In 1990, I opened my first restaurant, Chor Bizarre, at the old art deco hotel, Broadway, owned by my family. It was India’s first themed restaurant and became an instant success. Thereafter, many more innovative concepts followed when we set up Habitat World at India Habitat Centre, viz. The All American Diner, Delhi ‘O’ Delhi, Past Times, Oriental Octopus, and Eatopia. We opened Chor Bizarre in London and in other cities too.
Founder Chairman, EHV International / O.W.H.
In 2008, we leased The Manor Hotel, and I thought I would open a modern Indian restaurant – a concept that I had always wanted to create when I saw a couple of restaurants presenting pre-plated Indian cuisine in London. This was quite different from what we were doing at Chor Bizarre or Delhi ‘O’ Delhi.
I had a fair idea of what I wanted the cuisine to be, though I wasn’t quite sure of what shape or direction the brand would take. I was clear that Indian Accent would serve modern dishes that could be on a plate anywhere in the world without compromising their intrinsic Indian flavour. At that time, experimenting with Indian food was novel, and nobody was quite sure how receptive diners in India would be to such dishes.
Our pan-Asian chef, Manish Mehrotra, requested that I let him lead the kitchen for this restaurant, and we embarked on this adventure of trying to create a new sort of vocabulary for Indian food. I already had the name in mind (Indian Accent) and decided that while we could use various accents from overseas, including imported ingredients, the flavours should be intrinsically Indian.
In March 2009, Indian Accent opened at The Manor, a quiet, upscale, residential-style boutique hotel at the edge of the city. It was not an easy location to pull diners to, but the sense of approach and the clean, understated bungalow setting helped set the brand apart from more typical destinations at five-star hotels and malls. I had brought Charles Metcalfe from London to pair wines with the food – another first in India. To be honest, nobody really ‘got’ it, and for the first year, we were sitting vacant – a total flop. Manish handed over his resignation saying, “We have failed,” but I told him to just hang on because the handful of people who were coming in daily were most discerning and all extremely complimentary about the cuisine. It was bizarre how long it was before word of mouth took over. By the end of 2010, Indian Accent had become the hottest table to snag in the country and Manish was deservedly on his way to being recognized as one of India’s greatest chefs.
So, my first lesson was to be patient and to persevere and believe in one’s own conviction, or else we may have actually closed our doors, writing it off as a “failed experiment.” The second lesson I learnt was to follow a concept through completely. The entire team, the training program, everything was totally different from what Old World Hospitality had been doing so far.
The food was going to do the talking, and since it had so much to say, everything else would need to quieten down a bit around it. That was a more important underpinning for the brand than we realised. Over the long run, it helped us maintain our focus as a cuisine-led destination. Shorn of too much flash, it also helped diners trust this newer approach to Indian food. While the restaurants today, Indian Accent in New Delhi, Mumbai, and New York are chef and cuisine-led, the understated interior design also echoes in the graphics and even the tone of voice on social media.
Learning from how some of the greatest restaurants are chef-led, Chef Manish was brought center stage as the face and the voice of the restaurant. Whilst in the old days, Taj had given a great deal of importance to chefs like SubhashArora, ArvindSaraswat, and even AnandaSoloman and, of course, ImtiazQureshi’s luxurious moustache adorned many an advertisement for Dum Pukht, it was the first time when a restaurant had actually made the chef the full-on brand ambassador.
So, the third lesson was that if you are going into fine dining, then learn from what other chef-led restaurants have done. It did not hurt also that I was naturally reticent and would rather have the press chat with Manish on a daily basis, leaving me to do my own work.
My wife Rashmi, our design director, designed the first Indian Accent at The Manor, New Delhi, and thereafter, even when we moved from The Manor to The Lodhi, she maintained a tight grip on the look and feel. We hired outside architects and designers for Indian Accent New York and Mumbai, but some of the elements remained the same to give it a continuity. The aim was to have a classic design that could have longevity.
In 2017, due to the absurd law denying a liquor license to restaurants less than 500 meters from the highway, we had to look for another abode, and The Lodhi very warmly welcomed us into what is our fabulous home now. The next lesson I learnt was that when you have a restaurant as successful as Indian Accent, you need to give it the scale that it demands, which is what our space at The Lodhi does, and revenues have quadrupled over the last few years.
The last and final lesson is to not rest on your laurels. Indian Accent keeps on innovating. We have quarterly menu changes based upon seasons and ingredients, and training in the front of the house and back of the house is an ongoing process, with a large battalion of Managers in Training and Chefs in Training being hired every year. Manish had decided to depart at the age of 50, which he did, and we wish him well, but the company’s training program and passing on of learnings have always been an integral part of its DNA. Not only Executive Chef Shantanu Mehrotra but the 2 other Head Chefs as well as the long line of other trained chefs ensure that the recipes remain consistent.
From a restaurant that everybody thought would not work, and actually did not initially, Indian Accent is today considered the pioneering modern Indian restaurant worldwide and has garnered international acclaim for its cutting edge take on Indian cuisine. Indian Accent, New Delhi has been on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list since 2013 and is currently on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list too. It has won several awards, including being voted the No. 1 Restaurant in India by Condé Nast Traveller and by La Liste. A jury comprising of 75 stalwarts of the restaurant industry have voted Indian Accent as the No. 1 Restaurant in India for the last 4 years at the FoodFood Top 50 Restaurant Awards. It has been recognized by Time Magazine as ‘amongst the world’s 100 greatest places’. In 2016 Indian Accent opened a very successful outpost in New York and in 2023 opened its doors at the iconic Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre in Mumbai.
