Best of People

ASIF ADIL

Widely travelled, his favourite restaurants are eclectic and all over the place. He specifically mentions Il Mondo Delvecchio in New Jersey and the Four Seasons restaurant in New York (“53rd Street - their steak with pepper corn sauce is outstanding”). But his eulogy is reserved for Rat’s Restaurant, set amidst the 35-acre Grounds for Sculpture in New Jersey and designed to make visitors feel they’ve stepped into a village reminiscent of French impressionist Claude Monet’s town of Giverny.

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(Archives: October - December 2007)

RAKESH

MARIA

He is an unlikely foodie. Why? Because with his harried life, he eats lunch at four in the afternoon and sometimes even skips it. And dinner’s always after he gets home post mid-night!

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(Archives: April - June 2008)

QUEENIE DHODY

She had queenly airs about her right from the time she was a little girl. She loved to look glamorous, even before she knew the meaning of the word. And as a teenager she threw the coolest parties in town. Perhaps that’s why the nick name Queenie came up and stuck. Jasleen, her real name doesn’t suit her at all, give us Queenie anyday.

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(Archives:
October -
December 07)

HOSTESS SABIRA

MERCHANT

Organising a dinner successfully calls for a certain skill. Home entertaining is an art in itself. And Sabira Merchant, Grande Dame of Indian Theatre, English speech and diction teacher, is the quintessential, true blue hostess. Has been
for over the past three
decades.

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(Archives: January -
March 2000)

ZEBA MITHA KOHLI

Zeba’s been involved with chocolates since she was a child who used to wander into her grandfather’s office and watch the business developing. When her mother took control, Zeba began to help out, and spent all her hours before and after college in the business. “I used to stand in for a peon, sometimes be a sales girl, before I went abroad to learn about chocolate making,” she explains.

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(Archives: January - March 2001)

GOURMET
JIGGS KALRA

He has always made the cooks the stars. “I’m just the blah-blah man,” he is fond of saying. So he gets out of the main cities, he scours the small by-lanes, the tiny villages, until he comes across somebody making such brilliant food, that people do not mind standing in queues on the road to eat. This kind of person, Jiggs plucks out of obscurity and installs in the kitchen of some five star hotel. And he then promotes the bemused man’s food in a big way, until he is satisfied that India is aware of what her regional food can really be like.

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(Archives: January - March 2000)

NAFISA ALI

Being an army wife has made Nafisa Ali simple and unpretentious. Sure, she loves the good things of life, but these need not be Wedgewood, Baccarat and Robbe and Berking. “I hire the crockery and cutlery for the large parties,” she says simply. “I think it is more important to go to the market, buy the produce, concoct the recipes and find out that at the end of the day, everything has worked out well.”

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(Archives: April - June 2000)

VITHAL KAMAT

This is the same man whose mother pawned her jewellery to set up his father in the restaurant business in the 1940s. Vithal Kamat was an electrical engineer who joined his father in the family business by starting to work in the kitchen of Satkar Restaurant at Churchgate. This was 1970, and Vithal was 18. “I’ve never sat at the cash counters of any of my restaurants,” he says, “because my father always believed the owner’s place was in the kitchen”.

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(Archives: October - December 2000)

NIRMAL ZAVERI

This Gujarati jeweller from Bhavnagar, was a strict vegetarian for 40 years. Then one day in the 1990s when he was in the Middle East, by mistake he tasted fish. And he was astonished to find that he enjoyed the taste. That was his first experience of non-vegetarian food and he is glad that his tastebuds got working with seafood. Today, Nirmal describes himself as a connoisseur of food. He likes good food and he will try out most anything that appeals to him.

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(Archives: October - December 2001)

DR SUHAS & DEEPA AWCHAT

Deepa and Suhas are among Bombay’s five best-loved restaurateurs. They are a friendly and handsome couple, recognised for their contribution to the hospitality and catering industry. Perhaps, the Awchats’s success can be measured by the fact that all of Bombay’s Goans who are fastidious about their Prawn Balchao and Chicken Xacuti, dine at Goa Portuguesa.

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(Archives: January - March 2004)

His father offered him a piece of land in Nashik. “I took a look. It was grassland gently sloping down to the earthern Gangapur dam with hills on all sides. I thought, what a great place to grow mangoes. But discovered it was a greater place to grow grapes,” says Rajeev. The company’s named after his mother, Sulabha, “Sula represents the sun. When you think of wine, you think of lovely grapes growing in the sun.”

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(Archives: January -
March 2001)

NELSON WANG

He is an achiever, he works ten times harder than anybody, he never gives up and he dreams big. Nelson gave Bombay its most successful and popular Chinese restaurant, China Garden. Remind him about it and he muses, “Oh, what great days those were.” And saying so, his face takes on a nostalgic look.

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(Archives: April - June 2007)

BAKUL PATEL

Like Cleopatra, age cannot whither Bakul Patel. Coiffured and coutured with understated elegance, she continues to be a diligent working woman. Besides, she’s an upright citizen with Bombay’s best interest at heart and has pitched in, time and again, in various capacities.

For full article: CLICK HERE (Archives: April - June 2008)

MEHER HEROYCE MOOS

At 60 she is energy-plus and more. In a 37-year career with Air India that ended in 2002, she travelled to 160 countries all over the world, and now in retirement is making plans to visit the 40-odd that she has missed out. “I know that it will be impossible to see them all, but I’m hoping to visit at least 30 of them,” she says with the confident air of a back-packer about to set out on another adventure.

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(Archives: July - September 2004)

 SIMONE TATA

She is a handsome and distinguished lady, almost majestically leonine in looks, with thick platinum hair pushed back to reveal a broad and intelligent forehead, humorous eyes, a bemused look, and a mouth that is pursed up as if always on the verge of breaking into a smile. And Simone Tata smiles easily. Ask her about food, about eating and drinking and cooking, about entertaining and dining out, and she smiles charmingly and mysteriously.

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(Archives: April - June 2005)

COLIN

SCOTT

Scott, who has more flavours locked away in his brain than perhaps any master blender, used two very special malts for Chivas Regal 18 from the company’s famous line of distilleries in Speyside, Scotland: Srtathisia and Longmorn. “It was an enjoyable experience,” he says of his expriment in 1997. “I was creating a whisky in my mind. And comparing what was in my mind to reality. “

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(Archives: April - June 2005)

THE DOSHI

FAMILY

THE Doshi family has got into the restaurants business! Chakor and Champa Doshi, and their bright children Chirag and Kanika, have opened three specialty eateries all under one roof. Karma, a young people’s place known for its shooters and pizzas; the Liquid Lounge, a bar with cocktails and fingerfoods and music of the 60s, 70s and 80s; and third, Bellissima: a chic Italian restaurant.

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(Archives: July - September 2001)