A saturated hospitality market eyes the eastern suburb where a tired working class is ready for a beer and order-in culture
The oven baked zucchini parcel at Pot Pourri, a hot favourite. Pics/Sameer markande
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There's a white cake in the cooler. It has chocolate garnish, in white, brown and pink, stand erect like ice slabs in a colourful beyond-the-wall Westeros scene. And, while we may have been far off with the GOT reference, the glamour of the screen is definitely on point. Ishanee Amar Haware, 27, who gave up a cushy job in the financial sector, to start the patisserie chain, says it's her invention. "I saw someone wearing a dress with frills on Instagram and decided to render the same effect on a cake," says Haware as we dig into a Belgian chocolate cake slice that as it turns out has the potential to tempt even the strongest sugar naysayers. That it's paired with coffee that's come from plantations in Chikmanglur makes the trip to Chembur east suddenly worth the while.
Above, a vanilla cake that she designed based on a frilly dress she’d seen in an Instagram post
Boom, 2017
Yes, Chembur. The eastern suburb which last made headlines for a culinary reason in November 2016 when Matunga's iconic eatery Mani's Lunch Home moved here, having shut shop after the building it was housed in went for redevelopment, is now in the midst of a hospitality boom.
Ishanee Amar Haware, opened her first Mumbai outlet of The Koffee Works on Chembur's Sion-Trombay Road, in October 2016. College students and the work-from-home crowd, she says, are frequent customers
For long, the only place to hang out at in Chembur was Barista on the Sion-Trombay Road. "In fact, till this place opened up, we'd have our meetings at Barista," says Apurva, Chembur resident and managing director at Sid Hospitality which last November brought Pot Pourri to the suburb. Today, Apurva is spoilt for choice. Chains that have settled elsewhere in Mumbai, have in the last few months, made a debut here.
Gaurav Vaidya, CFO, and Apurva, managing partner, of Sid Hospitality. In November 2017, Pot Pourri opened a 5,000 sq ft space at Cubic Mall
Want to spend a day indulging your cravings? Do it with as few steps as possible as you start off with Theobroma, then 99 Pancakes, Keventers, London Bubble Co, The Koffee Works, Wok Hei and then China Villa. Within 200 metres, once you cross the landmark Lamba Restaurant, is Grandmama's Cafe. And, it will take a bit to believe, but at least three places here have opened since just December 31. Bar Stock exchange also opened an outlet late last year. There is Shalom Rooftop Restaurant near the station and there are rumours that Social too is going to get a home here.
On Sion-Trombay Road a host of new places have opened up in the last few months serving up coffee, Wi-Fi and a new place to hang out at
Free the way
Is Chembur becoming a popular place to party? There will be those who gawk at the idea. After all, in this sleepy suburb, if you throw a stone blindly you're more likely to break the window of a bank than a draught beer mug. But, things might be changing. Abhayraj Singh Kohli, who owns Grandmama's Cafe - the Chembur outlet is the fifth in the city - says the sudden accessibility that the Freeway and the Santacruz-Chembur Link Road have given the neighbourhood is likely to change the market. Check property listings for upcoming highrises and they reflect the same temperament. "earlier it was either the rich or the low-income segment that lived here. Now, as it becomes a prime property, it's attracting dual income households that come with better spending power. There are no organised players here, so we wanted first mover's advantage," says Kohli.
The redevelopment that the suburb is undergoing has also made more spaces available for opening up bars. Apurva remembers that as a youth, partying in the area for him meant heading either to Chembur Gymkhana or Wild Orchid, the ground-floor pub at Hotel Royal Orchid (which has a story of its own). Now 36 years old, Apurva says it's been a while since something opened up in Chembur. And, when Pot Pourri, which has an outlet at Vashi's Inorbit Mall, wanted to expand, Chembur became a market they wished to tap into.
"For the longest time, it was difficult to operate a liquor licence in Chembur because almost anywhere you'd be within 75 metres of a school, hospital or temple. It's only thanks to redevelopment that we found this place," he says, referring to the 5,000 sq ft space that Pot Pourri has at Cubic mall, where Basant Cinema used to stand.
Who'd have thunk it
While now there is space for Chemburkars to party near their home, the question is do 'outsiders' head here for an evening out? Those on their way to Navi Mumbai now have a place to stop at. Powai residents too have been known to hop over for a look, and bikers (both the motor and pedal kinds), we are told, have enquired about breakfast options at Pot Pourri (this Sunday, a brunch opens at 8 am, nudging Zumba classes out) post a Lonavla road trip. But, there was a brief two-year period in the 1990s when Chembur was a hot party spot.
Satish Balan, owner of Wild
Orchids, remembers when Luke Kenny would DJ here and guests arrived post 11.30 pm. "Sushmita Sen, Salman Khan, others from the modelling and film world and businessmen like Ness Wadia, etc. would come here," says Balan. He adds that when he opened the place, he kept a few parties to introduce the venue to Mumbai's IT crowd which took to the place. "We'd have 500 people at a time and had to open the restaurant at the back to accommodate everyone." That they served food till the end was a USP, he feels. But, the biggest compliment he received was when he knocked off 1900s, the club at Colaba's Taj Mahal Hotel and Palace, from the popularity list of Society magazine's "what's in and what's out" section. "That was enough for me," he laughs. Ola and Uber services, he feels, have made it easier for locals to party elsewhere and return home safely. He feels Chembur doesn't know how to party.
New world, same taste
"On the first day that we opened, which was October 1, 2016, a bunch of college students walked in and said they were glad to see a space in Chembur where they could hang out," says Haware, who first opened her outlets in Navi Mumbai. Chembur is her Mumbai experiment and one she hopes will be successful. And, where The Koffee Works provides free Wi-Fi and a place where the work-from-home crowd can plug in, Pot Pourri is bringing in an all-day bar concept.
You can get your Biras and Gateways on tap here, with freshly-made pizza dough to keep you sober and if healthy is what you're looking at, there's a millet and barley risotto with a light garlic flavour. Gaurav Vaidya, the CFO at Sid Hospitality, says that among the top sellers here is the cilantro chicken and the Andhra chicken, both of which retain an Indian palette "which works best". It's a sentence that even Sumeet Dewangan, who runs the home delivery joint Bonne Sante, which opened in January 2017, repeats.
Dewangan and his partner at Bonne Sante, Nishi Barnwal, both had a career in finance which they gave up for the love for food. Since Dewangan is a Chembur resident, he decided to open up this health food delivery joint here. That a place here would be a cheaper experiment also made financial sense for someone who was testing the market. In a menu that ranges from a kale omelette sandwich to Buddha Bowls and even a parfait (which a Zomato reviewer rated as okay), Dewangan says the NRI chicken and the black magic chicken are among the top sellers. In a largely residential area, a delivery service seems like the odd-man out. But, perhaps there's more that Chembur hides than it reveals.
For Dewangan, the orders come in not just from couples getting home late in the evening after a day's work, but also from students at Tata Institute of Social Sciences hostel at Deonar. Students, young couples with expendable money and places to drink and eat at - Chembur's new population - might just prove Balan wrong.
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