LUNCH WITH BS: Rohit Khattar

Biting the hand that feeds

Rohit Khattar wishes he hadn't had lunch with this reporter after all.

Few know of The Manor in New Delhi's Friends Colony, but this 15-room, designer boutique hotel was leased for several years to Aman Resorts, its guests global celebrities seeking privacy from the paparazzi. It is here, in its restaurant overlooking an expanse of lawn, that Rohit Khattar, the reclusive head of Old World Hospitality, has agreed to be interviewed over lunch, writes Kishore Singh.

Khattar's business is so mainstream, many Dilliwallahs don't even realise that he's behind it. At the centre of his operations is the India Habitat Centre where he runs not only the bar and restaurants but also the health and fitness facilities, the conference centre as well as the auditorium with its calendar of plays and performances. Habitat has upscaled the neighbouring India International Centre as well as the traditional Mandi House arts precinct to become the capital's cultural heart, which must make Khattar an extremely influential person, but he wears that role lightly "" and perhaps shyly "" on his sleeve.

And now Khattar has replicated the success of Habitat in the NCR's Gurgaon, at Epicentre, giving suburbanites respite from having to rush against traffic to New Delhi every time they wish to see a play or attend the opening of an exhibition. In Noida, he runs Chor Bizarre and Oriental Octopus at the Savoy Suites, but is occupied with finding the right spot to develop another Habitat experience. "The city," he says simply, "needs it."

The reason we're having lunch, the reason he's talking to a journalist at all other than exchanging polite conversation, is because Tamarai, in London "" oh yes, he's there too, about which more in a while "" has won two awards, as best late night club, and for having the best wine list; and because the Manor, where we've just placed our lunch orders, has just been leased by Old World Hospitality too.

We're having our first course "" he, a soup; I, a humongous Greek salad with fresh goat cheese "" when the photographer arrives, causing an upset. Knowing full well he would have refused permission for a photographer at the time we'd fixed the meeting, I had asked her to come midway into our lunch, and Khattar, taken unawares, is flustered. He begs to be let off, I insist, we negotiate that we will use the picture only in small size, he pleads that I stick to my promise, I give him my word fully recognising I intend to break it, and hair slicked back, printed shirt pressed down, Khattar agrees to a few bucolic shots.

From his childhood, when he would help out behind the front office at his grandfather's Broadway Hotel in Srinagar, Khattar recognised he would enter the service industry. When the Broadway Hotel in Delhi was inherited by his mother, and Khattar returned from the Michigan State University to take it over in 1986, one of the first things the collector of old prints, objets d'art and kitsch did was to launch the eponymous Chor Bizarre restaurant, the city's only Kashmiri dining experience in a maverick setting where a vintage car doubled as a salad counter, four poster beds and sewing machine trestles served as diners' tables, and the chairs were as mismatched as the crockery and cutlery.

In 1997, two things happened that spurred Khattar's career: he recreated Chor Bizarre in London, and won the lease for running the F&B and recreation facilities at Habitat. It also marked the transition from a family-owned hotelier to a "" restaurateur, I ask Khattar? "I enjoy," he responds, "being an impresario. I find the combination of food and entertainment heady."

Chor Bizarre in London was followed last year by two very successful launches. Sitaaray, an Indian grill saw Khattar's love affair with Bollywood "" he wants to script feature films some day "" come to life in the cinema art that he had been collecting for years; and Tamarai (think thamarai which is Tamil for lotus) recreated a restaurant that transforms into a "dark, sexy club" by night. "This was a big one for me," he confesses, "it involved serious money."

Our main courses have come by now "" Khattar, currently vegetarian in his quest to knock off a few kilos, has ordered a pasta with pesto; my choice is cannelloni with a mutton mince filling. Both helpings are huge, and Khattar, the restaurateur, morphs into Khattar, the auditor: "We need to cut back on portions," he tells someone in his staff, "at this rate we'll never earn money."

His plans, currently, are all about London and The Manor in Delhi. In London, he isn't quite through yet, and would like to launch a quick service or fast-food north Indian restaurant chain, something that is easy to replicate both there as well as back home in Delhi. At a national level? "No," he says, surprisingly, "for me, getting to know a new city is a huge ballgame. I still can't claim to know London; Delhi I do know," and so, across the NCR, he hopes to roll out 50 restaurants over the next couple of years.

These will include bringing Tamarai and Sitaaray to Delhi, and rolling out more versions of Oriental Octopus, the fast-food Indian diner, and at least one fine-dining Oriental option that he will launch first at The Manor. The hotel too will undergo a change of profile: as I write, Khattar has checked himself into some Ayurvedic facility in Bangalore, part of an ongoing process, he laughs, that allows him to knock some weight off even as he researches his next venture "" a luxury spa, starting at the Manor.

Meanwhile, he's been offered opportunities to take Tamarai to Washington DC (which he's refused) and New York (which he's considering because it's New York). "My desire," he says, is to do more hotel rooms and get into the wellness sector." A new restaurant will also be launched at Gurgaon's Epicentre where, in the absence of a club, he's focusing only on three instead of the four Cs that he says make up his Habitat format: club, culture, cuisine, conventions. "From a small company, we're becoming a middle-sized company," he says, "and have a very good system that allows for expansion."

For now, his restaurants (and they span the gamut from £1 for a meal at Eatopia, New Delhi, to £80 at Tamarai, London) are all handled from New Delhi "" "even the London restaurants" "" with a central kitchen in the NCR "and very good systems that allow for expansion".

Outside the restaurant, employees of Old World Hospitality are gathering for a puja, to celebrate the takeover of The Manor. "We have not yet looked at equity," Khattar, who is set to join the puja, says over coffee. "So far, we have funded our own growth but now, we may have to look for people such as these" "" he points discreetly to presumably two PE types engaged in a hushed conversation. Before leaving, one of them will come to Khattar to request a booking for his daughter's birthday at the Habitat.

While Khattar looks at real estate across the NCR and London for his growing ambitions, he makes it clear that it isn't only money that motivates him. "Delhi," he says, "needs an inflation-proof Epicentre brand," where ticketed performances and free entry to exhibitions will provide the trigger to convert people into diners. Yes, I lie to Khattar as we shake hands over, for me at least, a vast meal, I'll ensure there will be a very small picture accompanying this piece. My apologies, Rohit.

Postscript: Khattar has just got off a flight to Bangalore. "I read so many papers," he calls to say, "all full of what people are saying, and I couldn't help flinching because I don't what to appear like a pompous ass. Can you," he pleads, "simply ignore our interaction?" I can't, I assure him, mindful of the page editor's wrath, and no longer having to fib.

[We didn't "" Editor]