The Hindu Business Line : Sweet music of pots and pans

Bengali men are fastidious, demanding, far too critical but frustratingly accurate in their culinary judgements. Of course, they remain armchair connoisseurs, often patriarchal in their ways.

So when a Bengali boy agrees to help out his mother in the kitchen, begins to show culinary talent and wants to pursue the art through a catering institute, it's seen as freakish behaviour.

This is what happened to Anjan Chatterjee, born as he was into a family of research scientists and academics. Chatterjee's father was shocked out of his wits that his son wanted to take up a job "meant for cooks and cleaners" after getting his physiology degree. Chatterjee went on to defy every logic, expectation or stereotype; he now heads a Rs 75-crore speciality restaurant business with Mainland China as his flagship brand.

After the successful launch of `Oh! Calcutta', a fine dining restaurant, in May, Chatterjee and his team unveiled Mainland China in Delhi earlier this month. Coming to Chennai around August 15 will be Sigree, a chain that specialises in the food of undivided India. And in end-August, Oh! Calcutta will spread out to London and later to New York.

"I am happy with the way things are going," grins the 47-year-old Chatterjee, who runs 24 restaurants spread across the country, catering to over two lakh guests every month, a catering college in Kolkata and is looking forward to an international expansion soon.

Sensing opportunities

Chatterjee was smart enough to sense the opportunity in the food business in the early 1990s. And, most importantly, he had a big idea and a plan to go with it, which made the difference.

His early learning was at the Taj Group in Mumbai in the mid-1980s, after passing out of a Kolkata catering college. But he realised that he needed marketing skills if he were to get into business some day. He enrolled for a marketing course at the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management in Mumbai and started selling ad space for Ananda Bazar Patrika. "This was going to be a hard life, but I had chosen not to get used to too many comforts," he says. He then got into advertising and joined Situations Advertising, which he runs today.

Passion turns business

Meanwhile, Chatterjee and his artist wife, Suchchanda, cooked for friends at home frequently. They would experiment, innovate and argue passionately every time they tried out a new dish. And the more they did it, the more they — and everyone who tasted their cooking — were convinced that it was time to turn professional. "Friends like C.Y. Gopinath and Bachi Karkaria who are equally passionate about food encouraged us," recalls Chatterjee.

The company, Speciality Restaurants, was started as a restaurant in 1991 in a tiny, studio-like space in central Mumbai along with friends. They called it Only Fish. The idea, as the company's name suggests, was to create sharply differentiated speciality brands. Just Biryani and Mostly Kababs followed. "After this we decided to create the first five-star value chain of Chinese food in Mumbai and started Mainland China (MC)," Chatterjee says.

Today there are two MCs each in Mumbai and Pune, one each in Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad, and a second one coming up in Kolkata, besides the Delhi one. A dedicated college in Kolkata — the Mainland Institute of Oriental Catering — feeds these places with trained personnel.

"Selling Chinese food is safe," Chatterjee says. He decided to take on bigger challenges; his plan was to take Kolkata and Bengali food and present it as an evolved world cuisine. Chatterjee's single-most important achievement so far has been just that. He has turned a cuisine, which has been seen as the finger-soiling, sit-down, home cooking variety, into a fine dining experience.

At the Oh! Calcutta restaurants in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata you will find the finest hilsa, prawn, crab or grandma's best vegetarian delicacies such as banana flower or shukto (a bitter-sweet starter like avial) prepared and presented for a cosmopolitan palate. Contemporised beyond recognition, almost anything can be negotiated without soiling your fingers.

Of course, there are Anglo-Indian delicacies like the Railway mutton curry, smoked hilsa and dak bungalow chicken and old Kolkata Mughlai favourites such as kabab, rezala and biryani. "Not surprisingly, our guests are not only Calcuttans or Bengalis," says business manager Aditya Praabhu.

"It also helps that Kolkata is not the city it used to be, brand Buddha is rocking, and so is Kolkata," adds Chatterjee.

In the last 15 years, Chatterjee seems to have got everything going right for him: Sigree, which offers pre-Partition cuisine from the secret recipes of Gafur Miya, a chef from Lahore ("We met him on a cricket trip to the city"); Sweet Bengal, the sweet shop in Mumbai where he has engaged traditional karigars from the best sweet-makers of Kolkata; and Haka, a quick-service Chinese restaurant.

Says Chatterjee: "I came to Mumbai with Rs 600. We started with eight employees. Now we have 1,400 people working for us. A huge space in Mumbai is the home for our culinary artists from Kolkata, where they get to watch Bengali films and are visited by Bengali film stars and singers. These are little incentives for them."

Total quality and constant innovation are ensured through food competitions and rewards. "The best mishti doi maker got a 24-carat gold coin recently," he says.

According to the restaurateur, his strength lies in his people and the home-grown HR policies that he practises. As Chatterjee says, he has tried to institutionalise his passion and dedication.

"Our employees take an oath every day before they start their workday to serve customers, each of our guests is tracked through a very evolved system, hopefully that is the reason many of them delight in us," he adds.

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