The space bar

Shiro hopes to tower over Mumbai's nightlife with its neck-craning scale.

The best part about Shiro is that it exceeds expectation. Even when that's pretty much all you've heard about seven weekends in a row.

Jai Singh, Shiro's proprietor, knows better than to get swept up in the inaugural hype. He's a seasoned player in the business of food, drink and entertainment, aware of the caprices of the game. Still, he's upbeat about Shiro long outliving the honeymoon period.

For a city that's starved of breathing room, Shiro, with 10,000 sq ft of floor space and a 50 ft high ceiling, is almost a cruel joke. The design does all to emphasise the stature "" a 40 ft stone sculpture of a courtesan, of South-east Asian origin, receives your entry, and decorative elements "" Buddha heads, earthen vessels "" are tucked into niches that stack up vertically. Water bodies are a persistent feature, so are thickets of bamboo.

"The greatest reward for me is watching jaws drop as people step in through a door that's pretty unremarkable," says Singh. It was meant to be far from inconspicuous, but they couldn't locate hinges big enough or strong enough to support a 32-ft door!

For an undertaking so ambitious, it comes as a surprise that Shiro didn't take years of lofty and impractical planning. Singh and partner Sanjay Mahtani were scouting for space to house India's first Hard Rock Cafe when they came across what was an unused shed in the compound of Bombay Dyeing Mills.

"It was too large for Hard Rock but we just couldn't let go of it, so Shiro was created around it," says Singh. Hard Rock, incidentally, found itself 6,000 sq ft next door from Shiro. "The two profiles are deliberately different. Hard Rock is steeped in rock 'n' roll history; Shiro is a whole experience built on food, drink and design."

Bangalore-based architect Sandeep Khosla was drafted to convert potential to certainty. The word "Shiro" has it's etymology in Japanese (the food served is Japanese as well) but Khosla has used broader strokes for its pan-Asian interiors.

The space has been divided up to suggest rooms of a rich man's abode. Inspired by the legendary Buddha Bar? Singh disagrees. "Maybe it's the scale of it. Anyway I believe the best design inolves drawing from different spaces and places."

A large component of its popularity, Singh hopes, will be the cuisine. Partner Mahtani is behind that. "He is a fantastic cook." "Sanjay's the consummate people's person, always socialising with clients" he adds.

Japanese food is Mumbai's newest compulsion and Singh indicates there are plenty who've taken to sake. He suggests an initiation via a shochutini "" a martini made from shochu (a drink often referred to as Japanese vodka). The drinks are dear, cocktails average Rs 400.

"Location is everything in my business. A standard shoe box just doesn't work anymore." Even if it meant housing Shiro in a non-traditional district in central Mumbai. It was, in fact, the preoccupation with the "ideal space" that propelled Singh from a career in consulting into the f&b business.

When he was based in Bangalore a few years ago, he was struck by the fact that the city's famed pubs were nothing short of "garages that served alcohol". So Singh gave the city its first "lounge" called 180 Proof. Later Singh and Mahtani became Fashion TV's franchisee to start F Bar & Lounge in Bangalore and Delhi.

At some point FTV had big plans for India but Singh sold both properties after two and a half years of running them. "That's standard life-expectancy for most bars," says Singh, "you sell when the going is still good."

Not Shiro. In fact, Singh is loath to describe Shiro as hip or trendy. "Trends are short lived." His apprehensions are not unreasonable. The city's party-goers have fleeting attention spans, easily distracted by a new arrival. But, it will be hard to beat Shiro on sheer scale alone. Even Singh isn't quite sure how to outperform this one.