Pursuits: Is there a global fine-dining Indian restaurant brand in the making?

We live in an age of global restaurant brands.

No sooner is a restaurant wildly successful – especially in the West – than its owners begin talks with franchisees and collaborators about opening branches in other cities. 

 

   In many ways, the pioneer of this trend was Nobu. Ever since the time when Robert De Niro took Nobu Matsuhisa out of his Los Angeles comfort zone and opened the first Nobu in New York, the brand has become a global phenomenon. The first London Nobu was so successful that new branches began to open up all over the world. Sometimes it has worked (Dubai) and sometimes the venture has been less successful (Cape Town) but Nobu is now the benchmark for the globalisation of restaurant brands.

 

   Parallel to this phenomenon has been the growth of the celebrity chef. The world’s most famous celebrity chefs tend to be French – Alain Ducasse, Joel Robuchon, Daniel Boulud, Pierre Gagnaire, etc. – and they are less interested in replicating individual concepts than in opening restaurants that celebrate their cuisine. Thus, Sketch in London and Pierre in Hong Kong may be different from Pierre Gagnaire’s eponymous Michelin three-star restaurant in Paris but they trade on the basis of Gagnaire’s name.

 

   But now, even the celebrity chefs are keen to open restaurants that may never win three stars but still capitalise on the chef’s reputation. Joel Robuchon began the trend with his L’Atelier restaurants which do not aspire to the standards that won Robuchon his many stars and are more or less faithful reproductions of each other in every city. Daniel Boulud has done the same with his Bar Boulud brand – simple food, same concept and no haute cuisine.

 

   Each day I read about the success of one more global brand. La Petite Maison started out as a local restaurant in Nice and ran successfully to a loyal audience of wealthy customers before Arjun Waney took the concept to London and turned it into a smash. Now, there will be many Maisons all over the world. So it is with Hakkasan. Created on the basis of the vision of one man, Alan Yau, Hakkasan is now a global corporation owned by Arab interests. Zuma which fuses the culinary traditions of Nobu with the glamour of Hakkasan (and is another of Arjun Waney’s enterprises) is now among the hottest global restaurant brands in the world.

 

   All this begs the question: if the restaurant scene is going global then why is Indian food so under-represented?

 

   The Indian hotel chains have tried to run successful restaurants abroad with mixed results. ITC messed up the globalisation of the Bukhara brand despite the mushrooming of Bukharas all over the world more than a decade ago. The Taj ran the extraordinarily bad Raga in New York before throwing in the towel. It made a comeback of sorts with the success of London’s Bombay Brasserie in the 1980s. The Taj hopes to take the Bombay Brasserie brand global but as of now even the London outpost has hit a rough patch.

 

"The first great global brand will be forged outside India, perhaps in London or New York, using a concept that has been accepted by an international clientele."

   Indian chefs have been marginally more successful. Vineet Bhatia must be the best-known Indian chef in the Western world. His flagship restaurant in London, Rasoi, has a Michelin star as does his Geneva outpost. Plus, Vineet is a consultant to restaurants in many countries, including Russia, Mauritius and even India – he has two restaurants in Bombay.

 

   Can more Indian chefs replicate Vineet’s success? My guess is that they can but they face a problem because Indian restaurants are not really chef-led. A chef shines when a cuisine allows him to innovate and create his own dishes or when he fuses different cuisines together. The French chefs have an advantage in that their cuisine allows room for individual innovation. Japanese cuisine is more traditional but such chefs as Nobu Matsuhisa have merged Japanese traditions with Peruvian influences and created a niche for themselves.

 

   On the other hand, cuisines that are traditional and recipe-bound give less scope to chefs. There are very few globally famous Italian chefs though the world is full of Italian restaurants. Ditto for Chinese cuisine. I don’t think there is a town anywhere in the world where there is no Chinese restaurant. And yet, how many Chinese chefs can you name?

 

   There will always be innovators like Vineet Bhatia who will break the mould and win recognition for their Indian cuisine. But they will be the exception rather than the rule. So I doubt if we will see many celebrity Indian chefs emerging globally over the next decade.

 

   That leaves the second route: the creation of a global restaurant brand. At present, the only truly outstanding multi-outlet Indian restaurant brand I can think of that has prospered outside India is the Masala Zone chain which rules in London. I do not dispute that Masala Zone could do for Indian food what the likes of Wagamama did for Oriental food were its owners to decide to expand out of the UK.

 

   But is there a global fine-dining Indian restaurant brand in the making? Once upon a time I would have said that Bukhara would work anywhere in the world. But history and experience have proved me wrong. My guess, therefore, is that any great Indian restaurant brand will have to emerge from outside India and perhaps from the West. This is the pattern that other restaurants have followed. Nobu started in New York and Zuma in London. Neither took shape in Japan. Hakkasan was a London phenomenon and is still unheard of in China. The same thing will happen with Indian restaurants. The first great global brand will be forged outside India, perhaps in London or New York, using a concept that has been accepted by an international clientele.

 

   Which one will it be? I think there are two or three contenders. But let’s wait and see. I’m certainly not revealing any names at this stage.