Much has been said about the city’s “booming”, “evolved” food industry, but on a list that honours the very best restaurants in the world, Mumbai’s gourmet stars don’t even rate a mention. Restaurant magazine’s hallowed annual San Pellegrino World’s 100 Best Restaurants list was released recently, and its only nod to the Indian subcontinent has been in the form of the capital’s Bukhara (placed at 84).
So why is Mumbai missing from the list? Busaba chef Nikhil Chib believes the answer, in part, may have to do with cultural differences. He explains, “Japanese restaurants are given quite a lot of Michelin stars. That’s because their cuisine is very clean, none of the flavours are overpowering — which the French people (who give out the Michelin stars) can identify with.”
While Upper Crust’s Farzana Contractor says it’s simply because “we aren’t important to them in the scheme of things”, Indigo’s Rahul Akerkar doesn’t quite agree. He points to the nature of the jury (on which he incidentally serves) as proof enough that an ethnic bias does not exist in the case of these awards. A simple computation of votes cast by 800 international restaurant industry experts decides on the winning eateries.
“Quality-wise, Indian restaurants still have a long way to go. It has to do with a poor import structure, cold supply chain, lack of quality self-sustaining pool of personnel and the public’s discomfort in paying for quality ingredients and for quality establishments,” Rahul says.
Michelin starred chef Vineet Bhatia (who heads the Global Indian restaurant Ziya) agrees. “It’s easy to get swayed by this whole ‘biased towards ethnic restaurants’ wave, but the truth is that Indian restaurants are lacking in a whole lot of areas. These lists aren’t brought out purely on the basis of food quality. They take everything into consideration — service, good design, etc,” says Vineet.
Nikhil adds, “The amount of work involved in getting a Michelin star and retaining it is manic. Everything from the napkin quality to the temperature the AC is set at, to how well versed the captain and waiters are with the wine list is taken into consideration. Here, even good chicken makhni is served in a balti…there’s no concept like plating.”
— With inputs from Lakshmi Govindrajan Javeri