"The 'Possessed' Hotelier !! "

Ok so here is this character that in my style would like to say “has a childhood problem”. The most common mistakes we as hotelier do is to try and be someone else. In this process we forget who we are, such is the case of this hotelier who claims to have over 2 decades of experience in the “hospitality” industry. 

Firstly Mr. Two Decades must understand we live in another era, hospitality has changed, people who work for hospitality have changed. Gone are the days when you have a lesser educated soul coming in to your office and asking for a job. Now you go to different institutions in search of “human resource”.  You show a PPT and have to convince a student that your organisation is “avant grade” and would be a better place than the others in your market segment. The point here is there is someone trusting you and joining you institution so that he can make it big in the corporate set up. 

But you have other plans. Your agenda is very clear that all bulbs in the restaurant have to work, good point but please do not yell at the restaurant manager as he does not change the bulbs in the restaurant. Floors cannot be polished any time and every time you want. There is a schedule and there are constrains. The restaurant manager does not polish your floors, So please never embarrass anyone in front of his team or other HODs. You do not Invert a bar stool and say why is the bush dirty again good point you cleanliness freek, but the bush is fixed so that your floor does not get scratched. Remember an eye for detail is good but when you have everything arranged in a particular formation it looks to artificial and this you must realise, fine hospitality is about crispness and fine hospitality is about guiding your young team, moulding them into fine hoteliers with good eye for detail. Its not about yelling and screaming or humiliating people, no one learns that way. The art of being a good leader has a complete different definition its not about being a terror. The whole hotel just wishes you never exist!!!!

Ok for people who eventually some days reading it and for people who actually relate to the charactor. Imagine you are at your restaurant and the guy actually spits on the floor and then moves his palm in a circular motion and looks at you and says why is the floor dirty.... Yuck!!!! I mean how grooos!!!!  Boss understand you are just making a Mickey out of yourself in front of a wiping boy in the back area. The positive side is that you have now officially become the point of discussion in the cafeteria, smoking zones and the locker rooms!!!!

Listen to this one and trust me this is true. We all know with great positions comes great responsibility, we all know that lunch breaks are very short for a busy hotel head, but hey this one takes the icing on the cake, The soup is piping hot, ahhhherrr no time..... aye come here... bring some ice.... The waiter gets scared takes the ice bucket....... he chucks in three ice cubes into the soup and gobbles it down.  Difficult to believe but yeah this is Mr Two Decades himself.

The Back areas are important but hey when you have a large operations and large events your back area cannot look like your front of the house, if you want it that way then please give the operator enough staff not three waiters and himself and expect perfection

Zaffran, Bangalore

Zaffran opened its doors to Bangalore last November. Bangalore’s most desirable entrepreneur extended his business powess after the much hyped City Bar. There are very few ‘much hyped’ restaurants in the city today that I have not visited around the time they’ve opened. This fortunately or unfortunately is one of them. So finally, one of our lunch outings took us to this St Marks Road restaurant on a quiet tuesday afternoon. 

A very nice, bright and a pleasant yellow tone greets you along with silk curtains fluttering in the wind from the open side of the restaurant. There is also an option of lounge seating, which looked very cosy and could probably a perfect way of spending a sunday afternoon over tall summer coolers. The rest of the decor to me seemed like I had seen it somewhere else before (especially the motifs on the walls), is fairly dominated by yellow in the form of table cloths being countered by black dinner napkins, golden cruet sets and stainless steel cutlery. 

I hadn’t visited an Indian restaurant in a long time now. The last once that I visited set very high standards which super impressed me. A rare sight in restaurants today. So my expectations were certainly quite high. 

The menu design was typical to many Indian restaurants (wonder why), The beverage menu had most of the usual suspects in the vodkas, gins, whiskys (of its likes) and beers. The wine list too was fairly large and priced pretty standard. What was interesting to note was a few wines each from Portugal and Austria. Not such a common site on wine lists in the city today. Most wines are priced from Rs. 3000 upwards. 

The food menu was fairly large with lots of choices for all including vegetarians. Upon arrival a chance conversation with the Chef who also helped us uncomplicating the order process set the order of the evening. 

Our lunch started off with a sinfully thick Zaffran Lassi. As the name suggest, saffron and pistachio were dominating flavours. A fairly rich beverage to start the meal, so I decided to finish it after the lunch in place of the dessert. 

A unique Roomali roti masala papad was brought to the table next. This was a large roomali roti with chopped onions and tomato masala (a la masala papad), was supposed to be a crisp appetizer. Though the idea seemed interesting, the execution was probably timed a bit wrong.. and the a bit too messy. By the time we got to breaking a piece each, the masala was all over the table and we ended up eating a soggy roomali roti. Im pretty sure, if the roomali would have been crisp as it was meant to be, all of us would have certainly enjoyed it. 

The hot appetizers were however completely different from its preceding roomali papad. The chef had chosen to send us Zaffran Murgh Tikka, Murg Banjara Kebab and Ghost Tikka. All priced between Rs. 200 and Rs. 240 were presented well and were value for money. All three appetizers were succulent, seasoned and cooked well. Not a bad start to the meal after all, BUT i certainly expected something better and expected something more. 

For Main Course, the chef insisted we have the butter chicken and since we were a group of 8 the Raan Biryani. The Buttter chicken I felt was very standard, completely rich almost ready to rush you to Wokhart after the meal. A standard Indian bread basket accompanied the creamy curry. Hot, buttered and again, pretty standard. Giving the whole experience another change, I hoped that the Raan biryani would be the most amazing biryani I had ever eaten. The rice was delicately flavoured and cooked to perfection, but the meat seemed wanting. Though tender, it had reminsance of the butter chicken gravy (or so it seemed to me). 

By this time, I needed a crane to lift me out of the restaurant. But the question still remained to be answered. 

1. Was the restaurant nice - yes
2. Was the food good - yes, but quite standard. 
3. Was the service efficient - yes for a lazy afternoon, we were give a lot of attention, 
4. Was the pricing/ portions good - yes

If i had to put numbers to rate my experience on a scale of 1-10

Food - 8

Beverage - 8

Service - 8

VFM (Value for money) - 8

OE (Over all experience) - 7

Overall, I still feel Zaffran is a very decent restaurant with very standard Indian cusinie in a pleasant setting. But I could get this taste, quality and ambiance anywhere in town. 

How 'Classic' is your Cocktail ???

I LOVE Cocktails and I can dare say I certainly do have a wide enough memory bank of cocktails to recon with. What irritates me the most is that in todays world everyone who stands behind the bar considers themselves to be a great mixologist without knowing the M of mixing drinks except maybe for mixing up a great vodka/rum, ice and cola or a wonderful gin, ice and tonic with a couple of cubes of ice or better still Peter 'scotch' on the rocks. They also make tall claims of making fantastic classic cocktails, for the fun of which I always (or rather pun of which) I almost always get adventurous. One of the reasons I believe is the lack of quality formal training for bartenders at affordable prices.

Style and Flair (most often equated to throwing and catching bottles) are left to ones own imagination. There are very few Bartenders (or Mixologist as they would like to be called in todays world) in this city who I can put my money on for mixing cocktails and classic cocktails at that. More so, there are very few bars in the city where I can order cocktails and be happy to finish them.  In my recent tryst with cocktails at a city's popular bar, I was served a Whisky Sour with a salted rim. One of the most common errors bartenders make is to serve a Mojito with crushed ice or if you ask for a Martini you will almost always get one 'shaken' with Vodka (Thank you Mr Bond).. hmmm, how classic is that ??? 

There is a world full of Classic cocktails, Should you need any references, PLEASE do not just google/ wikipedia it. Invest in a good cocktail book by Dale DeGroff or by a reputed Bartenders Guild. Get your classic cocktails right, use them as concepts for experimenting with to get better results AND remember, The Classics never go out of style.

Cheers !!! 

The First One

I am a Hotelier.. Have been a part of the industry for many years now. In all of these years, I have 
wondered, 
a. other than the one off group/ club here and there, there never was any single common platform for all those associated (especially working) with the industry to share their knowledge and experiences on a common platform for the others to learn (and wonder too :) )
b. almost always, why this was not easily possible. 


I am a Hotelier.. Have been a part of the industry for many years now. In all of these years, I have learnt, 
a. to attempt the impossible and put in all my efforts to make it happen
b. to define the fact that, when someone says don't, I almost always will do :)


With this space, we hope, the industry will with all of its like minded people, create a platform to share and learn all fun things that happen on a daily basis in our industry. So weather it is food, beverage or any such thing that is or could be a part of the industry, feel free to be a part of all the action. 


Cheers !!!








The F&B Club