was doing it, I would move back to Delhi, like
#
this thought had always struck me when I was in college, that I wanted to do something
#
around the world of food, but I had no idea how to do it.
#
Like at every time, point in time that I'd wanted to do something close to hotel management
#
of food, I was always told that career meh thoda kuch karlo and then go look at that.
#
And I think in 2007, I was like, I'm done.
#
Like I think this is as far as I can go.
#
Like it was two and a half years in as a 26 year old.
#
I was like really like questioning what was going to happen next, because I was up for
#
a move in the bank and every move that was being presented to me didn't make sense.
#
And without telling my parents, I had a conversation with a restaurant I used to, it was run by
#
So went and met one of the partners one day and he was a jovial guy.
#
Like I still remember Sangi uncle was like, ha beta ajo, like join.
#
This was a small restaurant group in Delhi.
#
And in all the excitement that someone has given me, offered me a job, I went and without
#
talking to anyone, I quit.
#
And obviously this is even funnier because I went and met Sangi uncle's partner a few
#
weeks later before I was supposed to join.
#
And the guy was like, yeah, I heard you were joining.
#
I don't know what you're going to do.
#
And but you join, we'll figure it out and then we'll see how much salary to give you
#
after we figured out what it is.
#
And I didn't have the proverbial balls to go tell my parents that I'm joining, but no
#
I've just quit banking and I'm joining, which is when my grandmom famously regaled, bank
#
chhod ke paratha beshne ja rahe ho, if she'd known ki paise bhi nahi ban rahe to, the next
#
level of conversations.
#
But I kept that to myself for a fairly long time.
#
And I think at that stage, fortunately, like we were, they were in the process of opening
#
three restaurants in Delhi.
#
And I just deep dove into that, like, and I loved every minute of it, the energy of
#
it, the craziness of it, there is a certain adrenaline you get when you're on the floor
#
And I was more on the marketing finance side of things and long story short, these guys
#
saw value in what I brought to the table and came in and I learned a lot about what this
#
business was about, like in the deep end of it, there was, it was like learning by doing.
#
And the first year was amazing, open three restaurants at a complete high, and then the
#
tides turned on them, shut almost six, seven restaurants over the next two years and saw
#
the full sort of trajectory of what to do.
#
And at that point, I always wanted to do my own thing, but had no clue about like what
#
it was, how to do it, had spent about a couple of years in the industry, it was a confusing
#
I think I had a friend's father who was a mentor to me, who convinced me and showed
#
me about what the Cornell Hotel School can do.
#
And I'm so glad I took that decision, only because like I feel, as Yash was mentioning
#
earlier, like it really opens your mind to step out of India and like go into another
#
sort of education system.
#
And he and I were classmates there, met the first night, drank till four in the morning,
#
joked about like we were on the FNB track of our class.
#
And he joked that even at that point, that someday we'll do something together.
#
I think but what was amazing about Cornell was like, it just allowed you to ask questions,
#
it allowed you to like just deep dive into whatever you wanted.
#
We had a few professors in the FNB system who just were great at like mentoring you
#
to ask questions of the things which you never thought were important.
#
One of the first things like when her name Stephanie Robson, she used to teach a class
#
called Restaurant Development.
#
When she heard my story of like having gone through the experience in Delhi, she was like,
#
what you should do is sounds like there were a lot of things that went wrong, but you should
#
go do an independent study and see what did restaurants here in the US do to avoid the
#
And she sort of became my sort of guide at that point and allowed me to do a six month
#
independent study, which was just a reflection on my last three years is what it turned out
#
to be, but also opened the doors to have conversations with many interesting people to see how, how
#
do you do what you do in this business?
#
And it was a complete change in terms of like, to give you a simple example, my first job
#
in New York was with a French restaurant group called, which was run by the chef called Daniel
#
We have a ritual in every restaurant across the world.
#
It's called briefing before every meal, lunch or dinner, the team meets and you brief each
#
other and what's coming up in the next few hours, India, typically it would be a grooming
#
check like is your rest is your uniform like straight, your nails clipped, is your light
#
those days smoking used to be allowed, is your lighter working so that in case someone
#
needs a light, you get that.
#
And here on the flip side, my second day here, and this is the point Yash was making.
#
We were tasting the specials of the day.
#
We were having been trained on the wine briefing was one and a half hours long where it was
#
an education period for the entire team to see what, how do you do what you do and not
#
just the check a few boxes and now go and sell some food.
#
And it was crazy because I'd never been in an environment like that.
#
And following up with that is when I met Chef Floyd, I'd met him a little earlier and the
#
hope and dream was always to work with him and Danny Meyer, who wrote setting the table
#
because like, as I think both of us read the book at the same time, this was something
#
which was just like radical thinking from what we had been brought up and I wanted to
#
be in that system to see how it actually sort of came to life and to be able to get a chance
#
to work with Danny to work with Chef Floyd to actually open a restaurant in New York
#
City was like an unbelievable experience, like got thrown into the deep end, absolutely.
#
And that one year and a few months was like the hardest I've ever worked, I feel, and
#
I think we've done many more hard things, but because it was so new to me, it just feels
#
But like the relationships one made, like I'm still in touch with like my colleagues
#
from then, like it was almost like you went to battle together, like opening a restaurant
#
in New York was like, you go through the review system of the New York Times, which is a whole
#
story on itself and like you deal with guests who expect the best and want the best and
#
how do you give it to them?
#
And it all boils down to like the culture, the education, like it's all sort of slow
#
and steady building, it doesn't happen overnight, like that was the biggest thing.
#
And all of it like kind of started informing the kind of restaurant I would hope to open
#
one day and that kind of led to that call to Yash eventually, wherein we were like,
#
we want to do this back home and we spent a lot of time, obviously you have to come
#
up with the concept of what you're doing, but also about how we want to do it.
#
And I think we've touched on some of the topics around service and respect.
#
All of this came from some of those experiences that one had, because if one hadn't seen
#
it play out firsthand where respect actually leads to better outcomes, like maybe we would
#
have had very different sort of outlooks to life, but I'm glad we were exposed to that.
#
We were privileged to be exposed to that and better for it now.
#
So a bunch of things I want to double click on and first is a personal element that when
#
you decide to give up banking to make parathas as it were, there is a push and there is a
#
There is a push in the sense that there is a reason you don't want to do banking anymore,
#
you feel it's not for you.
#
And then there is a pull that you want to be part of this industry.
#
And as you know, in Yash's case, as he pointed out, he loved interacting with people and
#
just that whole experience of being a guy in a suit in a hotel saying, white asparagus
#
liji hai sir, crunchy hai.
#
So tell me a little bit about the push and the pull for you.
#
And just in terms of sort of getting to understand you better.
#
What was it that made you feel the banking world and the corporate world was not for
#
And what was it that really attracted you to this food business?
#
I think the I think the two aspects to it, I think in college, there was a festival that
#
was happening since even just have a festival called Harmony.
#
And I was part of the organization committee in it.
#
And I think there was something about like being on that organization committee, especially
#
I remember we had like bringing something to life from the scratch, like had this aura
#
in my mind, like it was just like exhilarating.
#
But also, like I think food for me has been a very, as I was saying earlier, like being
#
a very central aspect of like no one was in the industry, but my aunts would be like amazing
#
cooks and like they would constantly be talking about what what's being made.
#
We would go out as a family more and more as we grew up.
#
And it was amazing to walk into like, I still remember there was this one restaurant in
#
Delhi at the Hyatt, I think it was called Angan and they had this one kebab, which was
#
like basically a fried egg and the yolk had been removed.
#
And there was a kebab hidden beneath the yolk.
#
And I don't know, is this this memory I have of seeing it and being like, I love eggs,
#
And like it was one of those it was one of those moments where you don't forget.
#
We were talking earlier at lunch as well, like there's something about the memories
#
around food, which is just so strong.
#
And I was very clear as a 22 year old that I wanted to be in the world of food somehow.
#
I don't know where that push and pull, as you call it, came from.
#
I think it was just, again, just the growing up around food that has caused it.
#
And I have an uncle who is a phenomenal, phenomenal cook.
#
So every childhood would be he lived across Bangkok and Dubai, etc. would be traveling
#
And I remember in Bangkok, like he would make some of the best Thai food as in one had never
#
been exposed to like regional Thai food or anything, but just watching him cook would
#
And I think all these experiences added up to just saying that this is what I want to
#
This is what I want to do.
#
And eventually led to that tipping point, so to speak, of taking that steps.
#
And once I step behind the curtain, as I think you were saying earlier, like people then
#
realize it's too hard and then back off, like I wanted to get more and more into it.
#
It was no turning back at that point.
#
And when you talk of the differences between, you know, what you saw the the asking questions
#
of figuring out the why is behind everything, you know, why give a cappuccino in four minutes,
#
for example, and you look at India, you know what, how much of a mental shift was that?
#
Because I imagine that if if the culture on the serving side is different, it is both
#
by it is both caused by and a cause of the culture on the eating side being different.
#
So over here, my imagination would be or thinking back on the 80s and the 90s, the rare occasions
#
in the 80s when our parents would take us out is that you're going out and you're going
#
to get good food and that's it and nobody else really exists.
#
You know, the experience per se is, you know, you want to be in a fancy place with air conditioning,
#
but that's a five star hotel, five star hotel, and that's a food experience and you're getting
#
And at the same time, at the serving end, from what you describe and what I've heard
#
from others, it can very much be a life of drudgery for everybody, except the people
#
at the top making the decisions or, you know, for everyone else, you're just kind of ticking
#
boxes making 800 cappuccinos a day in four minutes each, for example.
#
And I don't find that exciting.
#
You know, if I was to be part of the profession, you know, what is there to motivate me to
#
say ki 20 saal baad mai chef banunga, you know.
#
So how different is that?
#
How different are the food cultures of these places?
#
And would you, you know, you mentioned that you were excited anyway by your experience
#
in Delhi, setting up those restaurants and everything that happened by just the activity
#
and the buzz of creating something new.
#
But in general, do you think that the industries are so different as to be almost entirely
#
Between the two countries?
#
I think but it's converging now.
#
I think you're seeing a convergence over a period of time.
#
I think it goes back to the point I was making where like, if you start involving those who
#
are serving and part of the service team into the thinking behind the product and thinking
#
And that's what we kind of do, right?
#
Like Chef Hussain, for example, will go out and like talk to the team and talk about like
#
what was his thinking when he was thinking, when he was creating the dish and while they're
#
So it's starting to connect the dots on that.
#
And then you, if you have loved it and think about it, like if you are a server, you've
#
eaten something that evening and now you have to go relay that experience, not something
#
you've memorized, but an experience you had yourself to a guest is going to be a completely
#
different conversation.
#
And he and I always talk, Yash and I always talk about like a restaurant's instant validation.
#
You know when someone's enjoying themselves and you will feed off that energy.
#
If you're serving someone.
#
And I think that was one of the hardest things in the pandemic, like for our teams was you
#
were working, you were doing the same work, but you were packing it in a box and shipping
#
There was no one to interact with.
#
There was no one to like, no one smiled to sort of feed off and things to deal with.
#
They were all sort of logistical tasks that you were doing.
#
And I think that in itself tells you just psychologically how, what a difference it
#
makes to be in a physical world versus a digital world.
#
And I think slowly, but surely we see more and more restaurants in this city and in other
#
cities in India sort of moving towards this.
#
And so I have a contesting view on why they've been different also, because if you look at
#
the Western world, anyone and anyone at some point worked in a restaurant.
#
You might be a famous actor now, but when you were between 16 to 20, you've waited tables.
#
You might be an entrepreneur or a businessman and they've done it.
#
So that respect is there because I personally waited tables.
#
And even now, like even when we travel, and this is, I don't like fancy meals at all.
#
So even at the fun, casual restaurants, the servers who are taking care of you could be
#
So he or she is getting this amazing personality to the table.
#
And all you have to do is just train him or her to understand the dish.
#
But the way they're explaining it is so joyous and it just creates a different experience.
#
That doesn't happen here.
#
And I always feel like I tell Sameer, his banking, it's been so long back, but his chain
#
of thought or the way he thinks about something, and he brought that into the hospitality industry
#
is what this industry needs.
#
We don't need people who go to hotel management, right?
#
There is nothing like now the reason I feel the worlds are getting better for us is now
#
for my team, like even coffee earlier, we were just pulling it out of a WMF machine.
#
Now coffee also has got its own respect.
#
You can get, I think Bombay is making some of the best coffee in the world right now.
#
So they can see their passion in that.
#
We started something called as canteen class, where on a Saturday, we used to shut down
#
the restaurant in the afternoons, and we used to invite students from all hospitality schools.
#
And it wasn't mandatory.
#
And it came from when I was in a hospitality school in Goa, and when I started working
#
my first job, and someone gave me a bottle of wine to open.
#
I didn't know how to open a bottle of wine because I never saw a bottle of wine in three
#
I saw an empty bottle of wine, which Pepsi was filled in and I was pouring out of it.
#
So for me, when we started Bombay canteen, I remember telling him after the first, I
#
was like, we need to do something for these students because they might not join us.
#
But I still feel education level in some of these schools is not great.
#
And I was going to some of these schools to just give some kind of inspirational in quotes
#
and talks, but I was being filtered by the dean of that school to say what actually I
#
And what I actually wanted to say was hotel management schools in India are conveyor belts
#
for hotels to get robots.
#
It's just a factory, robots come out of it.
#
Whereas now, if you look at the hospitality industry, you could be making some of the
#
Someone needs to inspire these kids to think about that.
#
You could be making the best beer.
#
Everything has become so much more accessible.
#
And we as industry leaders as such need to inspire this next generation to say, we don't
#
need you to come work in the restaurant.
#
You could be making the best sardo bread at home or banana bread like we all did during
#
And you might want to work two hours in a restaurant.
#
And that's when these younger people start coming into the industry who know that, okay,
#
I need to get from X to Y and Y will be making the best coffee that India will be proud of.
#
But till then, I need to work two years in Bombay, I'm going to make the most of it.
#
That's when I feel like, you know, all restaurants together will start improving.
#
One theme that I sometimes think about is how do you find passion in what you do?
#
Like most people, they're going through the motions.
#
Like today, I think I have found passion in a sense in podcasting.
#
I think about it deeply, I've really trying hard to figure it out, so on and so forth.
#
But most of my life, even the things that I've been really good at, like being a writer,
#
being a columnist, you go through the motions, you've got a weekly deadline, you do it.
#
You know, when I was in cricket journalism, you watch a match, you write the report, there's
#
no passion, you're kind of going through the drifts.
#
Now with both of you, it's kind of obvious that there is that passion and excitement
#
which is perennially present.
#
And I want to ask about your journey of finding it or getting it, like when Chef Floyd died,
#
you had a very moving post on Instagram about this 45-minute meeting with him and how you
#
felt at the end of it and how energized and, you know, how much that meant to you.
#
So just the same question to both of you, that where is that moment, like was there
#
a moment, for example, perhaps when you were working in India, Yash or whatever, was there
#
a moment where it felt like drudgery and you're like, you know, what the fuck is this?
#
What did I fall in love with?
#
And how did that awaken, that thing of like, you know, going beyond that and just being
#
so excited and so awake and alive?
#
So there have been bad moments in years of Bombay Canteen also, right, where like when
#
you asked me what are the things that Sami doesn't know about me, he sadly knows everything
#
because he's also made me cry about something for such a silly reason.
#
But he knows I'm a very emotional person.
#
So one of the times when I've sat outside our own restaurant and literally held my head
#
and just like cried was sadly the Kamla Mill fire tragedy had happened and obviously was
#
But what happened after that for even honest restaurateurs who were doing business the
#
right way wasn't fair at all.
#
And that's when, like I always say it, a restaurateur in India spends more time dealing with problems
#
outside his or her restaurant than in it.
#
And that's when sometimes we lose the passion and we start doing it like, you know, it's
#
And obviously business does matter a lot and once we had gone to New York and we helped
#
Chef Floyd open his restaurant and I was there for a good month and a half and one of our
#
guests who's from India who met me there and I was working in the restaurant is like, you
#
look so much happier working here as like because all I do is every day come check every
#
guest if they're enjoying making sure the team is fine and not worried about if someone
#
dug the road in front of us or cut off electricity for God knows what reason.
#
So in the first three years of my career, 21 to 23, I would have had those days but
#
that would have been more person related where someone treat me, treated me really badly.
#
But I did not lose sight at that point.
#
I always knew I wanted to do something.
#
My dad had this saying that as in he's a neurosurgeon in Pune and he used to always say this like
#
my business and like my life I'm a taxi driver, the day I put my meter on, I get paid.
#
Basically if I'm not on that surgery table, no one else can do it and I don't get paid.
#
So he's like always think about your life where you could do a business where you're
#
not there all the time.
#
So that business Kida was there.
#
But there have been moments in the last five, six years and I openly talk about it on my
#
Instagram as well that there are so many failures we've gone through or incidents where we,
#
it wasn't our fault and we made the brunt of it.
#
And I've just lost all hope and being like, why did I come back to this?
#
So it does happen, but it all it takes is like maybe one email from a guest who tells
#
us like how like Chitranjan in the restaurant took care of them and like, you know, I love
#
when people, you know, I love this podcast so far where it's for an hour we didn't talk
#
Like we love Chef Floyd, but restaurants are more than chefs.
#
It's a village that keeps it going.
#
And there are so many when people tell me, oh, I was at your restaurant yesterday and
#
Priya took amazing care of me.
#
It means a lot to us because in India it takes a lot to write a positive comment, right?
#
And to name someone that means they really took good care of them.
#
So I think it all it takes is those one moments, moments, which brings it all back for us.
#
And I think for me, like I've thought about this a lot only because like, I think there's
#
some things you asked me earlier, like when did you find out that you wanted to be interested?
#
Like I, I think I was one of those fortunate ones where I just knew that it was food.
#
There was no like confusion in my mind, but I think we also live in this age where there's
#
this romanticization of this thought that finding your passion is the right route to
#
And there was a cousin of mine who I was talking to a few years ago and we were just talking
#
Like he, he works in a completely different industry.
#
And I think I would never have discovered I love this till I went and did it and call
#
it naivety, call it just like where I went up to uncle and like give me a job and just
#
And then I found that, found out that I loved it.
#
And then it's like what you said about podcasting, right?
#
Like over a period of time you did like, and that's what people forget, like try different
#
things, experiment and that passion doesn't need to be your day job either.
#
I think that is the other flip side to this, where there is this notion now that your day
#
job needs to equal to your passion.
#
Otherwise you are wasting your life for some reason.
#
One of the things he and I always talk about passion doesn't pay the bills.
#
So you have to find a way to pay the bills at the end of the day and we are still not
#
paying our bills and that too.
#
But I think the reality is that, and we all evolve as human beings as well.
#
Like what I am, I still continue to be passionate about food, but through the restaurants I
#
have found other things that are equally interesting and I'm passionate about whether it's design,
#
whether it's storytelling and the whole nine yards around it, like it's come because we
#
started doing it through the restaurants and then you think about it and you realize I
#
Like I'm not just one, I'm just not the function of one thing.
#
And that's the bare truth of it.
#
I think my amusing on passion was not so much as about following your passion, which I think
#
You know, the cafes of Versova are filled with people who followed their passion and
#
wasted 20 years of their life and they're looking at their peers and nice apartments
#
and cars and foreign holidays and it's like they're fucked, especially in a profession
#
like that where, you know, the top 1% makes anything and the rest are struggling.
#
So I think following your passion can be overrated, but what I meant it in the sense of finding
#
something beautiful about what you do and then being passionate about it, which is not
#
always possible, I guess, in a lot of professions because, you know, hey, but you know, and
#
Yeah, I think for us and it's evolved, right, like first it was restaurants, now it's Bombay
#
Sweet Shop and Bombay Sweet Shop has just been like started off a very emotional journey,
#
but every day there we learn new things because e-commerce was something he and me have never
#
done before, but what he and we have now is a great understanding of what food products
#
And then most importantly, we always say it, what sets hunger apart, even if we come up
#
with an iPhone of our own, is the service we give after that, it's the customer service.
#
I think that's what links everything we'll ever do.
#
So I think like you are right, like finding your passion and going after it.
#
When someone comes to me, can I, should I open a restaurant, I say no, I was like come
#
work with us, learn at our expense, we could use some cheap labor as well.
#
But I do agree with you, there's so many failed restaurants out there, but I feel like our
#
evolution has been really fun for us.
#
It keeps us on our toes, we have fires every day to put out, but it just keeps us going
#
I always ask myself this question, honestly, like how long is the energy going to last?
#
And I've seen my personal like physical energy drop down since like we opened Bombay Canteen,
#
but it's mentally, I think we are so energized by all three and the fourth thing that we
#
launch very soon as well.
#
Yeah, and we'll talk about that also.
#
But before I just want to say that one of the great tragedies of this year for me is
#
that right after I met Sameer, I went on a keto diet.
#
So I had the opportunity to have some of the Bombay Barks before that from your Bombay
#
Sweet Company and it is the best chocolate dessert I have ever had.
#
I've been gifting it to friends and just raving about it and it's just a thing of beauty.
#
But alas, it is also a thing of poison for that is what sugar is.
#
Tell me a little bit about the restaurant business per se.
#
Like I had done an episode long, long back when I had these 20 minute episodes with a
#
friend of mine who was an ex restaurateur called Madhu Menon, who had a restaurant in
#
Bangalore called Shiok and he kind of mirrored what you're saying now in the sense that problems
#
beyond the actual restaurant would take up most of his time and the classic example he
#
gave was that in Karnataka and this restaurant was in Bangalore, you had one regulation from
#
the fire safety department that you must have multiple entrances to your restaurant and
#
another one from the excise department that you only allowed one, right?
#
And you can't possibly keep both of them happy because it's not Shrodingo's restaurant
#
that if this inspector comes, there's only one door.
#
And basically he was like giving a thousand bribes every month and it was just a nightmare
#
and it was just a mess.
#
And when I talk to friends of mine who run businesses in India, I'm like, why?
#
Like why would you do it?
#
Whatever passion you have, if you have a passion for food, then make it yourself.
#
But business, running a business, it is like mind-numbingly frustrating and difficult.
#
So tell me a little bit about that, like at least in your case, Sameer, I'm guessing
#
going in, you knew it would be tough because you had experience with Sangi uncle as it
#
were setting up those three restaurants.
#
Was it tougher than you anticipated?
#
As I imagine it would be for someone like me, I would just give up honestly.
#
And then I think like what Yash said earlier, like unless you don't have a village along
#
for this ride, it is absolutely soul crushing.
#
So to even think of doing it on your own, please don't because it's a very, very lonely
#
Like we had each other plus chef Floyd and so many more people have joined us on this
#
We are almost 250, 300 people now who work together.
#
And I think it can be soul crushing at times as Yash was describing earlier, but there
#
is this joy which is unparalleled.
#
And I'm only saying this because last week we reopened Bombay Canteen.
#
And even though it is now in its seventh year to see it light up again and to see it like
#
there is this moment when you're building something and there are these two moments
#
which always like strike me is the first time you do the light testing because you're seeing
#
everything at the right level.
#
And the magical moment is when music comes into the space.
#
I can't describe that feeling to you.
#
It is like it gives you goosebumps when you see like all the things that you've seen on
#
paper on 3D renders on this on through the dust and the construction to actually clean
#
up and then because you can't switch on the music till everything is spotless and it doesn't.
#
That's just the way the process works, right?
#
And then on top of that, you layer on like people in the space and you suddenly see energy
#
and you're fueled for a while, you're fueled for a while.
#
So I think it's moments like this, like I think we always tell ourselves and our teams
#
that chances are like 80 percent of the time you're going to be doing stupid shit.
#
Like that's the reality of it invoice page GST correct gayaki, some other random rubbish
#
which will pop up from here or there.
#
But it's that 10 to 20 percent, hopefully, which fuels you and keeps you in that zone
#
where you feel it's worth it.
#
Just to expect all of it to be worth it all the time, I think is unsustainable.
#
And it actually is not reality.
#
Yeah, we say to most hires is 90 percent of the work we do is not engaging at all.
#
And it's the 10 percent that gives us the joy in going back to a question running a
#
business in India is annoying.
#
I feel like you've used the mildest word you could think of.
#
It annoys me the most like, you know, if I'm on a vacation and Sam calls me and, you know,
#
so and so has shown up and is creating a nuisance.
#
And that annoys me the most because then you're like trying to get three people on the phone
#
and trying to resolve a problem.
#
But because laws have been created to create confusion and to create opportunity for certain
#
people, if that's the best way to put it, right.
#
That's what annoys you.
#
And for me, I think what is soul crushing is the is the sing song on the other side
#
where everyone thinks that, you know, we are heading towards the greatest country in the
#
world is ease of doing business.
#
And for me, I think it's it does go the other way.
#
So for me, I don't mind getting my hands dirty and getting things done.
#
But when someone else walks up to me and says, oh, things are easier now for restaurants
#
to run licensing, GST so good for you.
#
And it's not, honestly, the restaurant industry is the only industry that does not get input
#
And there's no reason why we shouldn't.
#
So it is those things like I don't mind fighting the good fight and just getting on with my
#
And honestly, India gives us so much opportunity, like there are so many things.
#
And part of the bad things is we have to deal with all this.
#
But when some like enthusiastic bugger comes to me and was like, like, that annoys me.
#
And it really annoys me when someone tells me, oh, things are getting so much easier
#
You know, things are so streamlined now.
#
I think they're worse than where we were eight years ago.
#
I mean, any a chitin are there despite the odds, as it were.
#
So tell me one more thing, like the interesting thing that strikes me about food, both at
#
a personal level of, you know, me going and cooking something and at the sort of bigger
#
level of running a restaurant is the transience of it.
#
You know, like Warren Grover, he spoke about how he likes to cook every day and he'll put
#
music and he'll cook and he'll do his thing.
#
And I have a similar sort of routine like that now.
#
And he talks about how I think the comparison he made was like with a rangoli that you create
#
something beautiful and but then it's gone.
#
You know, it's temporary, maybe like a sandcastle or whatever.
#
And that's at the personal level of cooking a meal.
#
And perhaps you get the satisfaction of feeding someone or eating it yourself or whatever
#
But also it strikes me in the restaurant business that if I'm a creator of another sort, say
#
if I'm a filmmaker, I'm a producer, many movie banadi, the movie is there forever.
#
You know, I bring out books, I write books, they are there forever.
#
Even these podcast episodes hopefully will be there forever.
#
So you know, your brother can see how you messed it up for years to come.
#
But for the restaurant business, it's like apne ek baar menu badal diya, what the previous
#
Those are the memories of people and memories are faulty and memories are whatever.
#
And we even take them for granted.
#
You know, like we'll go to a restaurant and we'll have an amazing meal.
#
And then it's like we were entitled to it.
#
It happened, move on to the next meal.
#
So how do you sort of think about the transience of it where every day in different unseen
#
ways you're creating your masterpiece, but it's not there tomorrow in a sense.
#
I mean, I know the processes and people in the village.
#
It's all there tomorrow.
#
But you know, that dish, that dish.
#
I think Sam says it whenever he wants to give this inspirational briefing is we are as good
#
as the last meal we served someone, right?
#
Then like forget menu change, like we have so many regular guests who know that we are
#
really great place and they keep coming.
#
But the night before, if one thing went wrong, that's the one thing they're going to call
#
us up about the next day, right?
#
To be honest, like the way you explained it, I've never thought of it.
#
Yeah, I was just thinking about the transience is something I have not consciously ever thought
#
But it's a beautiful way of which is great.
#
I'm sorry if I messed your minds up.
#
It's great to think of it.
#
But we actually like I'd forgotten about what Yash just mentioned, but it's so true.
#
Like you're as good as the last meal or the last drink you've served someone.
#
That's all that matters.
#
And that in itself is referencing that transience because the good part is like you get to sort
#
of wipe the slate clean every morning and like rebuild because you can.
#
You don't have to edit yourself every day, but like you get to continuously create.
#
And I think one of the things the Bombay canteen did very early on is like it was built into
#
the structure of the restaurant that we will keep making new things and making mistakes.
#
And but also like we were one of the first restaurants in the country to have seasonally
#
Like it's a given all over the world now.
#
But in 2015, we were probably the only restaurant doing it.
#
And we were actually told by like seasoned people in the industry.
#
Don't try doing that because here people want what they want and they want to come back
#
And I'm like, no, let's change it because something tastes best in that season.
#
So let's celebrate that.
#
That's the whole purpose of like being a restaurant inspired by India that we celebrate the food
#
of the country in every way, shape and form.
#
And that was an important aspect of it.
#
And I think we've always looked at like saying, like thinking about like, how do we keep creating?
#
And that's what drives us on a daily basis that 10 to 20 percent we were referencing
#
Like part of it is like the process of creation is what is very much in the center of the
#
Because without that creation, this is drudgery.
#
Like then you are not like working that mind to do anything new.
#
But at the same time, we spend a hell of a lot of time talking about consistency because
#
that's the only thing that's going to bring Amit back the next time because he can consistently
#
But hopefully then over a period of time, he also believes that whatever new thing these
#
guys create is also worth trying out, which has taken a little more than a little bit
#
The common thread I'm getting out of that is that earlier you could go to a restaurant
#
for food and you would get the food and the food is what is holding it together.
#
But today it's also maybe an experience and maybe just a shared ethic.
#
So I guess what would run through your restaurants is your ethic, a certain way of doing things.
#
And I want to ask about that next, because I'll often get people telling me, why don't
#
you do one hour episodes or why don't you have this guest or that guest?
#
And I'm like, no, I'm not chasing listeners.
#
I am, although I'm lucky enough to have enough of them, but I'm not chasing them.
#
I know how I can expand my audience if I want to, but I don't want to.
#
This is what I want to do.
#
So I'm coming there with that ethic.
#
Similarly, it seems to me that that approach is one that you guys share in the sense that,
#
look, if you wanted to go mass, you could go mass in a way and get in many more numbers
#
and all of that shit could happen.
#
But there are some principles and there is some ethic, which is dear to you guys.
#
Like I remember in one of your interviews or something, Sameer, you mentioned about
#
how some guests at Bombay Canteen said, ki yaar, you have a tandoor, you have chicken,
#
And you said, nahi, nahi denge, right?
#
Which is amazing, which is fantastic.
#
And exactly what I would want as part of the experience that there is something there which
#
is core to that and which is not just, ki we'll give you whatever the hell will make
#
So how did you arrive at that?
#
How did you arrive at that?
#
Like at one point you mentioned when you met Floyd, Sam, one of the questions he asked
#
you was, why are you here?
#
And this of course in New York, why are you here?
#
You know, and at some level I get the sense from reading about you guys, from seeing interviews
#
that at some level there was a thing of, let's go back to India and do our thing.
#
The way an American chef does America, the way an Italian chef does Italy, let's go
#
back and do our thing and something more than catering to the cliches and making the safe
#
Tell me how your philosophy was born.
#
So we started hungering with the, now I think we are able to elaborate it or better.
#
It's to say we want to celebrate India, right?
#
Now in our smaller worlds, we knew what hospitality is and during the break, I'm just going to
#
check this one Instagram video I saw yesterday of a guy by the name Will Gudara and he breaks
#
down the difference between service and hospitality.
#
And he says service is a process, the act of just someone asking for something, you're
#
giving it and hospitality- Making it efficient is service.
#
And hospitality is just doing it with a heart.
#
And making someone feel something.
#
I think that finding that for us was important.
#
Then also knowing and being honest to ourselves is both of us can't cook, right?
#
So finding someone who we respected when Chef Floyd came on board, like for me, it was a
#
surprise like why is he joining like, you know, obviously Sam had met him before and
#
the rapport they shared and he just saw that I think the honesty in us and obviously we
#
looked up to him as someone who had radicalized Indian cuisine in the United States, but more
#
like from a mentor perspective.
#
And that philosophy when it came to food was him having seen those years, like being in
#
the United States, seeing those chefs and celebrating farmers, celebrating ingredients,
#
he wanted to do that in India.
#
And he made sure that he instilled it with all the younger chefs as well.
#
So we had Chef Thomas who grew up under him.
#
We have Chef Hussain, we have Chef Kirish, we have Chef Shraddha now at Au Pedro.
#
All these chefs under him learned that philosophy and they are evolving that philosophy, right?
#
Like what indigenous means to them.
#
So when we have that in the kitchen that becomes the heart there, we have that as the heart
#
in the front of house and I think that coming together creates that shared ethic and philosophy.
#
Like celebrating India for me in Bombay canteen means if I come to your home and maybe we've
#
just met once before, if I'm a relative, you still make me sit and ask for tea, coffee
#
and get a tray of snacks.
#
It's just in our hearts and that's all that we have to represent within the restaurants
#
is that bringing that heart out.
#
So celebrating India was very core to what we wanted to do.
#
And to take off from where Yash left right now, I think it was definitely like as two
#
guys trying to start their first business, never having done this before, like it was
#
genuinely like having Chef Floyd in our corner that gave us the confidence to like go ahead
#
Like I think the language with which we now describe the last eight years is only in hindsight.
#
At that time we were just putting things together to like make it work on a day to day basis.
#
And if we had not had a year and a half worth of conversations with Chef Floyd, for example,
#
that we will not serve chicken tikka, maybe we would have gave, who knows?
#
Like if things had not gone the way we planned, like the mind plays its tricks on you.
#
Like you need to get money through the door and that happens so often with so many restaurants.
#
It opens with a certain concept.
#
It doesn't go as per plan and then you start flipping, flipping, flipping.
#
Like one of the biggest things, other biggest things I learned while in the year, you can't
#
be everything for everyone.
#
I think that is actually the anathema to like actually succeeding because the moment you
#
try to do that, you will no longer stand for anything.
#
And people see through that eventually.
#
So and little by little you succeed a little, I think confidence is one of those things.
#
I think it was Phil Knight's book where I read this line where it was like confidence
#
You need some to make some.
#
And I think having Chef Floyd in our corner was that first little bit that was there.
#
And then over a period of time, we've made some which has allowed us to have a strong
#
ethic and culture around which we function today.
#
And to dig a little deeper into what this ethic and culture is.
#
Like you've spoken about celebrating where we are from about indigenous elements and
#
But what does it really translate to?
#
I mean, celebrating indigenous elements being who we are could also mean making incredible
#
For example, or just making traditional dishes well or like highway goman tak, which you
#
described is also doing that in a sense.
#
But you guys have kind of gone beyond that in the sense that whenever I eat at your restaurants
#
and my old Pedro last meal last week was like heavenly, there's a you know, if I'm eating
#
something that I haven't had on the menu before, there is that delightful sense of surprise
#
It is not just a little bit of familiarity that may be there, but it is that delightful
#
And you know, like honestly, it was I got to tell my listeners about this.
#
It was a weekday night and the place was packed and I was sitting facing the window.
#
I was with four of my friends and I was sitting facing the window.
#
And it blew my mind that there are people who are passing this restaurant.
#
And I was like, what the fuck is wrong with you?
#
You know, of course, there was no space inside either.
#
But you know what I'm saying?
#
I just it was so surprising and so delightful.
#
And you just wanted more and more.
#
And I even took a keto break for a day because who can resist?
#
So just to kind of stop salivating and come back to the question, you know, so tell me
#
a little bit more about this ethic, this philosophy, this approach.
#
So when we said celebrating India, we said very clearly we want to celebrate India of
#
And we want to be aspirational, right?
#
He and me grew up in Bombay and now it's Mumbai, right?
#
So we always have memories and like you might have had the best poha somewhere.
#
We didn't want to touch that poha.
#
We wanted to recreate it and bring it to the poha of today.
#
So that's what Chef Floyd was great at.
#
But same thing when you walked into Bombay Canteen, you came in thinking it's going to
#
be an Indian restaurant.
#
So you thought of a Moti Mahal.
#
So we've drawn Taj Mahal in a corner, there are going to be these like lamps on the table.
#
And it was exactly opposite of that, right?
#
Very, I wouldn't call it grungy, but exposed walls, beautiful bar, a great cocktail program,
#
staff in like t-shirts with bro written on it.
#
Seven and a half years ago, that just changed the way people looked at Indian food.
#
I used to say it like celebrating India at that point could also have been, I love traditional
#
Like that's why I love Highway Guman Thak.
#
But if I were going to let's say a Moti Mahal or a Copper Chimney for dinner today and imagine
#
our reservations at 8 p.m., we could decide now sitting here what we are going to eat.
#
We don't even need to look at the menu.
#
But we also know at the end of the meal, it would have been great food, but it wouldn't
#
have been a great cocktail experience or a dining experience, but you would have left
#
We wanted people to come in and yes, people are going to get angry, but that same surprise
#
So we said this that and I still say it, I want to create products or brands where either
#
you love us or you hate us.
#
I don't want you to be here because here is where we'll play safe.
#
To what Fram said, like we came to India around like he was in New York, I was in Singapore
#
and we came nine years ago or something and we were just eating and believe me, we were
#
But every restaurant had a burger pasta on its menu with no context to it at that point.
#
And a year ago, I was pulling his leg saying when COVID hit us during delivery, we had
#
burgers and sandwiches on our menu, but we had it because we found out that it was the
#
best food that traveled during that time.
#
We had to change as per the circumstances.
#
We had to evolve that sense of evolution and saying, I'm going to celebrate India of today.
#
I'm going to celebrate the Goa of today, which we do at Au Pedro is I think what makes us
#
different and honestly, it's our team that gives us that confidence.
#
Chef Hussain in the kitchen is a wizard.
#
Like when he tells us there's a tasting and he pulls out like 10 dishes, we are enthusiastically
#
sitting there waiting for what's coming out.
#
Chef Girish who runs Bombay Sweet Shop, would you have asked me, would I be excited about
#
tasting mithai 10 years ago?
#
But when these guys tell us there is a tasting lined up in the evening, we are so excited
#
because when we taste it, we are thinking, how are we going to sell this?
#
How are we going to convince people?
#
What is the story we are going to tell?
#
So I think all of us just feed off each other, literally.
#
I don't know if that, so like we used to say that recreation or what was that word you
#
That's what our hunger rings, like we recreate something, but we make sure that like same
#
like the guest told you yesterday, Bombay Canteen got renovated and she's a slightly
#
older guest and she said to him, I love how it looks.
#
But I still, it still reminds me of the good memories I've had.
#
So like she kept saying it's refreshed.
#
So like even when you might eat, for example, the choris pulao at O Pedro, you love it.
#
It's a surprise, but there are elements in it which are comforting.
#
Comforting is also very important to us, like we don't want you to come to our restaurants
#
only on special occasions for that one, wow, expensive meal.
#
Even when we are very approachable in our pricing and the value we drive, we will give
#
you the surprise, but it's comforting at the end of the day.
#
That room that you're sitting in, there's energy, like you feel like you could walk
#
in wearing slippers or a suit.
#
You still feel at home in that environment.
#
And the whole thought process for us has always been like, how do you strike that balance
#
between surprise and comfort?
#
Because think about it, like on different days, you feel different things and you're
#
in the mood for different kinds of food.
#
And you almost want to like program the menu in a way that there is a little bit of something
#
depending on how you're feeling.
#
Like you want to be surprised, there's something for you to be surprised.
#
And this is something we've learned over a period of eight years.
#
I don't think this came to us, aha on day one.
#
And we've been able to now articulate it as well.
#
Like menu engineering is a whole field on its own, where you're looking at the menu
#
from the point of view that how do I make this menu in a way that it tells a story of
#
what the concept of the restaurant is, yet it feels good, whether Amit, you walk in with
#
a group of friends or you walk in with your family, it has an equal amount for both groups
#
because this is what happens in a restaurant.
#
Otherwise you go down the route of being a multi-cuisine restaurant and you try to put
#
pizza, pasta, Chinese, Indian, everything because everything is needed.
#
But even what we try to think of is like, and I think you and I have briefly had a conversation
#
about this before is form versus flavor.
#
And like, if you think of it as like a quadrant on those lines, we've realized over a period
#
of time, if you take form of a dish too far or flavor of a dish too far, you still have
#
an original memory of, and this is to feed off what Yash was saying about recreation.
#
There is an original inspiration for sure.
#
But when you move too far on both form and flavor, you're left with a new thing that
#
nobody emotionally connects with versus in, if you play just with form or just with flavor,
#
there is something to hook your mind onto.
#
And then hopefully we take you down on a journey and tell a story of what that dish was meant
#
And we find that time and time again, that works in a way that it works for us, maybe
#
for someone else, it's a different way of doing it.
#
And our minds now work towards sort of, how do you surprise someone on form or flavor,
#
whether it's mithai, whether it's going food, whether it's Indian food.
#
But there are certain things we've also learned over a period of time.
#
Like we're constantly looking at behavior.
#
I always feel like restaurants are a live laboratory.
#
So we've realized, so our menus are usually divided into small plates, large plates,
#
chotas, baras, et cetera.
#
Small plates is where people love experimenting.
#
So we sort of focus our energies there.
#
But when they end their meal here in India, you want comfort.
#
We've said, yeah, provide the best possible flavor, but let's not try doing too much to
#
it where people feel that they didn't end their meal being fulfilled or like having
#
like that great end to the meal.
#
And then desserts, again, is something people love experimenting with.
#
So you're back to experimentation state.
#
So it's almost like you have these canvas to play on and then you keep moving the needles
#
a little bit here and there.
#
And every menu change, you learn something new.
#
We try like, for example, last year, Hussain figured out a way to get fresh Himalayan trout
#
into Bombay and we started serving that every day.
#
And it was part of, we introduced the section after we opened, after COVID, just because
#
There is no reason for this to exist on the menu, except that all of us love to eat it.
#
Triple shays, one fried rice.
#
There was triple shays, one fried rice on it.
#
There was a thupka, which is like a ramen on it.
#
Like stuff that we would love to like binge on was there on the menu.
#
So again, like finding ways.
#
But that's a way of telling the story of why this is on, deserves to be on the menu.
#
And then please come and share our love for it.
#
And so it's a constant process of how do you continuously tell that story of food through
#
the menu, through the restaurant, through the service.
#
And it's, that's what's continuously fun.
#
For the form versus flavor, I can give you a quick example so people get it.
#
So it's one of our dishes, which is still on the menu.
#
It's called as a gulab nut.
#
Okay, gulab nut is a gulab jamun shape like a donut with old monk, fresh pistachio cream
#
Now the inspiration of this dish, Chef Kunali and Chef Floyd wanted to create a gulab jamun
#
So the inspiration of it came from Babao rum, which is a French dessert where a brioche
#
Now, in an Indian restaurant, if you put a dish called Babao rum, one we won't be able
#
to pronounce it because au will be like au au.
#
And it will just seem as a very intimidating dish to order.
#
So when you have to get the name right, right.
#
So gulab nut because gulab jamun and gulab nut.
#
So it comes like a donut.
#
But the moment you break into it and eat it, you get the same flavor and texture of a gulab
#
So it's in your mind, the muscle memory is taking you there.
#
And then the hint of old monk kicks in with the nice texture of pistachios, right.
#
So that recreation is there.
#
But the muscle memory is already kicked in.
#
This reminds me of gulab jamun.
#
Someone's taken my favorite dish and turned it on its head.
#
So then there are the bhot achcha laga, I love it.
#
You destroyed my childhood favorite dish, which is great, right.
#
Like we want to play with people's emotions.
#
It should go on a t-shirt.
#
That's our form versus flavor and then the story to tell with it, right.
#
And the story for us is how you write it on the menu.
#
How does the team explain it as well?
#
So form flavor, like now we use it completely for a lot when we're doing products with Bombay
#
And it just helps us also explain it to our team members when they are thinking of a dish
#
that use these as your quadrants to think about.
#
Because we are celebrating India, so if you put a foreign object on that, they won't have
#
And they'll think, why is this part of this concept?
#
So fascinating how, you know, form and flavor are part of the context that helps you relate
#
Like, I remember I had a vegetarian friend of mine had once agreed to try a dish I was
#
And this was in Istanbul in the Museum of Modern Art there, and they have this fantastic
#
restaurant out on the balcony.
#
And I'd ordered some veal.
#
So she said, Okay, let me try it.
#
And she's vegetarian, right?
#
So I was wondering, how is she going to react to it?
#
There's no context, right?
#
So she had it, she had a little bit of it.
#
And then she said, feels like paneer, which to me is, you know, like what?
#
That's not something I would have thought of.
#
that's where her memory took her.
#
Yeah, I mean, devoid of any context, you know, what are you going to say about it?
#
You have no context of texture, you have no context of taste.
#
And it brings me also to the phrase you guys used earlier, which was India of today.
#
Now the thing is, India, of course, one, we occupy like three centuries at the same time,
#
1928, some of us in the 21st.
#
And even within that 21st, we occupy, it's just so incredibly diverse, right?
#
And everywhere for the food that you bring up, like you pointed out, there is a constraint.
#
And that constraint, I'm guessing is a constraint that there has to be some kind of familiarity,
#
some kind of anchor for the thing, whether it is in form or whether it is in flavor,
#
like you said, but there has to be some kind of anchor for it.
#
And you can't just go completely crazy.
#
And also at the same time, you know, and this is something I've realized in many other contexts,
#
and I'm just thinking aloud in this context, that when you're creating something, sometimes
#
you have to have a the humility to realize that other people come from such different
#
places that they may not feel the same way you do about something.
#
And also the confidence in that, that no, this is what I feel, you know, ki yeh karna
#
hai, yeh karna hai, right?
#
So what is that journey like?
#
Like when you talk of menu design, what is that journey like of figuring out that, you
#
know, how important is that story really?
#
Because I imagine it must be much more important than it, you know, it's not, it's not just
#
a presentation thing or a marketing thing.
#
It's a contextualizing thing also.
#
So tell me a little bit through your learnings on all these subjects.
#
We got a lesson on this on day one of Bombay canteen opening, because it was funny because
#
it was 11th of February, 2015.
#
It was, I think one or two days after Arvind Kejriwal had just come to power in New Delhi.
#
And everyone's eat, if you've grown up in Bombay, like you've gone to Willingdon club
#
and you know, the story of the Willing, the Kejriwal toast there with the egg hidden under
#
the cheese because, because it's Mr. Kejriwal wanted to hide the fact that he was
#
eating eggs in front of other guests.
#
And we had bread leftover from a certain dish.
#
We had eggs, obviously in a kitchen and we had chutney from another dish, which was not
#
And we thought as a day special, we will on opening day, just put this as a special Kejriwal
#
And honestly, we got reviewed that day and it got written about the next day and everyone
#
started asking about it.
#
And the reason why I think it still is never going to leave the menu is because throughout,
#
if you've grown up in Bombay, you know where it comes from.
#
Otherwise you think it's funny that something called Kejriwal is on the menu and your mind
#
because of news, pop culture, whatever goes to Arvind Kejriwal.
#
And therefore it's funny to see that on a menu.
#
And suddenly like then you are ordering this because you struck a chord to the story.
#
And we've had instances where a table of 20 has come and ordered 20 Kejriwal like one
#
We couldn't make enough.
#
Like it is hands on the most popular dish.
#
And at the basis of it, if you think of it, what is it?
#
It's a really yummy chili cheese toast.
#
It's comfort all the way.
#
And that's the reality of it.
#
So I think for us, like when it comes to menu design, like this was a happy accident that
#
happened, but over a period of time, I think the first six months was a huge learning curve
#
where all four of us who were designing the menu were good carnivorous people.
#
And every vegetarian dish was an offshoot of a non-vegetarian dish.
#
And it bombed and how, and we realized that this, we can't continue doing this.
#
And we had to spend more and more.
#
And it took us a solid six, eight months to figure out what our thought process would
#
How would we create dishes, which would be exciting in the vegetarian realm as well.
#
It really pushed us to create.
#
And it was, it's interesting now that some of my favorite dishes currently on the menu
#
are some of the vegetarian ones.
#
There is a handvo toast that we do, black garlic handvo toast, where the tomatoes are
#
coming from a specific farm and like there is a rhubarb coming from a specific farm in
#
Ooty and there's a chundo around it.
#
And like in its form, it looks like a bruschetta, but it's great handvo, the garlicky flavor
#
and the tomatoes, the acid of the tomatoes with the sweetness of the rhubarb chundo just
#
Like it's got all the elements of it.
#
So it's a constant journey of like trial and error, trial and error to get to this stage.
#
Yeah, I think it's been also like we've added layers as we've learned a lot.
#
So I think the first layer was always seasonality, right?
#
Then was this veg, non-veg thing.
#
One of the things we learned in regionality, regionality in, in the, again, I'll try to
#
articulate is partialism that comes from like partiality from our minds.
#
So I want to have a mandeli fry on the menu and my mom's fish curry.
#
So we had a pathod on the menu that his mom used to make, then she's to do the muttri.
#
Then Floyd was from Goa and Bandra.
#
So those dishes, Thomas was from Kerala.
#
And then we never realized that, you know, the menus actually should be completely diverse.
#
So like when Chef Hussein also took over, he's from Chennai.
#
So a little bit of from there.
#
Now when we think of it and we are looking at the menu and new dishes we are putting,
#
we always have a look at, is there complete diversity on that menu?
#
Like it has to be north, south, east, west, anyone who walks in needs to find some familiarity
#
It's just not the familiarity of the founders and the chefs.
#
So that has added onto it.
#
Then obviously there is value, will people find value?
#
That's a very important question for us.
#
Like the cheese chili toast, you're not going to charge too much for it, although it's a
#
huge seller and people are still buying it.
#
But making that a very crucial part of all our products that we do.
#
We are always going to be, we are a premium, but it gets you a good value for what you
#
So I think those are the layers we've grown to understand much more, articulate better
#
and get it through to our teams that they also think about it in that way.
#
And I think to add to that, another layer that we've developed over the years is that
#
of technique and how do you create flavor?
#
And I think there's a bunch of stuff that the kitchen team does, the bar team does to
#
like create infusions and ferments and a whole bunch of other things that we don't actively
#
talk about, but it's being used at the backend to like provide a better flavor to the dish
#
And I know we spoke about it a little earlier that every dish has these sort of tick marks,
#
but also there's a lot of technique constantly being used to see how can we sort of amplify
#
flavors that we are doing, whether it's in the cooking technique or in the way it's being
#
presented or all of that.
#
But we are always also very careful of where if you over index on the technique piece when
#
telling the story, it almost can veer on pretentious.
#
Where do you know where this came from and how many days was this made for you, et cetera,
#
et cetera, which I don't think necessarily always needs to be part of the story.
#
But like at the backend, it's there to accentuate what you're doing anyway.
#
A civet shat out these coffee beans.
#
I always say this yesterday, I was saying it, I was like, I'm tired when I go and they
#
tell me, oh, we aged this coffee bean in a donkey's stomach and then they shat it out
#
and then we fermented it and then it went, it just like, I need a good coffee.
#
Yeah, I mean, part of it is I need a good coffee, but part of it is the story kind of
#
makes a difference, doesn't it, to the story and the vibe and all of that.
#
So let's take a quick commercial break and on the other side, we'll continue this journey.
#
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#
Welcome back to the scene in the unseen.
#
I'm chatting with Samir and Yash.
#
And so here's a question that I have, which came out of something that you were saying
#
earlier that Yash, you were mentioning that when you train all of these people, you know,
#
Saturdays, you'll have these sessions, you'll call them over.
#
And one of the things you said, you tell them is that you can now experiment on your own,
#
Because the means of production are open to you.
#
You can make sourdough bread at home and all of that.
#
And what strikes me is that there is an analog to this in the creator economy, which I know
#
And I of course know nothing about the food industry.
#
So I'll sort of talk a bit about the creator economy and ask you how well it goes through
#
that in the creator economy, what you have is that the means of production are open to
#
I no longer have to go to gatekeepers to publish our work or to produce our work or whatever.
#
And once you do enough of it, you become good and you become good in interesting diverse
#
Content is no longer homogenized because everybody can do it, can do their own thing and they
#
can thus discover niches, which the mainstream might not otherwise even have defined as a
#
niche or known that it existed.
#
And the way we consume content has changed completely.
#
So in the 1990s, you've got your Times of India and your whatever, you've got a handful
#
of TV channels in the 80s, you only have those darshan and that just expands and everything
#
is fragmented and it's both good and bad.
#
I mean, the negative aspects of it is of course, increased polarization, narrative warfare,
#
all of that, but generally good because individuals are empowered.
#
And that's the way the whole ecosystem has developed at the creator and you're empowered.
#
And importantly, the creator and you no longer need to scale.
#
You know, I can reach a thousand by Kevin Kelly's famous essay, a thousand true fans.
#
If you get a thousand true fans are willing to give you a hundred dollars a year, you're
#
You don't need to scale and become really big.
#
It's not like one percent of the top makes all of it.
#
So that's the way the creator economy has spanned out.
#
Now if we look at the ecosystem of food, I won't say restaurants, just the ecosystem
#
of food and eating, it strikes me that at one level, just because of comparative advantage,
#
you would imagine that logically people would cook less and less or if they would cook,
#
they would cook for creative satisfaction and whatever, but they'd cook less and less
#
because economies of scale would tell you that you focus on what you're good at and
#
somebody else will get home cooked food across to you or different food across to you.
#
And it'll be good to eat and all of that.
#
So you'd expect people to order in much more, which is of course facilitated by technologies
#
like Swiggy's Amato, et cetera.
#
You'd expect people to eat out much more, where it's not just a special occasion thing.
#
And over a period of time, and I don't know what the delivery mechanism would be, but
#
over a period of time, you'd expect more niche taste to evolve as more niche creators also
#
evolve in a sense, right?
#
Like the market which you're catering to, which likes your kind of food may not have
#
existed or known of its own existence 25 years ago, but now it's there.
#
And I can see this becoming more and more diverse.
#
And I did an episode on Indian food with the great food writer, Vikram Doctor.
#
And one of the points Doc made was about his fears of homogenization.
#
And the example he gave was of the Cavendish banana, that here's a banana we export to
#
the world and then somewhere in North America, they figure out is great to mass produce last
#
But it comes back to India and it's destroying all the local and regional diversity and the
#
Cavendish banana is everywhere.
#
And that's like a first wave of capitalism thing.
#
But the second wave that I see happening now is that individuals then get empowered and
#
a movement can break out in the opposite direction, where individuals and small groups can preserve
#
Like I read an episode with Pines Singhal, the entrepreneur behind stage.in.
#
And I had imagined before my episode with him that that's what is happening to languages
#
and dialects, that as we urbanize more and more, you know, cities speak languages, towns
#
So dialects are going to die out.
#
You're going to get homogenized because incentives are you go to a big city, you want to communicate.
#
You know, you might speak a dialect of Hindi, but you want to fit in.
#
So you learn Hindi and you forget your dialect and homogenization.
#
But what is happening and what he's demonstrated with stage and stage is an OTT for Bharat,
#
but not Bharat in terms of Hindi Punjabi, Bharat in terms of Aryanvi, Rajasthani, Marwari
#
They have those languages happening on the thing and sudden and it's flourishing.
#
It's doing really well commercially.
#
And industries are coming up around those dialects and you have a movement in the opposite
#
And I see that as a good thing about the creator economy, that you have a decentralization,
#
you have a change in the way people consume content, you have a change in the way people
#
produce content and you move away from, you know, certain cliches that become comfort
#
food across restaurants to an, you know, it's really a thousand flowers blooming or a thousand
#
herbs blooming as it were.
#
So you know, and I'm just thinking aloud and there's possibly no analog or, you know, one
#
would have to stretch, but how is the whole world of food evolving in that sense?
#
Like are these broad currents something that you also see happening in some distant way
#
And over a period of time, it's not that overnight, you know, I will cook something that my neighbor
#
will pay to eat, but over time, you know, what are the direction, the directional shifts
#
that you see in this whole ecosystem?
#
I think you're definitely seeing a bunch of these trends playing out much slower, of course.
#
And I think there is a reason to that in my mind, at least I think when we started about
#
almost eight years ago, it was not even remotely cool to be going out for an Indian meal.
#
And I think we were definitely part of that journey we've seen here where a lot of restaurants
#
have now sort of jumped in.
#
And I think everyone now that there is also this moment where now it's a moment of pride
#
where like you are eating Indian, you are enjoying the food you enjoyed at home.
#
I remember there was this point when a few years ago when we put Pakhla Baat on the menu
#
and Udayas came from all over the city to come have it in the city, right?
#
Like it's a moment of pride that food from our state is making it to a restaurant.
#
But I think to take a step forward, while in the creator economy, what you're creating
#
can be distributed digitally.
#
I think the challenge really is that how do you take the food which is being done and
#
being made at a much more small batch level?
#
And how do you distribute it enough to be able to make it viable for someone to put
#
Because as you rightly pointed out, like I think there is a certain decentralization
#
that's definitely happened, but we are sitting in a room right now and we are talking about
#
all things food and everything in between.
#
And tomorrow it can be with a push of a button, it can be out there into the world.
#
That is definitely much harder to think through as far as the world of food goes.
#
But I think you definitely saw that in the last couple of years because of the tailwinds
#
that the pandemic brought in this particular regard was everyone's home became their place
#
of work and suddenly like you were looking at options because and we spoke about it so
#
much like you didn't miss movie halls because you had all the OTT platforms to go to.
#
But when you when it came to food, yeah, you cooked on your own, but you still food is
#
also a form of entertainment and you look for more and more interesting options to be
#
I remember for I think there was this one Marathi cook which Yash found during the pandemic
#
when we ordered from her.
#
She was cooking from home.
#
You sent her a WhatsApp and it showed up on V fast and it was great.
#
But the reality is now that life has gotten busier again, like I'm actually remembering
#
that almost after a solid year and a half at this point.
#
So I think I would love for it to move in that direction, but there are definitely challenges
#
in terms of like for it to come to fruition, so to speak, to be able to see that complete
#
convergence of the creator economy and the food ecosystem, so to speak.
#
So I have a slightly differing opinion.
#
I have said this, that the last two years of the pandemic led to democratization of
#
a tech stack, right, where hungering is a very small organization, but using something
#
like Shopify, right, we, I don't think anyone with a tech background needs, you need a tech
#
background to use Shopify, but we had never run an e-commerce channel before.
#
We were dependent on Swiggy and Zomato and we set up Bombay Sweet Shop and one member
#
of our team took it on and we just ran with it, right, and we grew our business, right.
#
Now the same way I feel there is someone at home now who's making the best pasta in Bandra
#
and she sells maybe 10 portions a day, right, and she's happy with that, right.
#
But I think two years ago she wouldn't have had the right simple technological advancements
#
to help her and that has changed.
#
My only problem with India's creator economy is everyone is only looking at the oyos, the
#
bajus and the big unicorns and the drama around it and the pressure that then every boy or
#
girl who's doing a great sardo at home is how do I make this that big.
#
The expectations are too high on that creator and I tell so many of them who come to us
#
who are like we are still making out and we are still selling out every day and we want
#
to set up a chain and I was like why?
#
If it's still two of you, if I do the math you're making more money than I am, bottom
#
But you can have like even with us at Bombay Sweet Shop there is aspirations of taking
#
this brand internationally.
#
We want a sweet from India to be as recognized as Swiss chocolate.
#
It's something we believe needs to be there.
#
Barks is better than Swiss chocolate.
#
This is ludicrous to compare but anyway, sorry, carry on.
#
But there shouldn't be that pressure on every creator to be the next big thing.
#
Because I worry about India's big unicorns.
#
When someone takes the curtain away, there's like the mount of burn that's happening there.
#
But young 21 year olds are looking at valuations right now.
#
But they are not looking at the whole.
#
For me, the creator economy is based on and I feel India had it with artisans like making
#
really good like even with furniture.
#
We were so good at our furniture and look at our furniture now.
#
But we are all like blinded by valuations and the pressure that the 21 year old has
#
to feel that his startup needs to be the next OYO.
#
I feel like aspirationally if I was starting two years ago, I would also want to start
#
a mithai shop which only makes 200 sweets.
#
But because now quick commerce, I can sell out of those 200 sweets every day.
#
Like those mechanisms are there, the mechanisms like the same lady, she's still, I know she's
#
She's found a smaller kitchen because she didn't want to do it out of her home.
#
And she's still selling out.
#
And she must be making slightly more money than she did during court.
#
But it's an income stream that that family never had.
#
And for them, it's great.
#
So I feel that democratization of tech, this quick commerce is helping so many little this.
#
But just that pressure shouldn't be there that that Malvani lady needs to now become
#
the next, you know, chain, chain, like she the next Goli Wada power, whatever there is.
#
So that's what I'm worried about is this franchise, like for restaurants, it's the franchise model.
#
The same thing we Danny Meyer we spoke about, when we speak about Danny Meyer and setting
#
the table and hospitality first, no one recognizes it.
#
But when we say Shake Shack, everyone recognize it.
#
So he is the founder of Shake Shack, but Shake Shack came into being 20 years after he started
#
I could get 15, 20 years after, right?
#
He had set a foundation how that brand came off organically, and then became what it is.
#
So I honestly love what's happening in the homes right now.
#
People have tried a lot, like I get really impressed with India's craft alcohol industry.
#
I feel it started with people who were making beer in their bar tubs, and now are making
#
the best some of the best craft beer in the world is coming out of our country.
#
So I feel if they are given the right tools, through incentives and various things, the
#
you can see it flourish.
#
You can see it flourish.
#
Yeah, and this is something I vibe with so much because you know, and people who do my
#
podcasting course, for example, I will tell them this also, well, they'll be thinking
#
of gaps in the markets.
#
I'm like, no, no, no, don't do that.
#
If everyone tries to be Chetan Bhagat, you know, everyone will fail or even succeed,
#
But no, all respect to Chetan, but no, seriously, but you know, the only thing that kind of
#
makes you unique is you, you know, out of the 7 billion people in this world, you have
#
only one thing no one else has that is you be authentic, be true to yourself, do the
#
kind of work that you like.
#
And you know, if you're in the food business, make the kind of stuff that you like, and
#
you do not have to scale, you know, especially for people of my age, I'm in my late 40s,
#
you know, there's this mental thing that creators or entrepreneurs or whatever you have to scale,
#
you have to get to a certain huge size, like you put it and know that the reality today
#
is you don't need to think big.
#
Yeah, it is been romanticized so much in all the stories we hear about us like, it's like
#
raising the next round is like the moniker of success.
#
Yeah, someone still wants their money back at the end of it, you have to work to give
#
them their money back, they're not letting you off the hook so easily.
#
And that's forgotten always.
#
And it's often not about a bottom line alone, though, of course, that drives a lot of stuff.
#
But it's also about the value you bring to people's lives, which is intangible, right?
#
People eat your food, there are memories associated with that, which is actually a nice segue
#
to the next sort of theme I want to explore, which is something, Sameer, you spoke about
#
when you last came over for lunch, where we spoke about food and stories and the resonance
#
of food in our lives in terms of, you know, what it tells us about our past and about
#
memories and all of that, like I was telling Sameer when he was last here that my dad died
#
last year, so we sold his house, we were cleaning it up.
#
And most of the stuff we chose to let go because just no space, it's not practical, but one
#
thing I did keep were a whole bunch of recipe books which both my mother and her mother,
#
my maternal grandmother, had kept.
#
And a lot of these by my maternal grandmother are recipes in English of Western dishes like
#
souffles and pizzas and all of that.
#
And she's writing in the 1560s, mind you, in handwriting, and they're all neat.
#
And you know, the first page of the notebook will have a table of contents, which you can
#
tell is being filled up as the years go by.
#
And I've done tons of episodes with various women also on, you know, the lives of women
#
in India have been so different from the lives of men.
#
The histories have been so different in terms of being constrained by so many things, being
#
most of the time at home, having a completely different vista.
#
And food becomes such a big part of everything.
#
And on the one hand, it's like fucking drudgery because every day you're cooking meals for
#
people who will express no appreciation and it's a pain.
#
But those foods, the cooking that you do then also becomes a part of, you know, it's part
#
It's more than just something functional and whatever.
#
So I'd love to hear sort of your thoughts on this because I know you want, you know,
#
you spoke earlier of the India of today, but I know that's not all that interests you that,
#
you know, so tell me a bit more about that journey.
#
So I think for us, the other sort of epiphany that hit us when Bombay Canteen opened is
#
like how people connect to stories.
#
I think we've spoken earlier about like even in menu design, like, yes, it's form, flavor,
#
but like, how do you tell the story of the dish is equally important.
#
And we were very much rooted in nostalgia in our first year in terms of the way we told
#
It was something when Bombay Canteen's original idea, actually, originally when Yash and I
#
came up with the idea, it was called Tiffin Club.
#
And then there was a restaurant called Tiffin that opened somewhere in Bombay and we had
#
to quickly veer away from that, from that name.
#
But I think we ended at a better place because for us, the reason Tiffin and club made sense
#
at that point, because you grew up eating Tiffin, there was a club somewhere around
#
you wherever you grew up in India, it was the sort of beating heart, like a gym nightclub.
#
Yeah, sorry, like a gym kind of like, which was the beating sort of heart of that community,
#
And for us, I'm glad it evolved to the city, which was Bombay, which represented so much
#
to us and canteens, which represented the same thought as Tiffin, where you, where the
#
office, where the school, where the college, like everyone's been to a canteen.
#
And so began that journey.
#
But like when the first year of Bombay Canteen was being celebrated, we were like, how would
#
And long before collaborations were a thing in the world of food, like we ended up collaborating
#
with all our mothers with the simple thought that when you, when it's your birthday, you,
#
she cooks you your favorite food.
#
So all four, five of us who run the, were running the restaurant, we all come from different
#
parts of the country and all our mothers flew in, cooked two dishes each.
#
And it was the, called the mother of all menus.
#
And honestly, like it was such a visceral response to the menu.
#
Like it was our first sort of showcase of what Yash was talking about, just that diversity
#
in a menu and regionality and nostalgia, memories, all of it was at play in those 10 dishes.
#
But more importantly, it was at play because of who it represented.
#
And on a more personal level, I feel like as Bombay Canteen was opening, I was also
#
going through a personal experience where my grandmom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2009,
#
And she cooked certain things for us and she made certain things for us.
#
And literally very physically, we saw that disappear while she was there, we saw it disappear.
#
So the thought that struck us even back then was like Indian food at the end of the day
#
is undocumented, like unlike other cuisines around the world, like there is, it's hugely
#
undocumented and it's all oral histories or like word of mouth that it passes on.
#
And we've been fortunate enough in the last seven, eight years to go into people's homes.
#
People have shared with us.
#
The only way to learn is to go cook with someone.
#
It's not possible to do that.
#
And then come full circle to 2020 where the pandemic hits us and our natural places to
#
tell these stories of food suddenly disappeared from under our feet.
#
Like there was nothing left.
#
Suddenly we are left with mediums such as Instagram and other social media where we
#
Now we have to tell stories.
#
We have to make us sort of the rosy roti of it and like sell every day on it.
#
It became really difficult to sort of put that together.
#
And that kind of led to this thought that how do we continue telling stories of where
#
food in India is going?
#
And I specifically say food in India, not Indian food, because I don't think India
#
of today eats only food that is traditional.
#
I think for us, what's really important is to be inspired from where we came from, but
#
also also be thinking of where is it going?
#
And in that sort of spirit, I think what we're really excited about is the next project that
#
we've been working on for the last year, which is called Enthu Cutlet, where hopefully you
#
find like unusual stories of food in India, which we are able to bring to you, like whether
#
it's an opinion, whether it's a fresh take, whether it's a conversation.
#
And it doesn't need to be written by someone who's from the world of food.
#
Because as you were saying, like food is like central to all our lives at the end of the
#
day and everyone has a memory around it and there could be a take on it, which you and
#
I might not be familiar with.
#
And hopefully through that process, we are able to sort of connect and reconnect with
#
I think the reason you and I started talking was because of this project.
#
And like, as you told me your stories of what you've been through, I was sharing and here
#
we find ourselves having a longer conversation about it all.
#
And I think that in a nutshell is the power of food, like it allows you to really, really
#
sort of connect with another person and share something with them in a way that it makes
#
you feel something, which links back to what we've always done as through Bombay Canteen
#
or Pedro Bombay Sweet Shop.
#
Hopefully it's food that makes you feel something and hopefully Enthu Cutlet presents stories
#
to you that make you feel something.
#
And what did your mother's cook?
#
My mother cooked a prawn curry and it was chicken curry.
#
So we made a kothu roti out of the prawn curry.
#
And she had a dessert, I feel.
#
Clearly, our memories are serving us that prawn curry though, I will not forget, like
#
it's that hue of orange.
#
That flavor is just like.
#
I can tell you how it's made.
#
The color comes from obviously red chili, fresh coconut and then a little bit of tamarind.
#
So the mix of those colors that gives you a little bit of onions, which gets sautéed
#
at the start and then just bronze and the rest of the ingredients.
#
So it's something she makes like, she's, we had a limited menu at home.
#
We were good carnivores, but chicken, fish, mutton, but I don't remember.
#
She's going to be really angry.
#
I don't remember the other dish.
#
She'll just come up with something.
#
Your brother was right to warn you not to mess it up.
#
I mean, this is like a family scale mess.
#
What did your mother cook?
#
She made the thai pakoras, which there was specific like exploding, which were like,
#
it was hard to make because there was one, she's from Agra.
#
So it's a particular kind of pakora where it's stuffed inside with something and it's
#
hard to sort of pull off because you first fry it, then you soak it and then it's put
#
And the other dish was a Gobi dish, which I think all of us, like a Gobi musallam from
#
So, so she did a version of a musallam, but with Gobi.
#
So tell me something, brief digression.
#
I am kind of learning to cook and amateur cook and the things that I find most easy
#
and pleasurable to cook are either Western dishes or South East Asian dishes because
#
they're just so freaking easy, right?
#
You put three, four things and it's simple and it's fast and frugal and it's kind of
#
Every time I look at an Indian recipe, I'm going mad because it is half a teaspoon of
#
this and half one teaspoon of that and there are like 40 spices and there are like 80 procedures
#
and I'm like, what, you know, just keep it simple.
#
I was going to say, but that's where the creator economy comes.
#
And now there's a Maushi on WhatsApp who will send you like a Vindaloo masala that she's
#
made fresh and which you can keep in your fridge and I do that in Bandra.
#
There are the WhatsApp groups, which so normally like the local butcher will keep most of these
#
masalas in like regular pulpit plastic jars.
#
Like I have just discovered it, so it just needs onions, a little bit of pork, nicely
#
sautéed and you put this and people feel you cooked it from scratch.
#
Like I'm not kidding and I'll send you a packet.
#
It's unbelievable how easy it is.
#
And it will be keto because yeah, of course, masala is, but to your point, so we had and
#
scientifically, I think dock will be the best place to start.
#
But India's idea of is refrigeration, like I feel the idea of spices, the vinegar and
#
stuff like the souring agents we used to use every state like Goa uses a lot of vinegar.
#
We use tamarind here, they use Kokum, the souring agents, the grounded spice, because
#
refrigeration wasn't huge in India, I feel was a way of preserving the curry that you
#
I would be quite confident on that, but obviously doc would be the right person to answer on
#
I mean, that's a great point.
#
I mean, one of the things I realized with doc is that the food landscape changes so
#
fast that things you think of as Indian today weren't Indian, like just 20 years ago.
#
It just changes so incredibly fast.
#
And how have your taste changed?
#
Like do you still like your mom's food as much or which I'm sure everyone does?
#
No, but there's certain things which we almost like look down upon growing up where, which
#
So like there is a particular arhar ki daal with the hing ka tadka, which we would like
#
cringe coming back from school and eating.
#
And I know she'll love it when she hears this, that like that's the one meal I look forward
#
to with that aloo ki sabzi and bhindi, right?
#
Like it's just the combination is just, it transports you somewhere.
#
I don't think I'll ever make the move to locky and tinder.
#
But I think people on the chat are thinking you're on tinder.
#
I think the locky would have set the context.
#
So I think I still love the food.
#
I get at home, Yash was there last week and my mom thought she was feeding me.
#
So like a meal in my house is never less than like four dishes at a particular time.
#
So these guys were overfed and hungry.
#
To his question, I feel like home food, I don't, I feel I have stuck to the same.
#
I never liked vata nausa and I still like, I remember if I go back home, my parents are
#
still in Pune and if it's Shravan, I still remember if I drive from Bombay to Pune and
#
there is like vata nausa and I'm like, I didn't drive here for this.
#
I came here for the prawn curry.
#
What do they think of the food that you guys serve up?
#
Like my parents, my mom, obviously like, you know, like she's not very opinionated.
#
So he'll give it to me straight.
#
No matter how uneducated that opinion can be.
#
And that's the third member of the family.
#
I was waiting for that moment.
#
You can't remember, I was waiting for that moment.
#
Check, check and check.
#
Opinions are a lot, but they love it.
#
Like they were at Bombay canteen this weekend.
#
They're really proud of both of us and what we've achieved, obviously, and they've seen
#
us through the ups and downs.
#
But to your point, I just wanted to go back, like if how our tastes have evolved, I think
#
it also, because we are part of the industry, we travel a lot and we eat a lot on those
#
The travels are two kinds, one is work travel, where then we are eating like three meals
#
And one could be like a really fine dining place where it's a fancy meal.
#
And we are not eating it to replicate it, but you're eating it to get inspired.
#
You're eating it because there might be a texture in there or like a technique that
#
was used or the way it was presented or the service.
#
And you just like, wow, they've simplified this, like we need to do something similar.
#
So I feel in that way, like four or five years ago, I was mesmerized by these fancy meals.
#
I feel like it gets overdone to a certain point.
#
I just want to go have a good meal.
#
But we were at a restaurant in Brooklyn called Bonnie's and they served this cold chicken.
#
And it's basically a brief on a Hainanese chicken, but they serve it cold and it's basically
#
chicken leg as so simply done and brimming with flavor, brimming with flavor.
#
And it just blew our mind.
#
Like it was nothing like what we've ever tasted before.
#
And it's a like, it's a take on American Chinese food.
#
It's a nice, fun, casual restaurant.
#
What blew us away was the server that day.
#
And he also realized we are people from the industry because we ended up ordering the
#
whole menu and he enjoyed, like you could feel the happiness in his eyes of us just
#
So for me, I think my, like, because I've been a bartender before, it used to be about
#
whichever city you go to need to check out X amount of cocktail bars.
#
But now you're like being there, done that, there's only X amount of experimentation
#
But you're finding those places which really like inspire you.
#
I feel my, I think my tastes have matured.
#
Obviously like 10 years ago, I think I didn't have any of this at all.
#
I still don't have a wine palette at all.
#
It's, if I drink a good wine, I'll say it's great.
#
But I'm not like hints of leather and masala chai.
#
But that's something I know I can work on.
#
So like the great thing about us, like I was speaking to someone, same like this, going
#
back to this creator economy.
#
The new thing we want to start planning a new project, but we want to have a good coffee
#
And I was very honest to the person I was speaking to saying hungering has never done
#
great coffee, but it's never been because it's already been a 1% somewhere.
#
And at this place also, it's not going to have a coffee program, but I need to have
#
So find me that guy who's now roaming all over India, figuring out good estates and
#
we'll set it up and keep coming and training me also because I need to be trained before
#
So within hour, I feel like there are so many things for me personally, like we say like,
#
wouldn't it be great to go do a whiskey class in Scotland for three months, right?
#
So I feel that as one of the things that the restaurant owners in India get called is promoters.
#
And I hate that word when it comes out, Yash and Samir are the promoters of Bombay Canteen.
#
And I try using the word founders a lot because we are involved in the food, the drink, the
#
service, not physically as much as we used to, but a lot in the ideation and we want
#
And for us to be involved, we need to keep evolving our palate or, you know, taste to
#
And I think it goes back to like doing things, right?
#
Like I think the tastes have obviously evolved, but I think it's going back to the storytelling
#
Like this last year has been such an interesting journey where we've been working with again
#
a little village to bring this, the Enthu Cutlet project to life, where we've had a
#
chance to meet so many people who are brimming with ideas, whether it's here in India, whether
#
it's abroad, who are passionate about Indian food and are sort of dying to sell stories
#
about where it's going.
#
And for us now, this is a period of like absolute, like it's a blank slate because there are
#
no rules to in our mind, like we have no idea how to run a media company, a content company
#
So the question is, how can we continuously be curious, experiment, iterate?
#
And it really brings me back to the original, like your first year of Bombay Canteen, where
#
all we knew is we wanted to like open and, but once you open, like it's, that's when
#
the true magic happens because you see other people come in and it truly becomes like a
#
dialogue and not a monologue.
#
Like right now it's a monologue amongst us.
#
And that dialogue of like people giving us ideas, coming, contributing is what we're
#
Where to Yash's point, like travel became such a huge part of our method, if I can call
#
it that, because where else do you go as like entrepreneurs, founders to go learn?
#
You have to go just, you have to go see things, feel things, like look at things.
#
Like the other thing that I remember from this last trip that we took, we were at a
#
fine dining restaurant in New York city and the food I will say was nothing, not something
#
I will remember, but what I took away from it was they bought out this beautiful leather
#
bag and they let you choose your own chopsticks.
#
It was just the act of like just opening this bag and like beautiful, like inlay work chopsticks
#
and this excitement amongst the four of us that I want this one, no, no, you took the
#
one I wanted, it brought out the kid in you and that's the beauty of these moments.
#
The eye for detail of that person taking care of us was my girlfriend's left-handed.
#
So he quietly at some point moved the chopstick holder onto her left.
#
You know, simple things, simple things that, you know, you have like.
#
And where it transcends from just being a meal to like an experience as we keep talking
#
Like, I think the word experience gets thrown around so much, but like the question is what
#
today now in a, in a world where all of us are privileged enough to like have these experiences,
#
what will excite us next is the question we're asking.
#
So even with whether it's the restaurants, whether it's Bombay sweet shop, whether it's
#
into cutlet, the question we're asking is like, what is it that will be exciting to
#
Will it be view at lunch today, we're talking about how you did this trip to Mysore and
#
like eight within a 10 square kilometer radius and you were blown away by the diversity of
#
food within 10 kilometers.
#
Yes, that is truly exciting.
#
Like can you imagine like if that list existed out there in the world and like allowed for
#
people from Bangalore or Mysore to quickly go and like experience that versus that to
#
me would be exciting because genuinely like in today's day and age, it's so hard to like
#
sift through the clutter to actually get to things which you trust, things which you feel
#
Like we are all busy in our day-to-day lives.
#
You want to go and like quickly have that one amazing thing.
#
Why can't this be one of those experiences and hopefully and conversations like this
#
hopefully like spark other thoughts and and then you're on onto something hopefully which
#
is like a journey, which is amazing.
#
And one of the sort of the important needs of our times where we are surrounded by an
#
abundance of sensation and abundance of content is also filters.
#
So just that thing that, okay, I am in this city.
#
Where should I eat and what should I eat?
#
And to have a sense of that, you know, not just like a TripAdvisor top five rated restaurants,
#
but to have a sense of what would I like and where do I get that experience?
#
We'll talk a lot more about into cutlet.
#
But first I have some broader questions and one of them is about what I see as an interesting
#
dichotomy that perhaps doesn't exist in other areas.
#
Like you guys have done my writing course.
#
So one of the things I talk about there is that style must always be a slave to substance,
#
You don't want style to overwhelm the substance.
#
And yes, you pointed out a moment ago that, you know, you're not into flashy food anymore.
#
You're not into all the drama in the theater.
#
Ultimately, now you just the taste, the substance of it matters.
#
So that's one way of looking at it.
#
But where food is different from everything else is that you're a person's experience
#
of the food they are eating is also shaped by the theater is also shaped by the perceptions,
#
The fact that you're choosing your chopstick in that elaborate act from a leather bag does
#
affect your experience at some level.
#
You are definitely going to find the food a little more elevated, yeah, elevated as
#
opposed to if that experience hadn't happened.
#
So unlike in anything else, you know, these extra trappings are also kind of important.
#
So how does one draw this balance to, you know, to figure out that what element of the
#
theater or the gimmicks or whatever are necessary to the food being elevated?
#
And what are superfluous to it?
#
And the same the challenge with all of this is when people think that everything around
#
the food is what's making the experience, right?
#
And India has gone through this painful and it's going through this painful gimmicky phase
#
where the smoke and mirrors of things hopefully peeking out of it at this point.
#
As in hope is the smoke and mirrors is what people think will drive people back, right?
#
Restaurants are being built on trends, right?
#
Instagram images, Instagram images, Pinterest boards are what define a restaurant right
#
Whereas you create, we've been lucky our restaurants have stood the test of time, let's be honest.
#
But we have put in that effort that there is a philosophy first.
#
There's an experience around it.
#
And the philosophy with the experience keeps evolving.
#
We didn't set out to say that the modern Indian trend is going on, let's jump on it.
#
Like you said, like you're one in seven billion people show who you are.
#
And the reason why I feel like the superfluous or like what you described is people have
#
forgotten that yes, the act of selecting the chopsticks was amazing, but I use that chopsticks
#
to have the best bowl of ramen.
#
If that doesn't exist, then none of this makes sense.
#
And it's, you know what I miss in India is an educated opinionated review of the work
#
we do in terms of like if I were in New York, a review happens after three between three
#
Because and they come at least thrice.
#
It's because they want the restaurants to settle.
#
A restaurant at the end of the day is like, kind of like a factory, like everything needs
#
to fall like a domino effect and it takes time.
#
You have to be fair to the restaurant.
#
I always tell people we have been so lucky that the whole ecosystem supported us.
#
We've had bad reviews as well, which is fine.
#
Give us reviews based on the product, the experience, and that's what it should be.
#
And as an entrepreneur, you have to take it in your stride.
#
In India, the that power went directly to the Zomato reviewer, right, which is fine.
#
It's also a measurable attribute for a restaurant.
#
And we have never replied to Zomato reviews only because I don't think it's an informed
#
So if 10 people on Zomato tell me that service is bad, I need to look at it right.
#
So right now, restaurants are being dictated by if the reel of it looked good, if the Instagram
#
lighting worked, but that's not going to last long.
#
It's going to last six months and you're going to fade away.
#
So a good warm bowl of food, comforting food, if you start there, build all these little
#
experiences around it and make it come together.
#
I think that's what makes a restaurant or any food place for me, at least.
#
And I think the question you asked is a great one because like, what is the filter you use
#
to say that this is me and this is not me, right?
#
Like you can, again, going back to that original thought we discussed some time ago, you can't
#
be everything for everyone.
#
And I think it's something we maybe have unconsciously always felt like if this is making sense in
#
So one of the first experiences we created at Bombay Canteen, I still remember was, and
#
We were busy looking for colorful bottles to put on the table.
#
And we were in Muhammad Ali Road in our bottle suppliers and this thing.
#
And he was showing us colorful bottles because we felt the design needed.
#
And then suddenly, like someone in the store pulled out an old Rooh Afza bottle and it
#
struck a memory that water bottles always used to be old reused bottles in home.
#
Our core, our storytelling was nostalgic in nature and Rooh Afza bottles were what we
#
They didn't have any color.
#
But and I kid you not in the first six months, the number of people who tried to steal those
#
bottles and like we've stopped people at the door.
#
How do you steal bottles?
#
I was shocked at how people think they can and but to get caught anyway, they would literally
#
put it under the under their jacket and try to walk out.
#
But again, like, is it gimmicky?
#
Maybe but it fit into the story we were trying to tell at that time.
#
And I think that maybe the filter like we sort of try and apply because there is things
#
I remember this molecular gastronomy has been a thing and when we were opening Bombay canteen,
#
Like anything modern related to Indian food at that time had to have liquid nitrogen thrown
#
Otherwise, it was not modern.
#
It was a blockchain of the food world.
#
Couldn't have said it better.
#
And I remember going to a restaurant where which was an obvious riff of Heston Blumenthal's
#
I had never been to Fat Duck at that point, but like it just tasted bad because like it's
#
basically this one dish where there's sand and above that there's a glass and you place
#
And then I had the opportunity to go to Fat Duck a few couple of years after I'd had that.
#
And you realize what they're doing at the Fat Duck is telling the story of Heston's
#
childhood of going through an English countryside and stopping in the beach at wherever in south
#
And this was his memory being told, and you're wearing these headphones and you're listening
#
to the waves crash and then it all suddenly makes sense.
#
But suddenly, because you put a piece of like tandoori prawn on sand and you're serving
#
it and because it looked good on Instagram, it is never going to work ever.
#
And that's the that's the difference between like what Yash was talking about, like hopefully
#
we like move beyond like at the end of the day, it starts and ends with the food.
#
It has to be that and then you layer above that.
#
But if you don't have the basics right, it's never going to work.
#
And I guess a test for this is the same test as in writing.
#
Like what I talk about in writing is like, sure, you want to make it vivid, you'll try
#
But the time you realize you failed is when the reader notices a piece of prose for itself,
#
their attention is drawn to the reader, to the writer where they'll say, oh, you know,
#
Yash is so witty, I must follow him on Instagram instead of actually following the narrative.
#
But if it fits into the narrative, like the Rooavza bottle does, you know, then then it's
#
And that sort of makes a lot of sense to me.
#
I'm also interested in bars right now.
#
I am not much of a drinker.
#
My notion of drinks is that it should be a pretty straightforward process.
#
He knows this much of the alcohol, this much of the mixer, this much of the whatever you
#
mix it, ultimately, every good cocktail bar will basically be competent.
#
Usse achha kya hai, right?
#
But you opened Antidote in Singapore, which won, quote unquote, best bar in Singapore
#
in the year 2014, the achche din year.
#
So you know, tell me what makes a good bar?
#
What is then your philosophy as a bartender, as a cocktail mixer?
#
You know, how do you sort of elevate it above?
#
And I am the most lay person lay person you could speak to on this, because I literally,
#
you know, have no idea.
#
So so I feel like even like the my Antidote journey was very, very small.
#
But since then, like my even before and after the journey of learning good cocktail making
#
lessons or even like bringing it in into Bombay Canteen, where we were also on the Asia's
#
top 100 list, is there are simple things that you need to do right, and which we in India
#
were getting wrong, like the kind of ice you use, even the simplest equipment that you
#
use, your mixing techniques, your stirring techniques, a lot of that earlier was more
#
on the kind of glassware you are using and how fancy that can be.
#
But that's a later thing that brings in the experience as we spoke about.
#
Cooking is very similar to even cooking, but the benefit chefs have is they have 20 minutes
#
to pull out a dish and with a drink, you have to have it in five minutes.
#
No one waits 20 minutes for a drink.
#
But the same level of technique goes into it.
#
And I feel like right now, Indian bars are some of them are on level with international
#
bars is because earlier and it's going to be a slightly long answer earlier Indian chefs
#
never really traveled now chefs have all traveled over the world come back and standards in
#
Same is happening in the bar industry.
#
A lot of great bartenders work out of India and international guys are coming coming in
#
A lot of bar pop ups happen.
#
So the measuring like just so important because at the end of the day, it's a sweet sour balance.
#
So sweetener normally is your sugar syrup and your acidity either comes from a citrus
#
or typically that's lime or lemon juice.
#
Those are the basics of any cocktail with balance.
#
Then you layer it up with a sense of you add a little bit of bitters.
#
There's a sense of you add a little bit of liquors into it, which gives that taste to
#
There are those in India we love bartenders who like flair and like don't use any kind
#
of measures and world over that's gone away where you use a measure to like 5 ml, 10 ml,
#
12 ml that level because it does make a huge difference.
#
Chilling your cocktail to the right temperature, chilling your glassware to the right temperature
#
and then shaking or stirring it as required.
#
They're very simple techniques.
#
I also feel India needs to just wipe its slate clean and say, we'll just do classic cocktails
#
and we'll do it really well.
#
But we directly went to the spherified masala chai martinis and I feel that's what threw
#
There's a first time hearing of it.
#
I think it's a figment of Yash's imagination, but no, but just to add to what Yash is saying
#
again, like it's funny how as we are almost this has been an interesting reflection on
#
the last seven years and I don't think we've spoken about so many and memories are coming
#
I feel the first year of Bombay Canteen opening was again like such a learning curve in terms
#
of the drinks program because we had, we were fortunate enough to meet this one gentleman
#
and his name is Dimitri.
#
He lives here in Bombay and he's an amazing bartender, has worked with liquor companies
#
across the world and he helped set up the first cocktail menu at Bombay Canteen.
#
And as we were setting up, I'd come back from New York, I should come back from Singapore
#
and we had fallen in love with the Negronis of the world, the Manhattans of the world,
#
like the classic cocktails, alcohol forward, martinis, et cetera.
#
But funnily enough, we forgot to take into context the context of India at that point.
#
Think about it in 2015, we were still in the Mojito Long Island Ice Tea, heyday, fruity
#
drinks were the call of the hour.
#
We were just seeing the molecular stuff starting to come in, which was still sugary sweet.
#
And here we were presenting these sort of drinks, which the palate didn't exist so
#
And I remember he and I went to the US for a trip and we ended up in San Francisco at
#
this bar called Chick Dog.
#
Since then they have come down and worked with us here a couple of years back.
#
And what blew us away was again, they had a menu, which was telling fun stories.
#
It had nothing to do with the cocktails, their menu was like a stolen CIA dossier.
#
And it just had fun with that.
#
Like it was nothing to do with cocktails or anything, it was making you have fun while
#
you were reading a menu and therefore you ordered a cocktail.
#
And we came back with that inspiration and then we took it to our partners at Plissey
#
where Pritha came up with the thought that what if we tell stories of Bombay through
#
And our first cocktail menu, which we did as a result was a pop-up storybook of the
#
art deco buildings of Bombay.
#
And literally we still have a few copies where as you unfold it, you see all these heritage
#
buildings which we created this beautiful map where you could walk around to these buildings
#
and explore the art deco district in South Bombay.
#
And what was interesting was people were like, I've been to that building, I want that cocktail.
#
And suddenly you've transported them into rather than thinking about the alcohol, etc.
#
And what simultaneously happened to what Yash was referring to earlier was like the craft
#
liquor industry was coming in where the quality of overall the input, like the raw materials
#
being used was going up, which were more affordable.
#
Like it or not, alcohol is taxed at what it is in India.
#
So the inputs are really, really sort of high cost.
#
And I think it was a question in the last four years, four, five years, it's been all
#
boats rise with the tide where many things in the ecosystem have happened for it to reach
#
the level it has, including bartenders going out and being more exposed to world-class
#
I don't know if it has happened to slowly layer it on and become what it is today.
#
And I think it's a very exciting time to be in the sort of cocktail bar space in Bombay
#
in India right now, because of the amazing work being done by so many people.
#
But like, I'll just give a quick thing, like, and it's also we've, I feel COVID was a difficult
#
time for us, but there were silver linings on the way we looked at things.
#
So to his point, like all boats rise with the tide.
#
We've been lucky, like India's, the craft gin revolution has helped bartenders tremendously.
#
Like gin's like stranger and son's short story.
#
Gin is something that you need for like all cocktails, I would say, like a great martini.
#
But these companies have also let bartenders travel internationally through them and telling
#
the story of Indian gin abroad.
#
We've had a number four bar in Asia, now in India, which is Tashoro, which was run by
#
And since January, we said that we want to work on an online mentorship program with
#
them through Zoom for our teams at Hunger Inc, because we know that we can't have people
#
of their expertise on our payroll all the time, and they would not want to be restricted
#
But I also know my team needs mentorship and needs it from the best in class.
#
So now everyone's so used to using Zoom, why not, they're based out of Goa, start using
#
And it's such an inspiring thing for the team to be even spend one hour a week just talking
#
to them, asking them, okay, I tried making this cocktail, the balance was off.
#
So even things like that have like helped.
#
And I think the industry is going to just get better from there.
#
So you guys mentioned pallets, the challenge being that, you know, you start something
#
new, but people's pallets aren't evolved there and so on.
#
And earlier you spoke about how a lot of Zomato reviews of your restaurant will just be uninformed.
#
And you know, I just bought this Korean sauce from Urban Platter called Gochugaru, Korean
#
spice rather, called Gochugaru.
#
And when I was reading the reviews of it on the reviews page, it was immediately obvious
#
that all the negative reviews are for people who don't get what it is, they are expecting
#
it to be like an Indian spice.
#
And they're saying garlic nahi hai, yeh nahi hai, yeh woh nahi hai and it's like, like,
#
come on, you know, that context isn't there.
#
And hopefully you would imagine that over a period of time, their pallets also get trained.
#
Like when we were at lunch, we were, you know, I was telling you about this restaurant I
#
used to go to and Yash, you mentioned you used to go to also in the nineties, we won't
#
mention it, but Bombay Sizzler joint, we won't take the name.
#
And I used to love it back then, but I went recently and it was shit.
#
It's like, you know, and it's probably exactly the same food.
#
And what's happened is our palette has developed, right?
#
So when you get into that situation, that you've traveled the world, you're coming
#
with a certain sensibility, but that sensibility isn't shared by people here for no fault of
#
It's just that they've made a different journey to a particular point.
#
How does one approach that?
#
Do you say that let us find a palatable meeting point and then gradually bring them up or
#
do you say, no, let us do what we are doing because we are expanding their universe of
#
tastes and experiences that way and they'll eventually come here.
#
So how does one think about it?
#
And in your journey so far, you know, through Bombay Canteen and Opedro and all of that,
#
have you found that there has been that a change in palates or a change in taste where,
#
you know, less people will have unfair expectations of what your work brings out?
#
So I'll give you like a couple of very dish related examples because I think it helps.
#
Over one of Bombay Canteen, we never truly had a ceviche on the menu, right?
#
And ceviche is just for everyone.
#
It's a dish which uses raw fish in it, but it's cured fish with acid, with any acid.
#
And by the way, your Opedro ceviche last week was like mind blowing.
#
I wouldn't have expected that reaction six years ago, honestly.
#
And we've seen it now, Opedro has three ceviches on the menu.
#
Also because people, one, understand the idea behind it is, I think the one you've had is
#
the red snapper ceviche, which comes with the coconut milk on the side, is the sense
#
But the original idea of that for Chef Hussein came through house fish eaten in Goa, right?
#
And there's always acidity, that acidity can be coconut tamarind, there's always crispy
#
ness because of the semolina on top and that's why we do a little fritters on top.
#
That story someone comes and tells you when you're eating it, so it relates.
#
But you need to pick the right guest to suggest it to, right?
#
And that's the server's expertise.
#
And it's taken us time for them also to get there.
#
So there have been times when we've seen dishes, there's a beef tongue, a buffalo tongue prosciutto
#
on the menu at Wheel Tongue.
#
And there's those crispy potatoes on it.
#
We debated so much whether to put that dish on.
#
Thank God you did, thank you, personally.
#
That was on year one of Opedro's opening menu, takes a lot of effort to bring that dish to
#
life because we make the tongue prosciutto ourselves.
#
And it's a lot of curing that goes, it's a very long process.
#
But inspired by the way from a tongue sandwich, which you get on the streets of Panjim, right?
#
That's the original inspiration.
#
Again going back to form versus flavor, this was same flavors being bought in a different
#
So there's like a Pinto's bar in Panjim where all you get is beer and tongue sandwiches.
#
So that's where it had come from.
#
And in the first two months, like we were, first two months you get the food enthusiasts
#
who come in who love that dish, right?
#
And then you have the crowd on which your restaurant is going to sustain.
#
Over time we saw that dish just die out because people were just not ready for it.
#
Like at that point, we've just got back, Opedro finishes five years in October.
#
And it's doing phenomenally well.
#
It's because I genuinely feel India's this transition into food curiosity is faster than
#
People are traveling more.
#
People want that same quality now.
#
I think also it's Netflix, chef's table, master chef, it's content being shown.
#
It's the likes of like even like Saranjh Goyal, Ranveer Brar, all these guys traveling in
#
India, talking about it.
#
And YouTube algorithms make all the difference.
#
You watch one video about cooking something exotic, you'll get recommended five others.
#
So people are getting much more curious.
#
So it's, I forgot the original thought I had, but the ceviche, for example, that's what
#
Like it's proof to us that we do have mushroom ceviche now at Opedro.
#
If you had asked me eight years ago, can we have, I would have said hell no.
#
And actually if you look at it a decade ago to have like three or four cold dishes on
#
a menu in India in itself, because there is actually a huge association, khaana hai, fresh
#
hai, garam hona chahiye.
#
And then I still go out with my parents and my parents will always be like soup.
#
Like most restaurants now don't have soup on the menu unless you're going to a Chinese.
#
20 years ago, every restaurant in an Indian restaurant would be a shorba, there would
#
be a cream of mushroom, cream of tomato, or like obviously Chinese restaurants, that associated
#
manchow soup is like hot and sour.
#
I remember the last time I had soup at a restaurant.
#
So think about it like there are no longer soup sections on menus.
#
That's the evolution of the palette because clearly there is, there's obviously a generation
#
that still asks for it, but we now can have a whole section dedicated to cold dishes.
#
And to be honest, when Bombay canteen opened, we had a soup.
#
And we said, we, the reason we had that soup on the menu, we were like, people will ask
#
No, no, it was a drumstick soup.
#
It was like thoda kuch alak karke dekhayenge.
#
It was a good, it was a great dish.
#
And then it didn't last because, for many reasons, but I think that's been the interesting
#
and I think it's a interesting rabbit hole we've gone down right now, where like this
#
is going to constantly keep evolving.
#
So the question is, can you be curious enough to keep up?
#
And I think I'm reminded of something that is said about futurists.
#
And I often say about creators that they tend to overestimate the short-term and underestimate
#
And would it be fair to say that perhaps with reference to a few of these things that you
#
were trying, you were disappointed that people didn't catch on and palettes were different,
#
but now it's changed so dramatically.
#
You know, so does that kind of fit?
#
But I think now certain things, there's this one dish we always go back to, which we thought
#
would be like a runaway hit and we really should, but we keep talking about bringing
#
It was basically a prawn head rasam and we had done a spaghetti with a prawn head rasam
#
and to us, the umami of the prawn head rasam was similar to that of Maggi and therefore
#
noodles made sense because the whole play on nostalgia, Maggi, but form, but the form
#
The flavor was different.
#
I totally love to have it.
#
I had a prawn rasam in some restaurant in Khar a while back, which was really good.
#
And I thought the combination was fantastic.
#
So you keep talking about bringing it back, maybe it's
#
Prawn as a protein is a great to use because the flavors you get from the shells is just
#
And that wheel thing, like both your faces are turning into wheel right now because it
#
I feel like, like just stopping this interview and just going back there and kind of
#
Next podcast recording at Aupetro.
#
Yeah, let's do a live podcast recording at Aupetro.
#
Chef Hussain keeps getting food till the podcast recording happens.
#
It's been a long time, you are aware of this.
#
Let's talk about the experience of, you know, you start Bombay Canteen and it's incredibly
#
hectic and luckily you've had the bias for action.
#
You've kind of done it.
#
You're learning from the doing it.
#
And I love the way you described it, Sam, where you said it's like, you know, a monologue
#
becomes a dialogue and then it evolves into what it is.
#
What's like the next step in the journey?
#
Like what makes you think of, oh, Pedro, what are you guys feeling about Bombay Canteen
#
and most importantly, what have you learned about Bombay Canteen in the doing of it and
#
how does that shape the journey to come?
#
So year one of Bombay Canteen, I'll be honest, we weren't thinking much.
#
It was just like, let's get people in, people out, let's get, you know, table set up, reservations
#
We were trying to get our systems in place, like simple things like online reservation
#
But obviously year one, like, look, it was a heartwarming response.
#
We never said we always stay away from the word success because year one does not dictate
#
It was just heartwarming to see people enjoying food.
#
We were getting things wrong.
#
There were failures, but just the emotions that we're getting were amazing.
#
And then you had the people walking in being like, Andheri mein kholo, Juhu mein kholo,
#
mere paas Dubai mein jaga hai, open there and I think Sam was so grounded at that time
#
to say, guys, no distractions, two years, this all we do, no one gets distracted.
#
And this was based on actually reflecting on the period in Delhi where we spoke about
#
Scaling too fast is what caused us everything to fail.
#
And we were like, if there is no foundation, there will never be any scale.
#
So I'll give you the quick fire of how Pedro came about.
#
So we've finished a year and a half, we see this space where Pedro is now.
#
One of the things that Sam and me really believe in for restaurants is natural light.
#
We really believe like, even when we work, I feel like there needs to be an openness,
#
there needs to be a sense of space.
#
So while Bombay canteen never had the natural light coming in, that mill compound itself
#
allowed us to light it up in a beautiful way.
#
So we saw the space, beautiful natural light.
#
It's me, Chef Thomas, Chef Floyd, standing there are these chaffa, chaffa is what, frangipani
#
So we're standing there looking in, we've loved the space.
#
And Floyd says, let's do Mexican.
#
Now, four of us have never really agreed to anything so far, especially when it comes
#
That night, Chef Floyd is traveling back to New York, Sameer is going on a trip to Portugal,
#
like a leisure trip, and we say, okay, agree, let's start doing some research.
#
Now when we had done Bombay canteen, actually, we had done a lot of groundwork before, like,
#
you know, like we used to literally stand in Kamla Mill and follow people, where is
#
Like, you know, we used to just stand and do a lot of that research.
#
Now with BKC, we knew as a market, it existed, there were restaurants around.
#
So we didn't need to prove the market, we wanted to say, okay, let's go out and get
#
data to see what cuisines in India are doing well, you know, like just, and honestly, there's
#
no data available for this.
#
And at that point, like, I remember Thomas and me, I think, were in the restaurant and
#
we just start, okay, Mexican we all love, but what could the issues be?
#
And this was thinking six years ago, right?
#
One is avocado, at that point, one avocado was selling at some 200 rupees, right, which
#
Two is the idea of Mexican food then were cheesy nachos, creamy corn, something.
#
And just the idea that we would have to go through this education phase.
#
And we said, like, you know, what made Bombay canteen get that heartwarming was that it
#
was always relatable food.
#
Was Mexican relatable to us?
#
And I started thinking and I sent Sam and Floyd an email that we all love Mexican food.
#
And obviously, there's a huge presentation to this to say that Mexico as a country, I
#
have not been to Sam's been to and Floyd has actually done a Mexican joint before.
#
As a country, you feel a sense of delight.
#
You know, it's so colorful, people are so warm, they have their own culture.
#
The Americans went there for spring break, they'll go for a honeymoon, they'll go for
#
a wedding, you come they would come back with.
#
Then the cuisine transcended like even if I remember being in in Sydney and with an
#
And he said, let's go for Mexican tonight.
#
I knew it's gonna be a fun night.
#
You know, it's gonna be margaritas, you're gonna be drunk, always already gives you an
#
image of what the night is going to be like, right?
#
In the sense of BKC that made sense because for us, architecture and design plays a huge
#
For me, BKC is like manmade steel towers, first day you go to these fancy offices, you
#
love your office, you're taking photos, taking photos of the view, seventh day you're sleeping
#
on your keyboard, right?
#
But for that person who sleeps on his keyboard, does he really relate to Mexico, right?
#
So but Mexico was the happy place for Americans.
#
So the question was, what is our happy place?
#
And that's how Goa came about.
#
Like if I'm sitting in an office in a bank in BKC, if I close my eyes and start, what
#
is the place I dream about?
#
And it's Goa, it just brings a smile on our face, right?
#
We've like for me, I studied there, Chef Floyd grew there, like Sam's had various vacay.
#
Like anytime even our team goes there, they come back with a smile on their face.
#
And Goa has also changed for the worse, but still you come back with a smile on your face.
#
And that's what we went about creating.
#
Like Opedro would be our happy place.
#
And that's how we like every brand description out of that came out of those two words, let's
#
create a happy place for the community around us.
#
And Goa then like, they didn't take me to Portugal, they went for 20 days to do a lot
#
We still get shit for it five years later.
#
Yeah, actually, good plan.
#
Someone had to build the actual restaurant.
#
Yeah, so yeah, so I genuinely enjoyed, like I am very involved in the restaurant gets
#
built on the site and we built, I feel a really happy place for people like it.
#
And I think that was really like when I think about it, I think your original question was
#
And how are we thinking about it?
#
It truly triggered the next stage, like if step stage one to us was Mumbai Candy and
#
Opedro opening Opedro triggered stage two, because I think for us, we started seeing
#
like building another three, four thousand square foot space was like, then we really
#
started asking ourselves the question, like, is this where we see our lives going from
#
And it was just a question at that point, like, and there's a reason for the question
#
was, again, our minds kind of works in terms of behavior as well as like, what are you
#
India is actually a culmination of like 26 different countries, like taste change, like
#
there's no homogeneity.
#
Like when you going back to the question of scale, everyone says scale, scale, scale,
#
like India doesn't have the ecosystem to scale because like you need to go change your menu
#
in every city, Delhi versus Bangalore versus Bombay in itself, our three biggest markets
#
potentially are our 15th largest state by population.
#
If it was a country would be number 42 in the world.
#
It's massive and the use of the same spices changes every hundred kilometers or so they
#
And more than that, like there is no availability of affordable real estate to continuously
#
keep building with enough demand around them.
#
And so I think as we were looking at that is when and I'll throw it back to Yash on
#
this because it was again insight by him that triggered our next stage, which led to Bombay
#
So he, Sam brought up the question saying we need to get into people's homes.
#
And obviously we were doing Swiggy Zomato.
#
And at that stage, a restaurant company's way of getting into someone's home was an
#
offshoot of something you made at the restaurant.
#
So hot sauce or a makhani sauce or XYZ.
#
And we'd never really saw that as a transition.
#
And believe me, we tried also.
#
We tried to put the Kejriwal sauce in a bottle and we were just not happy with where it was
#
So many people aren't happy with where Kejriwal is going, but never mind.
#
So we, that was looming and the quickfire thing was we as the best part of being you
#
asked us what keeps passion going in this industry, I think is the people in this industry.
#
So if Sam and me today, even right now decide to go to Sagapur and we message any person
#
in the industry, that person, even if they've worked a 12 hour shift, will take their time
#
out to show us the city in from their eyes and like take us to their bar or their place.
#
And that list you get of places to go, like basically find the into cutlet of that city
#
is what makes this industry special.
#
And same when, so when we had moved to India, we used to get a lot of these guys in and
#
we always wanted to give them something we were super proud of to take back, right?
#
So normally what you do, you give masalas, same now, if you can't cook a masala here
#
in India, how is that guy in London figuring it out?
#
Masala chai, they brew tea, we cook tea.
#
So they're like, this doesn't taste how, so that started and it, I was flying for
#
Chef Floyd's restaurant opening and he had booked me on Turkish Airlines and I was passing
#
through the Turkish airport and I've never been to Turkey.
#
And there's a guy at the airport, a Turkish guy, like fully dressed up and he's selling
#
me Turkish delights and baklava is like his life dependent on it.
#
Like, you know, he's just like, taste it.
#
This was what, and like his heart was in it.
#
And I went and I was at the Forbes conference where Maria Sharapova is talking about her
#
She has a candy brand called Sugar Pova.
#
Now when you know a celebrity starts any brand, you just think perfume, but she started it
#
because she grew up in Chernobyl.
#
And with poverty, like how much a snicker bar, like a men to her, she described that
#
and she's like, at some point in my life, I want it.
#
That gave me happiness.
#
I want to start a candy brand, right?
#
So flying back, like I remember like sending Sam a note, like we've always said, celebrate
#
India, celebrate India.
#
Why are we not doing something with Indian sweets?
#
Like I remember first time in my presentation, I had a chicky dressed like a candy bar, right?
#
Is like, how do you make Indian sweets of today?
#
Like how do you make them fun?
#
How do you make it relatable?
#
And that's the journey that led us into Bombay Sweet Shop, where we knew, yes, people had
#
stopped eating Indian sweets due to various reasons, but we knew that our expertise at
#
that point from two spaces was one, creating an offline experience.
#
And we had understood the form, flavor analogy by then.
#
So we're like, there is something here.
#
We've never made Indian sweets, neither at Chef Floyd.
#
So Chef Girish had worked in New York, studied there, had come in India, was working with
#
So it's one of the best pastry chefs in India and an offshoot meeting with him.
#
We just asked him, what's your dream?
#
And he's like, I want to create the new Ayangar Bakery.
#
And he had grown up in Manipal and like he, and he'd had this, he'd gone to culinary
#
school there and six, and eventually went to the Culinary Institute of America.
#
But in between, he happened to work at a mithai shop for six months and he just had that one
#
experience and it had triggered this thought in him that what if you applied like French
#
technique to Indian sweets?
#
And Floyd would always say that unless you don't take time to understand tradition, you
#
can't sort of evolve it.
#
And I think there's so many, you can go into a different rabbit hole talking about authenticity
#
I don't think there is anything such as authenticity only because it needs to be relevant to that
#
And it, someone's tradition becomes someone else's sort of inspiration at some point.
#
And everything evolved out of something else.
#
And so Girish joined us in 2018 for two years we spent, he did most of the work, we joined
#
him as we were running the other stuff when we could.
#
But at different points, like he basically spent two years understanding how to make
#
traditional sweets from halwais across the country.
#
And that is the basis of like, so even the bark was inspired by sohan halwa, which he
#
Sohan halwa has this butterscotch flavor and he originally was trying to make an inside
#
out chicky as he called it, which eventually turned into the barks.
#
And it was the process of iteration through that, that we were able to sort of, again,
#
look at this to us, Indian, the Indian sweet market represented the same white, the canvas,
#
which Indian food represented where nothing had been done to contemporize it at that point.
#
But do it in a way that it stays true to where it came from.
#
So which is why, like Yash was saying, our strength always lay in creating these sort
#
of offline experiences.
#
So our first step was that we took an old factory in Baikala and we said, let's create
#
Willy Wonka's mithai factory here.
#
So that when you walk in, you feel that like, there is like something happening, like one
#
of the other exercises we do is like, when we are getting into a new concept, we make
#
a list of everything related to that concept.
#
It could be a hundred things.
#
We made listed everything about a mithai shop that we could think of, and then we slowly
#
struck away everything we didn't like.
#
And that's how you reach where you want to, what you want to keep of tradition, where
#
So what were the kinds of things you liked and didn't like?
#
Like one of the biggest things is all you interact with is a glass shelf.
#
You don't see anything beyond that.
#
You never see it being made.
#
So if, when you walk into Bombay sweet shop in Baikala, like everything's being made in
#
front of you from the hot kitchen to the finishing, to the way it's being packed, to all of it.
#
And all of it was bought out into the open because we felt like making a motichu laddu
#
is as beautiful as a croissant being sort of layered and cut.
#
And it's just not spoken about, unfortunately, because it's not cool.
#
It's not sexy to do that.
#
And that really led us into an, as life would have it, we opened in the first week of March
#
of 2020 and then life happened and it kind of like took us into a whole different realm.
#
We lost Floyd at that point, obviously.
#
And it took us a while to recover, but I think more than anything else, like Bombay sweet
#
shop has also turned into a silver lining because it forced our hand into being in the
#
online world in a very different way.
#
To what Yash was referring to earlier, like tech was like a POS system for us at that
#
point, like nothing more.
#
And he's really sort of caught it by the collar and looked at it.
#
So like again, hunger ink is really small, you know, we speak really aspirationally on
#
what we've created because we love it.
#
But for me, Bombay sweet shop is the best space we've created because with Shonan who's
#
designed it, there was like restaurants always there.
#
So you had a layout with this, we didn't have a layout, right?
#
And yes, now we say, you know, we need more space, but we didn't know that.
#
And it's when people walk in, they are just, they're like, wow, because someone's told
#
them go to Baikala, there's an amazing mithai shop and they're not expecting what they see.
#
Like it's, it's like for me, it brings a smile to my face now.
#
So like to his point, like we wanted to make Willy Wonka's mithai factory.
#
And the idea was you come in and see how everything's made.
#
When we lost Floyd and I don't think we'll ever recover emotionally out of it.
#
Like for him, for us, it was, he's, he'll always be a father figure, right?
#
But one thing he used to always tell us was storytelling.
#
The space was to be the storytelling.
#
But this democratization of tech also led to democratization of content.
#
Now that space has become our content hub.
#
Like everything we produce, we show it on our reels.
#
It's being done in this beautiful space.
#
We don't need to like dramatize it at all.
#
It just gets people so excited about Indian sweets again.
#
And we've done small things with regards to tech where we track every piece of ingredient
#
to when that mithai got made.
#
And the idea is the good thing for us is you order and then we make.
#
So you get fresh stuff, right?
#
Like unlike restaurants, when four people come to dine, we have the info of only one
#
person who makes the reservation.
#
Whereas because we are now in the online world, we know what people are liking, what they're
#
I, as a founder, have a crew of 100 people who get first tasting options.
#
So we make whatever gets, they get sent like an FBI packet.
#
There's a type form with a survey form.
#
They give us their feedback.
#
Chef Girish gets a chance to talk to them.
#
Okay, you found it salty.
#
It's a more collaborative process with our those hundred people like you were talking
#
about to take it to the next thousand people, right?
#
One of my dreams is like I, as a kid in Pune, used to think Cadbury's Indian.
#
I just, I just assumed it.
#
I would love to make an Indian sweet chocolate bar that we all just eat at home.
#
So we launched Indy, which is our chocolate bar, which has Patisa in it.
#
And it looks for me really beautiful.
#
And we've just launched it.
#
But now we want to launch like a flat bar.
#
So we had launched a mango flavored one and people liked it.
#
So what we are doing is we've got six flavor combinations that we've tried and we've liked.
#
So we through my Instagram basically put it out there that the same form flavor thing
#
is that's where my joy is.
#
And I want to share it with all of you.
#
Hundred people need to sign up, but you're going to pay for this.
#
You're going to pay for one bar a month, one chocolate bar, which will have Indian mithai
#
in it to be delivered to you.
#
You have to give us feedback, right?
#
At the end of the six bars, we'll do a zoom call with all of you.
#
It's not mandatory where chef Girish is going to ask you why, what, so that it's more collaborative
#
And as we will get, please see who's Pritha, who's super inspirational to do a fun workshop
#
with you on how to design a chocolate wrapper.
#
Like imagine who we would have never done this two years ago.
#
Like being able to share our things with the guests through zoom.
#
Are your hundred slots filled up?
#
We'll make a hundred in the first.
#
So, and then like a fun thing where we get to design that banner with them.
#
Now Cadbury can't do that.
#
I hope they're not listening.
#
So big companies will never do that.
#
You'll only be disrupted from below.
#
We've just sent out the first chocolate bars.
#
Everyone's given us feedback already.
#
And it's, we tell them also the packaging coming to them is a normal brown box right
#
And it's such a fun journey to be on because like I'm also being honest to them to say
#
you are some of it is going to come melted to you because we've not worked on the R&D
#
We need to get that form flavor right.
#
And let's see what ends up at the end of six months.
#
The funny part, what we find ourselves talking about now is like you have to do inherently
#
unscalable things to figure out where you're going.
#
If you only do things for scale, you have, you will never get the love right for it.
#
You will never get the product right.
#
You will never get the thought right because you were always building to distribute it
#
to a thousand different places.
#
If you hear any of the stories of the brands we love, they all started somewhere, but over
#
a period of time, those stories have been forgotten.
#
And that's, and I think that's an important reminder to us as I think what Yash was just
#
referencing to is like we are realizing the importance of community and building anything.
#
And I think that really brings us to where we want to go next in hopefully what would
#
be the third stage of hopefully a long journey is where Anthocartlet becomes an important
#
Like where at one level we've got the restaurants, we've now got Bombay Sweet Shop, which is
#
But also now we need to tell stories in a way that it makes people fall in love with
#
That's the only thing that we want to do.
#
We don't want to like, this is not like a branded community, which is here to like sell
#
you things, because the reality is people today are see through that stuff in two seconds.
#
As in you've been running a content based business for a while.
#
If you were going to peg brands left, right and center, listeners would see through it.
#
I think the moment you're cynical, people become cynical of you.
#
And I think this is going to be a whole different journey, which we've been fortunate enough
#
to have an amazing team sort of come on board in the last year on all fronts.
#
And it's been truly a process of rebuilding in the last year, year and a half.
#
And we're finally super excited about where it's going.
#
I think it took us a while to get there emotionally, but like actually super excited about all
#
the things falling in place currently.
#
And I'm sure there'll be more and more issues that will drop like hot potatoes on us, but
#
So yeah, long story to a short question.
#
No, I think that's a beautiful insight about how the moment you try to scale, you lose
#
So it's, it's just, you know, scale, thinking of scaling can be dangerous.
#
And what I love about the sort of work you guys do or anybody who kind of moves away
#
from the beaten path is that what you do is not just valuable for the doing of it, but
#
also that it gives others the permission to think beyond the boundaries.
#
You are in a sense, shifting the window of possibility for them, you know, by expanding
#
the pallets of certain people, you, you know, you, you also give someone else a chance to
#
come and take that a little bit further.
#
And that leads me to this thought.
#
I did a recent episode on cinema, perhaps the most joyous episode I've recorded with
#
J. Arjun Singh and Subrata Mohanty.
#
And one of the points Subrata made about the Hindi film music of the fifties and sixties
#
and early seventies is that in his view, it was a golden era and it was a golden era that
#
happened because of a confluence, a lucky confluence of talented people who thought
#
the same way about their work.
#
So you had the music directors, you had the composers, you had the lyricists, you know,
#
the whole shebang, everything kind of just came together and then it kind of went away.
#
And I asked him why it went away and it's partly, I guess, circumstances or whatever,
#
because I was a little baffled by it.
#
If it worked so well, if it was so successful, it would have given rise to more people like
#
them and all of that, but that didn't really happen.
#
A bunch of really talented people lived, they worked together for a while.
#
It was a beautiful melding of talents and then it was gone.
#
And when I think of, for example, what you've described of your journey so far, the key
#
element in it really seems to be people, you know, having people who share the same ethic,
#
who share the same whatever.
#
And Floyd really seems to be a driving force in this.
#
So can you talk a bit about him, you know, and what is left of that as well in all of
#
I think there's so many sort of, in my mind, when I think of Floyd now is you're left with
#
so many memories and so many sort of roles that he played.
#
He started off as the guy who interviewed me, so this sort of larger than life figure,
#
I would say who interviewed me to being my boss, to being the guy who would call me every
#
time his iPad wouldn't work, to then becoming a mentor and guiding us through this journey
#
of opening our first restaurant, to then becoming a father figure in our lives at large about
#
just, we lived a decade together and I think we lived and I'm really glad that we got to
#
spend that time together.
#
So I think at various stages, he's played different roles in the most beautiful possible
#
And I think that really sort of roots us today.
#
I think a lot of what we are trying to do is in our work is sort of take forward the
#
things he stood for in his legacy, so to speak.
#
So for instance, we now run what we call the Floyd Cardo scholarship with Manipal University,
#
where we try to get one student from an underprivileged background to go through their beautiful culinary
#
I think it's one of the best programs right now in the country.
#
And I think we're starting in small ways to sort of bring his legacy forward.
#
We hopefully have some other exciting projects that come on board in the next few months,
#
which again, sort of celebrate him.
#
And I think that the change for me has been like to go from mourning him in a way to celebrating
#
him in every way, because I think he was equally mischievous.
#
Like he would play pranks all the time to being this obviously very serious thinker
#
about where food in India and Indian food and technique and how do you teach and mentor.
#
Like there's a whole spectrum that needs to be celebrated.
#
And I think that's the beauty of it.
#
And we hope we're able to do justice to it as the years go by.
#
I think for us, Floyd will always be a very, very strong sort of influence in our lives.
#
Yeah, as in we have so many stories, I feel like, and we always make it a point also to
#
our, we call it a founders meet on whichever employees join, if it may be the restaurant
#
in the first 30 days, they have to sit with us and we walk them through what we call our
#
And we, we talk about our values by saying these are not poster values.
#
We don't have beautiful corridors where there's a poster with someone standing with their
#
hands, you know, like namaste, saying respect below it, you know, like how you go to a bank
#
and but when you go to the bank, tell others zero respect that's given to you.
#
We talk about it through what employees have done in the last eight years to show that.
#
And all of that has come about through Floyd like he had every right to act like a celebrity,
#
He was super humble, like when this was our first trip to New York after he left us.
#
And we still meet restaurateurs who will tell us about how Floyd came to the restaurant
#
and even after did his dinner, maybe spend like an hour and a half telling them about
#
his, where what are some of his failures and how they could learn from it.
#
The fact that he was an open book to like teach always very calm.
#
Me and Sam have fought only once.
#
No, no, that's a whole different story.
#
That's a very drunk story.
#
But yeah, we were fighting in the first week of Bombay Canteen over something he had seen
#
in New York work as a process.
#
And I was fighting him to say the team is too new, we can't handle this right now.
#
We were going at each other in front of the team and he took us aside and just gave us
#
And I think we still remember it and we fought for different things, but we've never really
#
raised our voice after that because we still remember what he said, said to us.
#
So I think those things will continue.
#
I think he basically made a point that you guys can disagree, but like, I think again
#
goes down to signaling, right?
#
Like the perception of the team thinking that you guys are not on the same page should never
#
happen in front of them.
#
And, and obviously argue, but argue with respect and the fact that you have been talking to
#
the team about not raising voices or teaching with respect, but that's not what y'all are
#
It's a very simple thing, but sometimes it's like in the heat of the moment of especially
#
operations it gets to you.
#
But his wife Barkha is carrying forward his legacy with what she we've called Floyd Cardo's
#
She recently spoke at, there's a, I would say the best hospitality conference in New
#
York, it's called Welcome Conference hosted by Will Gutara.
#
And she spoke at it and the courage she showed because it wasn't easy what she went through.
#
So she's with someone we always in touch with and she's carrying forward his legacy as well.
#
And at the end of the day, we just want him to be proud.
#
I know Chef Hussain says it every day to his team as well, that whatever we do, we should
#
always make sure that he's proud of what we do.
#
What I often think about is how, what we do and the people we do it with shapes who we
#
It changes you fundamentally.
#
I would imagine that someone who joins you as a young server and imbibes your values
#
would actually be a different person than had she joined, you know, some standard restaurant
#
which you know serves chicken tikka.
#
How have you changed as people?
#
Because one thing that I imagine an experience of running a restaurant where you're fighting
#
fires all the time would be in terms of teaching your humility.
#
And another way of actually managing people, I think when you manage people, if you learn
#
to do it well, you again have to learn humbleness, learn how to respect everyone and all of that.
#
How has this whole experience changed you as people?
#
Like I would imagine Sam that had you still been a banker, you would have been a different
#
person, not passing a value judgment, good, bad, this, whatever, but just a different
#
So what can you look back on your personal growth through this period and think about
#
how you would have been different as people or how you have been shaped?
#
I first disclaimer is hungering has bad days of even culture.
#
You can't be at 100 percent like I just want to say to all startup founders out there,
#
like we are not 100 percent every day.
#
We have employees, we have servers who come in and just didn't get the right treatment
#
But I tell my leaders and tell the team today was a bad day tomorrow.
#
You need to walk in knowing that we'll give 100 percent tomorrow.
#
And in India, culture gets gets very mistaken with morale, right?
#
People think culture changes overnight.
#
The morale changes overnight.
#
And the last two years were hard.
#
So as a person, I feel year one when Floyd, like for me, hospitality was the thing that
#
he imbibed because he worked with Danny Myers for so long.
#
He brought it into the thing was very new for me because I had worked with hotel restaurants
#
And I used to always say me and he always used to say, you have to say we, we are in
#
So the first year, like I drank the Kool-Aid fully and we are like in there in the trenches
#
doing this, doing it the right way.
#
But I used to get really angry when an employee used to leave us and we used to be like, we
#
Like, you know, I have been where they were 10 years ago serving a table and I know we
#
are giving them the best treatment, we are paying them well.
#
Why are people leaving us or even now?
#
My difference being is you need to keep giving the right culture and be less cynical about
#
the result of it, right?
#
You keep investing in that culture, but you will still have employees who are not going
#
to be happy with what they see and feel at work and they are going to leave.
#
And at that moment, you're like, why am I still investing in this culture, mentally,
#
physically, financially?
#
But give up that and go back to keep doing it because people keep leaving.
#
One thing like I have learned is if someone works with us for two years, I'm really grateful.
#
Like we've got, we've obviously COVID destroyed our great retention numbers, like it completely
#
But now I'm like, if anyone gives me two years, I'm fine.
#
But I tell them, please take a step up in your next place, go to a better organization,
#
see what will, what leader you will work under there.
#
Don't look at just the organization because it's happened to me, like when I gave my first
#
campus interview, the HR director of the hotel was the nicest genuine person.
#
But the leader I was reporting to was not a nice person at all.
#
So there was a couple of things, like for me, I've, I feel like I used to be very hotheaded.
#
I've become less hotheaded now.
#
Your mom calls him the angry young man for a reason.
#
Angry not so young man now.
#
But I've been able to channel my emotions much better.
#
You can't even remember what she cooked for you.
#
I mean, yeah, she should be angry.
#
I feel it was jelly custard, like it was a version of it.
#
I don't know if that answers the question, but I've become less cynical about that part
#
Not saying I'm zero, but...
#
For me, I think it's been a, it used to hurt a lot when people used to criticize or like,
#
like, again, I feel in India, you're not really taught how to give feedback or receive feedback
#
in a very healthy manner.
#
And you realize that very quickly that going through, especially running restaurants in
#
India, someone has an opinion every day.
#
Like if you decide to start like taking everything to heart, you're done for.
#
You will be in a sort of emotional wasteland for a long time.
#
I remember the debates we had when we got our first negative review and like it would,
#
because you've put your heart and soul into it, like it matters.
#
And not to say that it doesn't matter, like, I think we now tell ourselves about how look
#
for the trend within what people are saying versus what people are saying.
#
I think we react to it less emotionally and react to it more from a data point of view
#
versus like just taking it like, who the fuck are you to talk about this, right?
#
And I think for me, like, I think it's also been a personal journey to figure that out
#
also because like I'm someone who like, I realized this about myself, like I like people
#
Like, and you can't please everyone and you just have to be comfortable in your shoes
#
that not everyone's going to like you and so be it, like move on.
#
You need to be doing what you need to do and they need to be doing what they need to do.
#
I didn't know that about you, that you like to be liked.
#
And I know nothing about you.
#
Yeah, and I had to give you two things you don't know, right?
#
I think we should do this as a weekly podcast, I feel like.
#
Like COVID obviously hit the restaurant business very, very, very hard, right?
#
How did you manage to kind of stay afloat?
#
And did it sort of, I won't say expand your horizons, that's unfair, but in what new ways
#
Did you find yourself thinking because of COVID?
#
Like Yash, you already spoke about understanding the technology and getting a little deeper
#
into that, figuring that part of it out, but just in general thinking about what you want
#
to do with your lives, what makes you happy.
#
And earlier, a lot of that would have had the physical component of running a successful
#
And here for almost a couple of years, that game is kind of shut down for the moment.
#
So what are you going through?
#
I think again, like losing Floyd played such an emphatic role in the way COVID hit us.
#
I think so many people lost, so many near-India ones, and I think we went through the same
#
So I think the first, I would say the first lockdown was just spent operating out of fear.
#
Like you'd already gone through the worst of losing someone who was so close to you,
#
and then you potentially had everything on the line you've built.
#
You had no clarity in terms of whether what will come about.
#
We went through one of the most stringent lockdowns that ever were, and we were going
#
We opened for delivery, we put some things in a box, we did the best we could at that
#
point in terms of like delivering it, tried to add our sort of thoughts to it.
#
And I think there was a point for me personally, where I think a few months in, it just came
#
to me like we need to stop operating out of fear, and we kind of spoke about this.
#
And we were having this conversation quite actively when the Delta wave hit us.
#
And I remember we came together, eight, nine of us who were the leadership team, like we
#
got together in my home, I still remember, and we said, guys, this time let's play it
#
by our own, on our own terms.
#
What we love to do is to create.
#
That's what gives us, we spoke about this earlier also, like it's the creative instinct
#
that like brings the joy.
#
And we were like, we need to make some money to survive.
#
So every restaurant, every place that we have will operate two brands, the original one
#
And that led to like a series of ideas being thrown out.
#
We ended up with multiple delivery ideas from King Fu Canteen, which was Indian Chinese,
#
to Sandwich Shack, which was Comfort Sandwiches, to Pita Shack, which was a Mediterranean place,
#
to Brunan Babka, which was an online sort of bake house, Thai, there was same, same,
#
but different, which was a Thai, like within like four months, we created five different
#
Do a Keto Shack also next time.
#
We actually had like Keto versions of like lettuce wrapped and, and, but that, you know,
#
I don't think it made, it gave us survival money for sure, but like it more, more than
#
that to what Yash was referring to, it boosted morale at that point in a way that I don't
#
think any, like us having a conversation with the team is not going to do it.
#
Like everyone's in the same boat at that point.
#
And there was some very hard decisions, which I hope no entrepreneur ever has to make.
#
And we'd never go back to that time.
#
You had to let people go.
#
And then that and more, right?
#
Like I think there were tough decisions along every step of the way.
#
And I think that really was the tipping point for us where coming out of the second wave
#
is when we were also, and we were very fortunate, I will say this, our family supported us,
#
our investors supported us, all our partners, our landlords supported us, like we wouldn't
#
be here if, but for this, there is no way that by no stretch of imagination, am I saying
#
like there was some stroke of genius that led us here.
#
It took the village again.
#
So like in my point quickly, like I still remember the first, we didn't get time to,
#
so Floyd passed away, restaurants, we actually shut our restaurants before the lockdown came
#
in because Sameer was sick, like normal sick.
#
And my girlfriend, Nico, was in Singapore doing this Bombay Canteen pop-up with Chef
#
Thomas end of Feb, maybe.
#
And we used to live in Singapore.
#
So we had a lot of friends and she called me on the second day of the pop-up saying
#
this thing is hit here and Singapore's, this was end of February.
#
Singapore's really coming down straight and they've asked us to leave the country.
#
And I think we should think about what is going to happen in India.
#
And you know, at this point in India, we are like, nothing can stop us, right?
#
Come now we've opened Bombay Sweet Shop, come middle of March, friends who run places in
#
London have already spoken to, and they are like, it's bad.
#
You need to start figuring out what's going on.
#
And that sense of like not feeling safe enough started coming in for me personally.
#
And I decided that we're going to shut all three places and just imagine like you're
#
standing doing this town hall, telling your teams that they had never heard of this.
#
So we also showed a presentation on what I had got someone from London to send us, like
#
wash your hands, do X, Y, Z, y'all are going to get paid.
#
And I remember telling them, we'll be back in a month.
#
That was the best information you had at that point.
#
Like we made that decision, a very gut decision and helped because they all went home home.
#
They didn't get stuck in the city.
#
So they weren't stuck in Bombay.
#
So because I think three or five days later, the city got shut.
#
Luckily, all team members who weren't from Bombay had left.
#
Then obviously the end of the month, Chef Floyd passed away and that sent us down a
#
But I remember April, we were like, we have to get out of this.
#
It used to be me, Sameer, Chef Thomas, Chef Hussain, Chef Girish, Veda who's now running
#
And couple of like, I know who our team members also were and we were 11 of us, delivery operations,
#
We go in, Veda is running the pass, looking after for Swiggy, Zavato, making people line
#
Sameer and me have made an Amazon kind of warehouse in the, we've removed all the tables
#
I remember one of the front of our guys, we've literally made an Amazon warehouse in the
#
front, small menu, Hussain, Thomas, a little bit of kitchen, Girish, who's the head chef
#
of, I owe them so much of Bombay Sweet Shop.
#
He's the dishwasher guy with another, with Burhan from Dishwash, both handling that.
#
That's all we started on.
#
And just like, it felt unsafe, honestly, coming into work because also you were driving on
#
the roads like empty, you had that stupid pass on your car.
#
But every day just went past, I was lucky to go home to Nico and an amazing dog.
#
I think that my, that close circle of this team and Nico and Tux like just made me realize
#
that we, we have everything we need right now.
#
And we just kept doing that.
#
Just kept the first lockdown, we just like, just keep it simple, keep it like Chef Hina
#
used to make cakes at a house, Shannon used to go with a car, pick up the cakes, bring
#
it to the restaurant, we used to sell the cakes by delivery.
#
So we, we were like, we have to survive, there's no choice guys, we are going to make the survive.
#
And that's what we did.
#
I feel like that hustle that our team has is what sets us apart and the support we got
#
from everyone around us, like even our regular guests who I don't think should be ordering
#
with from us three times a week, but they were, they knew they had to contribute and
#
it's all thanks to landlords, like landlords were really nice to us.
#
If you delivered to Andheri and I knew about your wheel, I'd order it three times a day.
#
So does Tux get better food than other dogs?
#
Yes, but not from the restaurants, we make it at home.
#
He does get, he actually eats better food than I do, if I tell you his diet right now.
#
So right now he's on beef, like ground beef that is sauteed, he's on French greens, he's
#
on tori, he's on red snapper, it's like a cucumber and zucchini, that's a good diet
#
for a keto friendly diet.
#
That dog has more like privilege than anyone else.
#
Yeah, if you ever need a second dog, I can dress up in bark, and you know, just saying
#
bark reminded me of the best desert in the world basically.
#
So Enthu Cutlet, you know, so tell me a bit more about that.
#
You know, when you, when you came home for lunch a couple of months back, you told me
#
I think you should challenge him to tell you in one sentence, which is not more than six
#
This is the scene in the unseen.
#
We don't do one sentence.
#
No, no, take an hour as long as you want, but tell me everything.
#
No, I think as I was explaining to you earlier, like I think it's been a culmination of the
#
things we've done, which has led us to this point and this realization of the importance
#
of something that is Enthu Cutlet now.
#
Hopefully we are able to sort of see the light of day on it very soon, but the idea really
#
behind it was like just the way the restaurants were also, while they were rooted in a concept,
#
they were also the kind of restaurants we wanted to go to.
#
This is a symptomatic of like the kind of stories I want to read, Yash wants to read,
#
the team wants to read and be a combination of like, it should be fun.
#
It should be things that are off beat, things which you don't just find with a Google search.
#
That's the hope and dream.
#
And we are constantly striving towards that.
#
But there is, like we were talking earlier, there is no sort of playbook to this yet.
#
Only when we start doing it is when we are going to start figuring it out.
#
In fact, we spent a couple of hours this morning debating vociferously, like what is the sort
#
How will we distribute it?
#
How will we do all of those?
#
And I think all of us bring very diverse points of view and I can see Yash already sort of
#
For me, Enthu Cutlet will hopefully be like the Gully Boy of Indian food and India stories.
#
The reason I say Gully Boy is because Gully Boy is that one Hindi movie that all of us
#
around this table watched and enjoyed.
#
Like you know, my parents loved the old and also loved these new ones, which are like
#
But like I really respected Gully Boy for the way they showed what they did, right?
#
So for me, like Enthu Cutlet should be something that's going to be like opinionated, informative,
#
but like unusual food stories and we need to start small, like so we feel like we can
#
give you like a Netflix style binge where we'll just drop like, I don't know, six to
#
eight stories at a time that will come out bimonthly for you.
#
Yeah, so it's text and visuals to start with.
#
And the whole idea is that it's rooted in a season.
#
And the season to begin with is say curiosity and curiosity around food and like we've spoken
#
to people who beautifully contributed around their curiosities around food.
#
And we are playing around with other ideas where every every two months the season changes
#
and as the season changes, hopefully the conversation changes so that yes, it's still talking about
#
like what I was what we've been talking I think through the show is like where our food
#
has come from, but also hopefully where it can go.
#
And I think to Yash's points, like it should be opinionated, it should be argumentative,
#
but it should also be a fresh take on stuff.
#
It hopefully should be fun and that will be sort of the like, the culmination of I think
#
a lot of things we anyway do at the restaurant, but taking it into different spaces than we
#
are used to and but do it in a way that like, it makes someone think to your point, like
#
again, we're not thinking about scale, like this is not like 100,000 subscribers, like
#
if I can get 1000 people to read it, great.
#
And we'll take it from there.
#
Like there is no like grand like unified theory around this like hopefully builds in steps
#
as we are doing it more ideas will come or people will join the community that we're
#
trying to build and then it goes from there.
#
Like in my world when we had written a long time back and we didn't we didn't have an
#
into cutlet, even this idea of what this thing is, we had started writing a document which
#
we used to call hungering digital. And I think those were some of the good things that we
#
picked up during lockdown was putting our thoughts down on a piece of paper and then
#
making it like a runway for six months.
#
So we put down this document for hungering digital, where everyone in India right now
#
is talking about community.
#
And I just don't like other than watching community the show and laughing.
#
I just don't know how to define it.
#
So I had said this and I typed it out to say the best thing about Bombay Canteen is when
#
you come to Bombay Canteen as a family or as a friend, you're all sitting around a table
#
and there's food on the table.
#
But what is more engaging is the environment that we've created within those four walls
#
for all of you to exchange stories, right?
#
Like dinner or lunch is yes, it's about the food, but that atmosphere where you've tasted
#
something and you start telling a story, then he starts telling a story.
#
So we felt that we've created that environment within the four walls of Bombay Canteen.
#
And we're really proud of that.
#
But how do you do that when you remove the four walls and like taking it to an online
#
And that's what the hope in Thukatlet becomes is where all of us share unusual food stories,
#
but they are research like the food at Bombay Canteen, there is opinion that the chef has.
#
There's research from a region that's gone into it.
#
And that's what we want to do.
#
But it won't have anything to do with our restaurants, with what we do.
#
It's just something that I feel Sam has been wanting to do for the longest time.
#
And like if through this podcast, you would realize he himself is like an Thukatlet about
#
food because he's like born in it.
#
I feel it's for those Thukatlets to come there and like Thukatlets unite.
#
Mature Thukatlet is what it kind of seems like you've, you know, been seasoned by life
#
You know, that's a bit as in as a 40 year old, they've definitely been seasoned quite
#
I'll link it to Thukatlet from the show notes.
#
You know, I'll just tell my listeners we are recording this near the end of September
#
and but the episode will release when Thukatlet releases basically will kind of time it for
#
the same time, because I'm really looking forward to it and to seeing, you know, one
#
of the best part of what I feel is like, again, conversations such as ours, which I don't
#
think would have happened in the absence of us doing this.
#
And I think that's the beauty of it.
#
Like, and are you from the world of food?
#
But like there are strong memories you have, there are strong opinions you have.
#
And they I think food is a device to have conversations about many things that are happening
#
around us, whether it's politics, whether it is culture, whether it is lifestyle at
#
Like that is the beauty of food.
#
Like it is the center of the world in a way.
#
And so many people associate with it.
#
I think one of the most exciting things for me is like the conversations we are having
#
as a team with people right now and seeing the possibilities right now, we are imagining
#
the possibilities and hopefully in the next few months, we actually see those possibilities
#
Yeah, and what kind of struck me even when you sort of reached out in the cold and said,
#
I want to share an idea with you.
#
What struck me there was the openness and the humility to, you know, instead of kind
#
of sitting back and saying that, hey, we've nailed it, we've made these cult restaurants,
#
we've got this great sweet company happening to actually talk to people and try and figure
#
shit out and just have that sort of hunger to do something new is something I love.
#
Some final questions, really two final questions for each of you or for both of you, which
#
is that what advice would you have to give to young entrepreneurs from your experience?
#
Because you've kind of, you've seen the ups, you've seen the downs, you've, you've been
#
disruptors, you've tried to do something no one has done before, you know, what advice
#
I think I already said it, don't try and do it alone.
#
And don't try to scale.
#
And then I don't think don't try to scale it, I think scale where it fits the context.
#
Scale for the sake of scale is wrong.
#
Like I think we've understood that the restaurants in itself are difficult to scale because of
#
the kind of restaurants we built.
#
But Bombay Sweet Shop deserves the scale.
#
Because of again, it is of what it is being built.
#
Think about it, like Mithai was always meant to be enjoyed at home.
#
So if I can distribute it and think of ways to make it interesting and fun to be enjoyed
#
We have to give it its due.
#
So I think that would definitely, I think understanding the context in which you're talking about
#
Yeah, and I've, I've, you know, I keep raving about the barks, but I've tried a bunch of
#
I think our good friend Roshan Abbas, who's joining us for drinks in a little while, he'd,
#
you know, gifted me a hamper of your stuff and they're all brilliant.
#
And I hope they kind of become ubiquitous till people forget ki barks pehle kahan hua
#
I feel any entrepreneur, I would say people, invest in people and enjoy the grind because
#
Might as well accept it.
#
So final question, almost a predictable one, if you've heard my show, which is, you know,
#
I'd like you to recommend to me and my listeners books that mean a lot to you, but could also
#
be films, could also be music and even the books need not be about food, but they can
#
So, you know, whatever means the most to you through your life and which you'd love to
#
So I think we've spoken about setting the table, obviously, because of just the nature
#
in which it changed our thought process when it comes to the world we inhabit.
#
And I think it's applicable to many, many sort of other areas.
#
For me, the other book which I love is one called Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull, who
#
was one of the founders of Pixar.
#
And I think what struck me, I think I read it one or two years after Bombay Canteen opened
#
and it like, like the parallels between the world of film, theatre and food is just, it's
#
obvious once you get into it.
#
But like, really, the thought there was like, how do you scale creative thought?
#
And that's what I took away from it, like, how do you build an organization which supports
#
How do you not lose your soul?
#
If you think of Pixar, like, there's so much love created over such a long period of time,
#
And it's because like it was built for that, in a way, and like getting a peek into that
#
thinking was amazing for me.
#
For me, the book, you'll remember the name, the book by the founder of Zappos.
#
Delivering happiness is just every founder needs to, because it talks a lot about just
#
And I feel you might be starting a SaaS company or you're starting the next OYO or you're
#
It has to be the basis of everything you do.
#
Then the second one I feel specifically for Indian entrepreneurs is because I feel we've
#
never been trained to be extroverted and present our ideas.
#
We have a dream in our head and we make the worst PowerPoints in the world, I feel, the
#
There's a book called How to Talk Like Ted.
#
It's basically ex Ted speakers who've put in very simple things.
#
It's a really nice book with examples and you can go to YouTube links and see it.
#
It's helped me personally a lot.
#
Like whenever I present an idea to Sam also, I put it on a simple white presentation and
#
present it because it some things in your brain, you need to be able to put it out in
#
And is there a great idea from you that Sam hasn't responded well to?
#
I wanted to start a Ladoo concept called Ladoo Ray.
#
There you go, it's out there in the world, it's going to happen now.
#
Yeah and I've seen an Instagram idea of yours that was a prank which was coffee barks called
#
Yes, Namitha wasn't too happy with that, yeah, my mark, that was a prank on her, yeah, yeah,
#
she's still rolling her eyes at me.
#
No, to be fair, to talk about clarity of ideas, I think at that time both of us along with
#
another colleague of ours, we did your writing course and I think it was just a great way
#
to sort of again, are we both going to ever write anything?
#
Meaningful, probably not, but I think the principles behind it which was super important,
#
the clarity of thought, thinking of who's reading, the thinking around, I think it's
#
that principles of the thinking which was really amazing and which is what is driving
#
a lot of what we are doing right now, like what is behavior, who are we talking to, maybe
#
it's through a restaurant, maybe it's through the written medium of Entu Cutlet, maybe it's
#
through the neck, it's funny as I'm thinking, I'm remembering we used to have a chikki which
#
used to be called everything chikki because we...
#
So basically when you go to a mithai shop, the sweet and the savory, farsan, kachori
#
and stuff, chakli, wafer, so we took all that with jaggery and made it into a chikki because...
#
I think I've had it if I'm doing, yeah, yeah, it's fabulous.
#
So we used to call it everything chikki because it's everything in the store and we like,
#
I love it because it's like, like chakpataness in it and it never really took off.
#
So we like through a competition sent it out to people and said, you name it for us and
#
everyone came out with Bombay Bhel Chikki, which is actually such a nice, simple answer.
#
We should have thought of it before, but people told.
#
So for Diwali, like we are today sitting in September, we have sold out of it.
#
It's the first product to already get sold out for Diwali and we are like a good month
#
You haven't sold out of bucks.
#
Like that should be perennially sold out.
#
What is wrong with people?
#
They're not eating them fast enough.
#
There should be a resale market for that damn thing, like black market of bucks.
#
So Yash and Sameer, thanks so much for coming on the show.
#
This was such a fun conversation.
#
Thank you so much for having us.
#
If you enjoyed listening to this episode, check out the show notes, enter rabbit holes
#
Sameer and Yash's social media handles are there.
#
You can follow Sameer on Twitter at Canteen Sam, though he doesn't seem to be too active
#
and you can follow Yash on both Twitter and Instagram at YashWeCan.
#
I don't have such a great handle.
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You can follow me on Twitter at Amit Verma, A-M-I-T-V-A-R-M-A.
#
You can browse past episodes of The Scene and the Unseen at sceneunseen.in.
#
Thank you for listening.
#
Did you enjoy this episode of The Scene and the Unseen?
#
If so, would you like to support the production of the show?
#
You can go over to sceneunseen.in slash support and contribute any amount you like to keep
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