April 6, 1998

A bewildering variety of food-to-order services thrives as it adds spice to Mumbai's social gatherings.

By Anupama Chopra

Honey, what would you like for dinner tonight? If you live in Mumbai, you could ask to begin with a delicately flavoured three-herb soup and assorted starters -- perhaps some prawns in mini-tostada shells or muhammara, a Lebanese spicy walnut dip. Then move on to some yakitori chicken with sage cream pasta and salads or Burmese khawswey chicken. And finish up with some croquem bouche, a pyramid pastry filled with cream and soaked in toffee syrup or, say, a chocolate kalhua hazelnut mousse cake. And it's all available at the other end of a phone line.

It's eating in -- Mumbai-style. The city's gastronomic horizons now include a bewildering variety of food-to-order services. Hundreds of enterprising men and women -- not all trained -- are converting their home kitchens into small-scale businesses and offering the world. Remember the mouth-watering baked mushroom stuffed with spinach and shallots you tasted in the south of France? Chances are someone in Mumbai is making it. Everything, from medicinal juices to Cajun cuisine, is available -- for a price. Depending on the caterer's brand name, number of items and head count, these entrepreneurs provide six or seven course meals charging anywhere between Rs 200 and Rs 1,000 per head.

Siddharth Shanghvi, 20, is a commerce student at a suburban college but actually spends most of his time in his kitchen rustling up sauce bechamel and mousse with Bailey's Irish cream. Shanghvi, a self-taught chef whose family is in the bottling business, runs La Decadent, a top-of-the-line, exquisitely exclusive catering service providing continental food for parties of less than eight. His tag line? "Some sins are worth it." At Rs 1,000 per head, his "personalised, tailored to the style and taste buds of each client" service isn't cheap but Shanghvi, who makes all the food himself, is booked till November. "I'm in the business of creating occasions," he says.

Housewife-turned-businesswoman Priti Kothari isn't creating occasions but she sure is adding a quaint flavour to them. Four months ago, the avid self-taught cook started a Lebanese food service. Today, she's up at 3 a.m. rustling up falafels, khoubiz bread and hommous. Business is great -- she averages four orders a week -- and in another month, Kothari plans to expand the menu, introducing Lebanese vegetables, Feta cheese and rice items. "I just wanted to keep myself busy," says the cook, "but the response has been fantastic."

Natasha Khambatta, a hotel management graduate, makes desserts to die for -- strawberry champagne cake, fresh mango or litchi with white rum, liqueur cakes. So what if they cost about Rs 400 to Rs 500 a kg? Says Khambatta: "Now people want three or four desserts for parties of even 10." Veena Vaswani runs the year-old Gourmet Foods, making Burmese, Japanese, Chinese, Thai and Sindhi cuisine. A 15-year stint in Dubai and the consequent entertaining got her interested in food. She mainly caters to office parties. "I'm interested in serving people who like to experience the new," she says. Gopal Nair has fresh oysters and mussels flown in from Kerala on order, Vibha Sethi sells home-made chai masala, Pushpa Khatau specialises in low-calorie ice creams which cost between Rs 200 and Rs 300 a packet, and Nawaz Barucha makes waffles. "It's not an explosion, it's an implosion," says food writer Rashmi Uday Singh, author of The Good Food Guide to Mumbai. Six years ago, Singh started Foodline, a popular newspaper column, which had readers phoning in with suggestions and queries on food. She estimates the growth in home-food services has been over 100 per cent since then. Irfan Pabaney, a restaurateur who now runs La Cucina, a service providing Mediterranean, Spanish and Italian food, says the "industry has registered 200 to 300 per cent growth over the past five years". A year ago, Pabaney, who likes playing around with pastas, olive oil, herbs and cheeses, went solo and is already in demand. "One week I was doing three parties," he says. "I was shocked at the response I got."

Why the frantic growth? For one, food has occupied centrestage in urban upper-class lives. It's not just a meal at the end of the day. It's an occasion, a conversation piece. And well-heeled, well-travelled Mumbai folk desperately want a change, specially when it comes to entertaining guests. Even the conservative Gujarati and Marwari communities are increasingly opting for new tastes. Kothari says she served falafels and hummous at some recent Ganpati parties. "My food is not Indianised," says Pabaney, "but people are willing to adapt to subtler flavours." Catered food is clean, home-cooked and often cheaper than a five-star restaurant. It also has immense snob value. As Khambatta puts it, "Chicken tikka and dal are so passé." It's exotic and exclusive -- haute couture as opposed to pret a porter -- and in the war of poses, a handy weapon. "It's very competitive," says Khambatta, "and clients often tell me, 'I hope you haven't given this anywhere else'. Many won't tell their friends how to contact me."

However, not all food services make the grade. It's an unorganised business with varying quality standards. What is ordered sometimes isn't what's delivered. "It's the easiest business to get into," says chef Sanjeev Kapoor, who anchors the popular Khana Khazana show on Zee. "And ignorance is so high that you can get away with anything. Since being a good cook is a prerequisite to starting a food business, the food would be good but it may or may not be authentic." Not many clients are sticklers for authenticity. Indian-Chinese, Chinese-Thai, Thai-Indonesian, what's the difference? As long as it tastes good, is different and your friends haven't served it yet ... party on.

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