You could, after all, easily get a great meal delivered, eat it straight from the box in front of the TV, and feel entirely satisfied. You could also go to your old favourite, that restaurant which has stayed consistent, its worn, comfortable furniture witness to your changing appearance and habits and choices, its menu updated, but not enough to throw you off your game.
Or, as Delhi’s aspiring, food loving, middle and upper class crowd is quickly discovering, you could make an event out of a single lunch or dinner – a memory that involves not just your taste buds, but an entire gamut of experiences. While the old favourites continue to attract their patrons, there’s a whole new and exciting list of options to pick from — themed restaurants that offer anything from ambient décor and specially designed menus to live entertainment. These places are opening with increasing frequency, dotting the culinary map of Delhi with the proof of their owners’ imagination and creativity, and the city’s eagerness to try something new and offbeat. Breaking the clutter is the trending catchphrase and fun, original and quirky emerge as the buzzwords in the conversations with the heads behinds these ideas. Till a few years back who would have thought a boutique-studio bar will be called Junglee Billi and that it will focus on feisty women. Or a place can pack your drink in a pouch so that it doesn’t brim over when you shake at the dance floor. It is no longer about all are welcome. The owners are profiling the customers. Known for risky whiskey way of life, these spaces are instilling a cocktail culture in the city at prices which are not prohibitive. They are not about people who need to be bounced out after a few drinks. These are spaces where you can study progress reports and move on to enjoy progressive rock. Not all of them work, but the ones that do quickly make their presence felt, and names like Social, Café Dalal Street, Tabula Beach, Piano Man Jazz Club and Flyp@MTV are bound to come up the next time you want to show guest what Delhi has to offer.
The third stop
Except for MTV, no television channel has been described as a cultural phenomenon. In the mid 90s when it started beaming pop culture in Indian living rooms, purists saw it as a threat for the young and the restless. Many thought soon our children will also be singing “MTV Makes Me Wanna Smoke Crack”. It was not be. It became so Indianised, or Bollywoodised for some, that it began to taste like coffee in a beer mug. As it began to lose its fizz, the brand rejigged itself with Xtreme and Coke Studio, a range as vast as a six course menu. In advertising circles, management graduates often ask people what the brand looks like to them. When “Dam Mast Kalandar” is played with a rock band in Coke Studio, it reminds me of the irreverence of a chef who would make waffles out of dhokla or dosa batter.
Interestingly, it got real as it is one of the recipes that Chef Ranveer Brar has conjured up for Flyp@MTV, the first MTV-themed café in the world which opened in Connaught Place this December. It is Viacom 18’s foray into F&B business with Funbars Hospitality and the tie-up is for 10 cities. It takes some cheek to marry sushi with butter chicken and helping cheesecake find its way in gulab jamun but Brar has shown some real flair in designing the ‘glocal’ menu.
The desi connect travels to cocktails as mixologist Nitin Tiwari offers a cocktail called teri maa ki . Before you take umbrage, Nitin tells us that the watermelon-based mocktail drives its name from the Japanese sauce teriyaki. “As MTV is about fun and quirk, we drew from the fact that watermelon in extremely popular in Japan and we added basil for the Indian touch.” The place has its own herb garden and ice tea gets blended with jasmine and rosemary. The tag line Work, Chill and Play explains the motto of the place and the changing space of food spots in our lives. “We want it to be your third place,” says Neeren Tewari, Director, Funbars Hospitality Pvt. Ltd., “after home and office or college.”
With big names in the music world at its disposal, Flyp offers membership with the facilities of shower and locker. “Often you don’t have time to change to go home and change for the party,” says Neeren promising performances by two top notch artistes every month. The herbs serve well during the work time before the Liftman comes with beer like a cutting chai to declare that it is time to chill. When it comes to play on the dance floor people often find it difficult to hold their drink. “We put the drinks in pouches and store them in the fridge. When you order we put alcohol and serve in few seconds. Cocktails are either shaken or stirred. As James Bond says I want my martini not shaken but stirred. In the next movie he is going to say he wants it flipped,” declares Nitin as he flips one for me. “The pouches are attached with strings which you can put around your neck. There is no need to return to the counter again and again.”
The fun element translates in the talent room where you can audition for MTV or record your prank as a bakra video. Reminding of the photos we used to get clicked in the local fairs, a touch-screen TV has an interactive world map to choose countries and click selfies with the digital background with headgear and dishes of the selected country. MTV Virtual Museum is created for the customer to explore MTV world in the previous years through oculus and controllers. The customer can select and play videos from the channel’s archive.
Neeren, who has experience of running Shiro and Hard Rock Café in the city, wants to profile the patrons to make it a hub for creative people. “It is no longer just about food and drink. We want to engage with people who don’t work out of conventional offices. As you enter you will get to download an app where you will get to know about other people in the café. So if a guitarist is looking for a PR professional, he can send her a friend request. This is how dialogues begin. You can send the other person a drink.” The infographics on screen will show the occupancy inside the outlet – gender and profession-wise.
“We intend to hold impromptu and planned interactive sessions like a workshop on creative writing or during chill time Nitin can call the patrons to the counter to give a sample of five top cocktails that are trending in the world. How many times we can change the colour of the walls. We want to change the ecosystem.”
Designed for her
At a time when the city is increasingly getting insecure for women, when Nida Mahmood says, the idea behind Junglee Billee was to create a very women-friendly space, it sounds reassuring. “The USP of our space is that while being beautiful and out of the box it is a club for women,” says the designer who has conceptualised the design of the boutique-studio-in-bar in Greater Kailash. “The needs of women are paramount for us. How many times a bunch of girl want to go out, party and enjoy themselves but they don’t know how will they get back home. Here you have fun till whatever time and we make sure that you reach home safe.” The décor is inspired with art nouveau movement of 1920s. “It has strong British, French and Portuguese influence which found its way in places like Bombay Velvet in the 1920s,” reflects Nida.
“It is about a bygone era but put together in a very interesting quirky way.”
Nida underlines that it is an original concept, not done anywhere before. “It has hints of pink and florals. The architecture reminds of big living spaces but there is not a single dot that stereotype women. It is for gutsy women and it reflects in the name,” says Nida denying that it emerged from the popular dialogue in Farhan Akhtar’s Don.
The focus on women clientele doesn’t mean men are not welcome. “They are but not the types who ogle at women. We will exercise discretion as we don’t want our female guests to be intimaidated. It reflects in the design itself. It is not an industrial design.” The place offers membership to women and through them their spouses, friends and brothers can join.
As the market swings
Café Dalal Street brings the thrills of bearish and bullish movements of stock market to the table.
Watering holes are no spaces waiting to be filled with your joys and sorrows. They can be part of your everyday life. . Gone are the days when people enjoyed their drinks in a staid atmosphere. Instead now they want to visit a place abuzz with activity or providing entertainment in the form of quality performances and music. One such is the recently launched Café Dalal Street (CDS) in the Capital. Offering a wide variety of drinks in both alcoholic and non-alcoholic categories CDS enthrals its customers with all the thrills of a stock market with one major difference. Here instead of the volatile movement of shares one watches the bullish and bearish pulls on the prices of drinks.
Himanshu Gupta and Vidit Gupta, the two partners of CDS, came across the fluctuating drink price concept while studying in Warwick University, U.K. Liking it they found it to be popular not just in the U.K. the US and Japan but also in Mumbai (Bar Stock Exchange). “We decided to make it our peg and stand out feature since we thought it will go down well with our target group –– in the age group of 25 to 40 ranging from college students, self-employed, entrepreneurs, professionals, those in corporate sector among others. Essentially, those wanting to engage with the restaurant they visit,” says Himashu.
Opening at noon, drinks are offered at a base price fixed by the management. “We open at competitive rates ensuring that irrespective of the brand or variety, it is the cheapest in the area,” says Himanshu. From then on the price of a particular spirit or beverage goes up and down based on the frequency of orders and the time periods within which they are placed, all done automatically by the computer software. Thus more demand jacks up the rates while its inverse makes it come down.
The real action takes place when the market crashes twice a day when the prices touch the maximum fixed by the house. One sees instantaneous and spontaneous cheering and shouting among the customers, with the DJ announcing it and TV screens and tickers flashing it. “The fun really involves you,” says Meenakshi who visits CDS at least once a week with her friends.
“Unlike real exchange, here everybody is happy when the crash happens. I have seen many moving from drinking Black Dog to ordering Black Label,” reveals Himanshu.
Adding to the thrill is the décor of CDS. You see the hand-painted Google map of Connaught Place, the Dalal Street building, bull heads, old telephone instruments, painting depicting the face off between bull and bear, lights in coloured wine bottles suspended from ceiling and the dim lighting.
Aware that a café cannot survive long term without good food, CDS provides multi-cuisine option to its customers. So not only are there signature drinks like Bankrupt appropriately priced Rs.1000 (Jack Daniels silver select, Maraschino, Vemouth rosso and Bombay), Eliminator (mix of orange juice, Red Bull, gin, tequila and vodka), in house Cider (a fruity beer), Virgin Sangria and Thai mojito but also food with a twist. Gol gappas are served with chicken chunks and butter chicken gravy and keema in pie served with matthis.
Happy with the feedback Himashu perceives a change in customers’ profile with more youngsters especially girls not averse to drinking. “Instead of enjoying alcohol at home now people prefer to socialise over drinks,” he remarks and feels in the coming days Connaught Place may well turn out to be Leicester Square of London or Times Square of NY.
All that jazz
The rustic, dark, smoky feel of Piano Man Jazz Club reminds of the prohibition era.
Through no real fault of mine, and a complete accident of birth, I’ve remained sadly clueless about American prohibition era and its underground, speakeasy culture. Even then, I can see, assisted by popular documentation, that Safdarjung Enclave’s Piano Man Jazz Club does bear similarities to the real thing— in a tad heavy handed, but appealing way. An initiative by engineer and self-taught baker, Arjun Sagar Gupta, whose earlier venture was The Piano Man in Vasant Vihar, TPM Jazz Club promises evenings that combine great, curated performances (that do go beyond jazz) and a delicious culinary experience, ensuring all the while that they use an “artists first” approach.
On entering, I notice that there is a rustic, dark, smoky feel to the place, which is quite interesting, considering the lack of any real smoke in the room (the cigarette wielding lot banished in the now familiar fashion to a little glass enclosure on one side of the mezzanine floor). What creates the atmosphere is perhaps the sepia tinted lighting, which softens the edges of the wooden, rustic furniture and lends the place a hazy, almost tipsy air. At this present moment though, a Monday evening, the restaurant is quite sparsely populated. I suppose even prohibition-era loving Delhiites draw a line at Mondays.
I wonder if I call the place cosy. Perhaps it would be better described as compact. The ground floor is set up with a grand piano and a space for the live performances, which wins Piano Man Jazz Club favour from its patrons, with performances by independent and upcoming artists scheduled through the week. The mezzanine floor holds the bar and substantially small chairs and tables as seating, placed along the edge of a narrow wooden railing that gives you the distinct impression of sitting in a theatre balcony. The low ceiling, the exposed walls, the small space that insists you sit in close, almost shoulder rubbing proximity to your neighbour, creates the illusion of something intimate— a shared secret. A breathtakingly lovely chandelier hangs from the ceiling. It's been constructed with shiny, polished trumpets. I find out later that the chandelier has been conceptualised by Gupta himself, and designed by Amith Chhabra, the founder of Livin’ Colors Design.
While there are two more levels to go— a first floor with the bakery that Gupta started, Cake Away, and a second floor fine dining space, the Jazz Club and its wonders are best experienced from where we sit, close to the bars that serve you whiskey sours as you take in the performance below.
The food menu is obviously prohibition inspired, and introduced the concept of “dinner theatre”, with some interesting, tempting options on the list, a combination of light finger food and tapas that sit well with a round of cocktails.
You can choose from a wide range, one that includes sinfully decadent bacon cheeseburger bombs and pulled pork sliders, to the more staid, but still interesting plate of marinated button mushrooms. The drinks menu impresses too, and the ones that come to our table are especially delicious— good, strong concoctions with names that invoke signature drinks from 1920s New York and New Orleans. We don’t get a chance to experience the music, but end up chatting with a few regulars who assure us that they are regulars especially because of the great jazz the club consistently offers. “There is no such other place for jazz lovers in the city, really, and the ambience is great!” they enthuse.
We agree. With the promise of beautiful music, surrounded by brick walls that bear names of legends like Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday and ensconced in the warm, sepia tinted comfort of the place, we do agree.
