Wish away the heat wave with restaurateur Riyaaz Amlani’s delicious coolers
A fruity summer cocktail is hard to decline — particularly on a sweltering (and working) afternoon. At the all-day Mocha Bar in Delhi, co-owner Riyaaz Amlani agrees wholeheartedly, looking pleased as his new “neighbourhood pub” fills up. Behind the bar counter today, Amlani is getting together the ingredients to whip up a couple of fruit-based cocktails for us.
From the fruit basket, we pick out kiwi, peach, melon, strawberry and orange, and Amlani gets to work. We skip watermelon, because the stock isn’t as crunchy and sweet as Amlani deems fit, but the melon sangria will make up for that, he promises. “Drinking is largely about the mood, isn’t it?” he asks. “If I’m sitting around with friends, I prefer beer. For a quiet evening, on the other hand, wine works best. But if I’m clubbing I like to have vodka. At the end of a long, tiring day, it’s a glass of single-malt whisky,” says Amlani. And his days usually extend well into the night, what with the string of restaurants he oversees.
Under the banner of Impresario Entertainment & Hospitality, 30-something Amlani has opened 16 Mocha Coffee Houses across the country. In Mumbai, Amlani’s hometown, he also owns popular joints Salt Water Grill, Del Italia and The Tasting Room, and a couple more cafes. In Delhi, Amlani’s bar and fine-dining Smoke House Grill has been a hit — so then why a Mocha bar?
“It’s the first Mocha that is primarily a bar and not a coffee house. But I wanted a ‘local’, which I found Delhi lacked. Mocha Bar is a casual space you can saunter into at any time of the day,” says Amlani.
His business plans, incidentally, followed Amlani’s brush with Bollywood, 10 years ago. This Mumbaikar — currently enamoured by Delhi — worked in a production house for a while but found it stifling. A phone call later, the deal was sealed to start a small, 500 sq ft coffee shop with two friends. Eight years into the business, substantial ground in this sector is now under his wing.
Any regrets there? “No, but had I known then how to run a restaurant, or a chain of them, it would have been a disaster. I enjoy the not-knowing part of it. And if I have learnt anything, it’s that you can’t run a restaurant from a restaurateur’s point of view, it’s the customer’s point of view that one needs to work with,” says Amlani.
He isn’t a cut-and-dried businessman. His BMW GS 200 bike is an object of his affection, and every once in a while accompanies him on a long ride on the highways beyond Delhi. “Since I’m in Delhi for weeks together every other month, it’s easy to take off from here. The roads are great, and open skies come early.”
Amlani’s soul-searching also takes him to Nizamuddin to listen to the qawwals at the dargah on Thursdays. As for the rest of the city, dotted as it is with fragments of history, it has him equally charmed.
