President’s Message
MUMBAI, INDIA’S GOURMET CAPITAL
Today Mumbai is India’s restaurant capital. From it is a genre-defining to the genre-defying cooking. Mumbai is experimenting with flavours and formats that are transforming India’s food landscape, leaving a foodie like me spoilt for choice. There is an energy to the city’s restaurants, a sense that a chef can do anything and the only rule is courage.
10 to 15 years ago it wasn’t so – Mumbai was a culinary backwater. With the exception of the occasional Indigo or Thai Pavilion and the local Gomantak and Malwani restaurants, our city was caught in a time warp. Then suddenly around five or seven years ago, everything started to change; the list of trailblazing restaurants in Mumbai suddenly exploded. Starting with The Table, The Bombay Canteen, Bastian, Yauatcha, Masque, O’Pedro, Suzette, Le15 Patisserie; brave souls were inventing newer gastronomical wonders.
This explosion was the result of first generation of Indians that grew up in a liberalised country. They didn’t need to follow their parents into traditional jobs. However, that didn’t mean that they needed to just sit around or pursue their dreams in Dubai or London or New York. These young entrepreneurs had studied and worked internationally and then chose to return to pursue their dreams, and where in India but the city of dreams!
Mumbai’s intrinsically cosmopolitan culture welcomed young chefs into its culinary arms to a place with the energy and vibrancy of a New York or London but quintessentially Indian. Almost every meaningful chef or restaurateur who has emerged over the last half decade has traversed this journey.
Food is an art form, a means of creative expression and will always blossom in places that are open to new ideas and new thoughts that celebrate diversity and freedom.
So let’s celebrate Mumbai, a city that has, for well over a century, found a way to be both truly global, yet in her
heart truly Indian.
Framroze Mehta
President