Rohit Khattar is back!

Suppose you run a successful restaurant. Not only is it profitable, but it is regularly hailed as India’s best restaurant.

It wins every award that matters. Culinary Culture gives it the top rating of five stars. The chef is rated as India’s best. The foreign media call it the leader of a new generation of Indian restaurants.

 

What do you do next? Do you sit back and let the acclaim wash all over you?

 

   Or do you try and open outposts of the restaurant in other cities? Or do you seek new challenges, perhaps outside the restaurant business?

 

   These, I imagine, are the questions that Rohit Khattar has been asking himself over the last decade. As most foodies already know, Khattar is a born restaurateur. (Chor Bizarre; India Habitat Centre and its influential restaurants; Sitaray and Tamarai in London etc.) Two decades ago, he signed up to manage The Manor in Delhi and wondered what to do with the dining room which had, until then, been considered a jinxed space because of the number of chefs and concepts that had failed there.

 

   He decided to take a chance on a chef who had worked for him in Delhi and London. The chef was Manish Mehrotra, whose experience, until then, had been in pan-Asian kitchens. They opened Indian Accent, and after about a year of struggle, they beat the jinx. Not only did Indian Accent become famous and successful, but it also created a new kind of modern Indian cuisine, which has been widely imitated around the world.

 

   When Indian Accent took off, I wondered what Rohit would do next. I thought he would open an Indian Accent in London (because he already ran successful restaurants there) and eventually, I was proven right. But before that, he opened in New York to great acclaim, and when he did open in London, it was only, I suspect, because rents went up on the street where his Chor Bizarre was located and he needed to open a more upmarket restaurant with higher prices to pay the landlord. Indian Accent won rave reviews from London critics until it ultimately became a victim of the Covid pandemic.

 

   But Rohit did very little in India. There was Comorin, a larger, casual place that is still the best restaurant in Gurugram. (That’s a fairly low bar, but it really is an outstanding restaurant.) But there wasn’t much else.

 

   Instead, Rohit partnered with his old friend Anand Mahindra (a major shareholder in Indian Accent) to make art films. He spent many years in the movie business, and though he denied it at the time, I felt that the restaurant business no longer captivated him as much as it once had.

 

   Then suddenly, Rohit came back to restaurants with a new vigour. In the years when he had been making movies, the restaurant scene in India had changed. Indian Accent was certainly the best restaurant in India, but there were many rivals baying at its heels, buying themselves awards and places on global lists.

 

"We forget now that one of Rohit’s great successes in the pre-Indian-Accent era was Delhi’s The All American Diner."

   Rohit decided he would create new concepts and new restaurants. He opened the highly regarded Hosa in Goa, which did modern South Indian food (though he flinches when people call it South Indian Accent). He tied up with David Thompson, the legendary Australian chef who introduced Thai food to the world, to open a series of Fireback restaurants all over India. An Indian Accent outpost caused a stir in Mumbai.

 

   But Rohit was not done. Last month, he opened Comorin, Fireback and Drift in Mumbai. There will be at least three restaurants in Hyderabad this winter. And Bengaluru is next.

 

   So what changed? How did the guy who opened India’s best restaurant wander into films and then suddenly return, all guns blazing, to create a second empire?

 

   Rohit is not particularly forthcoming on the subject, but having known him for 30 years, my guess is that because he has always been passionate about films, he needed to get that out of his system. He has no regrets, he insists, about letting his focus shift from restaurants. But equally, he is unable (unwilling, perhaps) to explain why, at 62, he is working so hard to build a new restaurant empire when the old one is still doing well. (It’s not money; he has never been motivated by financial considerations.)

 

   He says that, at the height of Indian Accent’s early success, when its tables heaved with investment bankers and hedge-fund managers, he could easily have found funding with debt and equity options, but his notoriously cautious style has always been to wait until there is enough surplus liquidity in his company before investing in a new restaurant. But now, developers are approaching him and asking him to open restaurants in their projects, so his own investment is limited. The real-estate boom has come with new opportunities.

 

   He invited me to try his Mumbai restaurants last week and I was pleased (and frankly, a little surprised) to see that not only has he not lost his touch, but that his restaurants have moved with the times. The Mumbai Comorin was packed out (there were many tables of eight or ten, which is unlike Gurugram) and the food was as good as the original. I had attended previews of the Goa Fireback when David was in the kitchen and the food was terrifyingly authentic. It’s still authentic, but much less terrifying: There is something for everyone here.

 

   I hadn’t been back to Indian Accent Mumbai for two years and I was pleased to see that Chef Rijul Gulati has found his own voice (As has Shantanu Mehrotra, who now heads the kitchen at the Delhi Indian Accent). The distinguishing characteristic of Indian Accent’s food has always been that it emerges from the Indian tradition, not, as is the case with so many of the newer fancy Indian restaurants, from the chef’s ego and a desire to imitate famous foreign chefs. Though Rijul had caviar and truffles in his dishes, he never let them overwhelm the Indian flavours.

 

   We forget now that one of Rohit’s great successes in the pre-Indian-Accent era was Delhi’s The All American Diner. He is reviving the brand all over India, but until then, there is Drift in Mumbai, which walks the line between American favourites and French classics with surprising deftness. While I went on about Rohit’s success with Indian flavours, my wife cheerfully declared that Drift was her favourite of the four restaurants he has opened in Mumbai.

 

   Rohit’s second empire will flourish; he is not a born restaurateur for nothing. But what happens next? He has built a formidable company, anchored by a great team of managers and chefs, and is investing in even more talent, including a new management training programme. He says he sees himself more as a creative custodian, mentoring a new generation of managers.

 

   But that process will take at least a year to go through. So for now, the headline still is: Rohit Khattar is back. And how!