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Wine & Dine

Text and Photography by Mallika Chandra.

Rehan Mehta, 31
East 7th Pizza & Deli
Location: Colaba
Speciality: Pizzas, sandwiches, burgers, puddings

Rehan, tell me about your journey as a chef.
The first time I went to cooking school was after I finished my schooling in Mumbai. I had taken a gap year in 2010 and I did a three-month course at Le Cordon Bleu London. That experience actually made me not want to become a chef so I went to a liberal arts college in the US, where I graduated in psychology.

In my third year at college, I happened to watch a video of Anthony Bourdain (the late celebrity chef and travel documentarian) and David Chang (restaurateur and television personality) eating at one of Chang’s New York restaurants. That made me want to go back to cooking. In fact, I felt like I just could not do anything else! I enrolled in the cooking school David Chang had been to, which was the French Culinary Institute in New York. I had discovered a course that would allow me to take six months off from college, come back and still graduate on time. I loved it there.

The way it worked in America at the time was that I had three months to find a job after graduation. So I applied to a bunch of places. Finally, via Craigslist, I got a job as a pastry cook at Momofuku Milk Bar in New York (now called Milk Bar), even though it wasn’t what I had specifically trained in. I was making cookies, cakes and bread and I still think it’s the best job I’ve ever had. Unfortunately, I had to leave after a year because they were unable to sponsor my work visa.

When I returned to Mumbai in 2015, I was given a job in the pastry department wherever I applied because of my experience at Momofuku Milk Bar. My first job was in Colaba at the modern-American restaurant Ellipsis (now shut), headed by Chef Kelvin Cheung. Chef Kelvin was a Milk Bar fan so he was keen to have me onboard. Unfortunately, he left the restaurant six months after I joined.

Then, in September 2016, I joined Masque in Mahalaxmi in Mumbai. Chef Prateek Sadhu and co-owner Aditi Dugar got in touch with me while the restaurant was still under construction. Even on my first visit, I could tell the kitchen and the space were going to be special. The first year of Masque was really interesting but we were struggling to figure out our style or what could make it unique. Eventually, Chef Prateek started digging deeper into his own Kashmiri roots, and that’s when it really took off. It made more sense because it was personal and culturally relevant rather than just trying to be like many other Scandinavian-inspired tasting menu restaurants. What I enjoyed most from my time there was the fact that the chefs would serve all the dishes and got to interact with the customers, who were usually passionate about food, and that made it fun. We also had a lot of freedom to work on new dishes which kept things interesting.

Later, I grew disillusioned with fine dining. I was keen on starting something that could feed a lot more people. I thought about opening a sandwich shop. I did a few pop-ups and started looking for locations but nothing worked out. At the same time, I heard about the legendary chef Rahul Akerkar opening a new restaurant (Qualia) and I applied for a position in the hot kitchen. I was responsible for the pasta section, which was amazing because I like working with dough and the pasta became really popular.

What led you to start a cloud kitchen and how did you intend to stand out?
Soon after I left Qualia, the pandemic struck, which rekindled the idea of a sandwich shop since people were hungry for well-executed comfort food. There wasn’t really a Western-inspired sandwich culture in Mumbai at the time but because people got into baking bread during the lockdown, a sandwich culture was bound to follow.

My original sandwich shop idea evolved to include pizza. My thinking was that pizza and sandwiches go hand in hand. I had eaten a lot of great pizza during my time in New York, which got me obsessed — and during the pandemic I started fooling around with it, making it at home for my family. It was a no-brainer to start as a cloud kitchen at the time because if there had been another lockdown, you would be stuck paying rent for a restaurant without anyone coming in there. I found a place in Colaba in December 2021.

How did you go about setting up your operations? What did you bring in from past experience?
It took me three months to set up the place. I was very finicky about the kitchen being a certain way. I had to find the right oven. I knew I didn’t want a wood-fired oven, I wanted an electric one. In New York, most of my favourite pizza places used electric ovens. Wood fire is very charming, but I don’t think it adds much in terms of taste. I feel like if you have the right electric oven, the pizza can taste just as good and it’s a lot more consistent, which is important. When you’re trying to churn the pizzas out really fast and have 10 to 15 orders at a time, that wood-fired oven is going to be a pain and maybe a few are not going to be as good as the rest because it’s so hard to maintain and control the heat, unlike electric ovens.

Having mulled over the idea of the sandwich and pizza shop for so long, what has the menu development process been like?
When I started working on the recipes, I thought it would take maybe a few weeks or a month, but it took me five months just to figure out a pizza dough that I was happy with. I did almost a hundred trials. I was just making pizza every day and trying to figure it out. I never imagined how complicated it could be, given that it is just four ingredients that you’re working with. But, the way you mix those ingredients, the proportions, how much water you add, which flour you use, how long you ferment it — all these needed to be figured out. Finally, I settled on a dough after trial number 96. I wanted to simplify the dough process because it’s important for my team to be able to execute it as well as I would. That is why I ruled out a sourdough pizza dough because it has too much margin for error. Now, we’re on pizza dough trial number 103. The pizza dough recipe is still called a trial, even though we’ve been open for a year. And we keep making adjustments in line with changes in the weather to get that perfect light and airy yet crispy pizza crust.

Next came the sandwich bread. We were outsourcing the bread initially but the numbers didn’t work out. It was easier to settle on a recipe, but it still took several trials. We use a Vietnamese Bánh mì-style baguette. Compared to a French baguette, it has a very thin crust and a fluffy interior. The sandwiches got a lot better after we started making our own bread.

The one thing I knew I had to figure out was dessert. Most pizza places serve dough balls with Nutella and stuff like that. But I wanted something lighter. I thought an American-style pudding would fit the bill. Our lemon cheesecake and chocolate puddings do really well. We had a strawberries-and-cream pudding and one with mango, which were seasonal and really popular. We’re using fancy vanilla beans, but besides that they are mainly fruity, creamy and crunchy.

You put out a job opening on Instagram sometime back and it communicated a lot about the work culture you are trying to both desist from and build. Was that intentional?
Most restaurants I have worked at, the hours have been very long, which has been the benchmark in this industry for ages. But I knew I didn’t want to do that. If I was doing that and we were successful and making money, I would have still considered it a failure because an overworked team is not a sign of success. To me, it makes financial sense as well. If you push people so hard, they’re just going to get burnt out and leave in a few weeks or months, or a year. I would rather have people stick around for the long haul, be happy, go home and not think about work.

That’s why, in that hiring post, I was explicit that our shift lasts 10 hours only. In reality, it’s only 9 hours, but I have accounted for some extra time should we occasionally need it. Now, after running this place for a year and seeing how difficult it is to actually make money, I see why other restaurateurs demand such long hours from their teams. If restaurant sales are not reaching their target, the management somehow feels that making people work longer hours will boost sales. However, while sales might increase in the short term, if targets are not met, it’s more likely that there is a problem with the product or experience.

Were you also intending to give your customers an insight into what kind of cloud kitchen it is and the kind of people that are making the food?
That’s not why I posted it and I didn’t think about it at the time. I was just trying to hire a good candidate. But, of course, if I were to see a business posting something like this, I would be more likely to try the food and would try to order often. Our restaurant industry doesn’t have the best reputation. So, anyone who knows anything about what goes on behind the scenes would be happy for things to change for the better.

Who is your typical customer?
Unfortunately, most of our orders come from Swiggy and they don’t share customer data. It is safe to guess that most of the people ordering from us are kind of like pizza nerds, which seems to be every third person nowadays. Most of our food is New York-influenced. Those who’ve never had this kind of food are keen to try it. And those who have been to New York or Philadelphia and have had a cheesesteak sandwich, for example, will also want to relive that experience.

I have also intentionally not marketed East 7th Pizza & Deli a lot because I’m still tweaking things. I feel like it’s always a work in progress and I’m kind of a perfectionist; and I say that in the worst possible way. I’ll keep procrastinating with the marketing because I think maybe pizza dough trial 104 or 105 will be the perfect one and then we can really push our marketing. Currently, marketing has mainly been through word of mouth.

Is that also a result of the name East 7th Pizza & Deli? Your official company name is also interesting.
You could say that. Our official company name is Very Casual Foods. I came up with that name after leaving Masque because I was just so bored with fine dining. It is funny to say that now, since Masque is one of the best restaurants in India. I see myself sticking with fast casual or casual restaurants with thoughtfully executed and ingredient-driven food.

The name East 7th was inspired by the street I lived on in New York. While I was in cooking school, I lived on East 7th Street between 1st Avenue and Avenue A, which is in the East Village. And that one street had so much good food! You could walk down the street in 90 seconds but it had a lot of great tiny establishments. And each of them specialised in just one or two things. There was Luke’s Lobster, which made just seafood sandwiches. There was a Venezuelan arepas place. The building I lived in had an Italian sandwich shop called Porchetta, which just made a roast pork sandwich. Across the street was this soft-serve place called Big Gay Ice Cream, which sold really funky soft serve. And then there was a Chinese teahouse where I would sit and drink tea. That street really inspired me.

How would you describe what a deli is?
In the New York sense, it is your local sandwich place where you pick lunch up on a work day but it also could be where you go to get basic groceries, maybe even some baked goods, without having to make a trip to the supermarket. Within that, there are the bodega-style delis, where the sandwiches are made simply, using just packaged ingredients. Then there are the old-school delis, which make everything from scratch, like Katz’s Deli, which is famous for pastrami. Russ & Daughters is really well-known for their smoked fish. The deli culture came from the Jewish population of New York. But now it has become a trend that has spread across the world.

How do you build trust as a cloud kitchen?
I’m very particular about keeping the kitchen super clean, and also about making sure that ingredients are at their prime. That sense of hygiene was ingrained in me thanks to all my previous work places. Obviously, our food safety laws are not as strict or as strictly enforced over here in India, as compared to New York, but I enforce those same standards anyway.

How has juggling the roles of chef and business owner been for you?
I wish I could just cook and focus on the food because it would be so much easier. Half my time is spent managing people, even though I only have a team of nine. Just trying to keep them all on track and training them keeps me significantly occupied.

I’m terrible at marketing. So that’s another thing that I wish I would just not have to do. I keep hoping that if my food is good enough, I won’t have to do any marketing and people will just come anyway. And that’s obviously the dream. In New York, if you have an amazing restaurant, even if it’s a tiny one, the word is going to spread so fast that you’ll have queues down the road. But over here, I don’t think that’s possible because we are offering a niche product. Having said that, I’m not necessarily trying to reach a wide audience. I’m just trying to find the right people who want something delicious that’s made with care, attention and good ingredients.

What ended up being easier than you thought?
I don’t think anything has been easier than I thought. Most things have been harder than I thought. However, when someone tries your food, especially if it’s a stranger, and tells you that they loved it, you feel good and you feel like it’s all been worth it.

What is the perfect order from East 7th Pizza & Deli?
Our menu is not very long because I want every item to be super delicious. A Ray’s Cheese Pizza, our version of a margherita with extra buffalo mozzarella and parmesan cheese; a Pork Belly Bánh mì, which is meaty and spicy; and a lemon cheesecake pudding!

Previous: Kunal Makhija, Arabisque
Next: Kartikeya Ratan and Rishabh Doshi, Kiki & Pastor

Wine & Dine

Text and Photography by Mallika Chandra.

Kartikeya Ratan, 32 and Rishabh Doshi, 32
Kiki & Pastor
Location: Bandra
Speciality: Mexican

Kartikeya, tell me about your beginnings as a chef and how you co-founded Kiki & Pastor.
Kartikeya Ratan (KR): For the last decade or so, I’ve worked at a number of fine dining restaurants in India and abroad. And I increasingly felt that I wanted to cook more soul food, comfort food — food that actually satiates. When I returned to Mumbai from Delhi in 2019, I felt like the pandemic had taken a big toll on the nightlife of the city. There wasn’t any place where you could just hang out and not have to sit down and dine in. A taqueria was a great way of bringing that vibe in. But given the circumstances of COVID-19, things were very uncertain around 2020-2021, and yet Rishabh and I kept discussing how we could do it on a small scale.

While I was home during the lockdown, I started selling taco kits and there was a good response. But I wasn’t happy as a chef although the product was doing fine. I wanted more control. So now, we no longer send customers the ingredients and ask them to assemble it. We build your taco and deliver it to you. We are also big on catering because tacos are a lot like chaat, right? You want to eat them fresh. And yet, the deliveries work because we have a good radius, being in Bandra.

A lot has been spoken and written about how Mexican food just doesn’t do well in Mumbai. Do you think there’s something in particular that is working for you?
KR: I think one thing we realised pretty early on was that there’s no substituting good ingredients. Working in fine dining taught me that no dish can be greater than the ingredients used in it. And I think that with Mexican food, that is very true. You can’t just make a mole (sauce) out of a Bhavnagri chilli, for instance. Sometimes, sourcing a good, dried chilli from Mexico is crucial. Freshness also plays a huge role in components that are almost served raw, as is the case with most of our salsas and marinades. So freshness takes precedence over everything else and the quality of ingredients can never be compromised.

How have you tried to elevate or differentiate your food from what is available in the city?
KR: A lot of people ask us for Indianised versions of things because that’s what they’ve grown up eating. You may have seen corn queso balls on our menu, but they won’t taste like the ones available at New Yorker in Mumbai, for instance. In no way are we saying that we are better or dissing an experience that we too have grown up eating. But we are offering a new experience when it comes to eating Mexican food. There’s more to Mexican food than just putting cheddar sauce over everything.

Tell us how you are able to deliver the food as fresh as possible.
KR: Delivery is a difficult format. Especially during the monsoons, it becomes tough for a rider to get your food to you in perfect condition. But people still expect to get piping-hot food; fresh food shouldn’t get soggy, hard or dry. One of the things we do is that we add either a layer of chilmole or a jam that we make with salsa verde between the meat and the tortilla so that the juices from the meat don’t make the tortillas soggy. We also do a double tortilla so that even if the first tortilla gets soggy, you can just slap the second one over it.

Rishabh Doshi (RD): Basically, proportions matter. So, if you sauce it up too much or too little, it’ll change your whole experience of the taco.

KR: Absolutely. When we hire a new chef, we can taste the difference between them and someone who’s been making it for four or five months and has understood what these sauces do. Everyone has their own tastes and the dish gets its personality from there. So, the question that arises is how do you give it that personality while maintaining a high standard? It comes from the base recipes, which are tried and tested for a long time before we put them out there.

Tell us a little more about how you set up processes for the cloud kitchen model.
KR: Mostly, it was about keeping in mind the taqueria concept and the freshness of the produce. When we fixed on a delivery model, where the food was going to be on the road for 30 to 40 minutes, we had to do a lot of tests. Rishabh lives in Bhandup and I live in Wadala. So, I would send him dishes, and we would note how they travelled. Did it get soggy? Did we need two tortillas or extra salsa? From that exercise we decided to send the salsa separately, for example.

In terms of prep, it was very different from when I worked in restaurants that served tasting menus. At Eleven Madison Park in New York, for instance, we knew that 120 people were going to be coming in for dinner each night and that 14 dishes would be going out to each guest. In a cloud kitchen, you may not get orders for, say, two hours straight, and then suddenly they may come in non-stop until midnight. A match might mean people are ordering in or if it’s a long weekend and people are out travelling, then orders reduce. Still, there’s no way of gauging the volume of business for a particular day.

We try to keep the prep fresh, but we balance that with some back-up, which will last a little longer. We are very particular about the shelf life of our guacamole and pico de gallo. It’s better to make them twice a day, rather than to serve them the day after. Whereas we make refried beans in bulk because it tastes better the next day. Like dal makhani. Our pork carnitas and lamb barbacoa are made in big batches because they need to be cooked for four to six hours in the oven. So, we freeze them in batches. For the tortillas, we actually have this lady coming in every day. She makes them fresh for the lunch and evening services. We know now that we will need about 200 tortillas from Tuesdays to Thursdays. On weekends, we need more.

I would’ve thought that as a chef-driven taqueria you would be making the tortillas in-house.
KR: At first, we tried to make the tortillas ourselves but it’s tough to get it right every single time. At the same time, we were looking for someone to make a tiffin for our staff lunch. It struck us then that the person who makes the rotis that came in our tiffin could perhaps be trained to make our tortillas. So, we took a chance and reached out to her. It took some time for her to get used to the different flour but she turned out to be an expert. Even today, if I tell my cooks to make the tortillas, they’ll take probably four hours to do what she does in one.

People ask us, “How come your tortillas aren’t masa?” Firstly, there’s no corn available in India. There are some farms that are doing it, but it’s not the same. Even the calcium that you get in India, the chuna, it’s not the same quality. We tried multiple batches and there’s a long way to go in terms of sourcing and finding the right grinder because you need that volcanic stone. So, when we do get it right, we’ll do it but we did not want to do it half-baked.

How did you think about the branding, the naming and positioning of your taqueria?
KR: Kiki was my nickname when I lived in Goa many years ago. We then discovered that Kiki also means “get-together”. In African-American slang, the LGBTQIA+ community calls it a “Kiki” when you’re getting together to gossip, drink and have fun. The pastor, on the other hand, is considered by some to be the greatest of all tacos; it’s a topic of debate in Mexico City. We just wanted to give a fun name.

RD: In that same spirit, we do a few specials, especially on match days. We also do a Taco Tuesday special, where you can make your own combos. That pushes people to try new things because you can get a single piece instead of ordering a full portion. It’s also because Tuesdays are generally considered slower in terms of business.

KR: Plus, the guacamole is free on Tuesdays.

RD: In terms of the design, our designer flaked on us and it was too close to launch to find someone else. The only option was to do it ourselves. We did multiple iterations based on a list of keywords that we wanted the brand to be associated with, like “approachable” and “fresh”. That led to the primary colour of the branding being a muted green. The logo itself is hand-drawn and in it, the taco is bitten into already because we want to portray it as so good that you forget to take a photo.

KR: Which is actually seen in a lot of Instagram posts where we are tagged. We see a lot of bitten tacos.

RD: We have a few people who’ve taken a photo of an empty plate and said, “I forgot to click it, but it was amazing.” And that’s exactly what we want.

KR: Tacos are often called “ugly delicious” so they don’t need to look perfect. We don’t cut our tortillas with a cookie cutter either because we want that organic shape. That imperfection makes it approachable.

How do you employ social media?
RD: Unlike in a restaurant, things aren’t happening with us all the time. We also do not want to overwhelm our followers. So, we moderate our social media uploads. Reels that share a glimpse of the kitchen and the behind-the-scenes activities generally do well so every day at noon, we post something from the kitchen that announces we are open for orders.

KR: We do want to put a face to this otherwise invisible operation.

RD: Our kitchen is kept spotlessly clean by the team. We actually had a couple of customers come in just to see the kitchen. One of them wanted to do catering and one of them wanted to place an order. He wanted to see the place that he’s ordering from.

Would you say convincing your customers to order the best recommendation is your biggest challenge?
KR: When you’re in a restaurant, you have a server who recommends dishes. And when people call us, we do the same. But most of our orders come through Swiggy, Zomato or our website. So, there’s no room for recommendations. There’s no room for understanding what they are looking for. It is also challenging to communicate the size of our portions. People have all kinds of expectations. It’s easier to manage those expectations face-to-face.

Do you feel like there is pressure to employ social media and put your persona out there?
KR: This takes me back to when Instagram started. Friends, both chefs and otherwise, told me to post more. But when I was working in kitchens, we just weren’t allowed to use our phones on the job and that is something that’s stuck with me. So, it doesn’t come naturally to me to take a photo and post about something I cook. When I’m cooking, I’m cooking.

Rishabh has considered making a brand out of me as a chef but for me the food is enough. I’m not Mexican. I haven’t grown up around this food. It is something I’m extremely passionate about. I enjoy eating tacos myself. But if you look at my personal Instagram, people are disappointed to not find any food there.

I am now okay with being in front of the camera because I do realise that people want to see the faces behind the food. Otherwise, you’re just another cloud kitchen. So, when we do events, we make sure that at least one of us is attending. It makes sense for people to know about you. When you know the story behind why someone is doing something, you appreciate it more.

Did you anticipate that cloud kitchens would become a long-lasting format?
KR: I think so because even someone like me, who was never a person to order in, did so during the pandemic. Post-pandemic, there are so many cloud kitchens opening up, and so many shutting on a regular basis as well. But there are a few that have stuck because they have modified their product to fit the delivery model. A lot of restaurants have also realised that a chunk of their business is coming from delivery. The culture has shifted drastically. There is also an interest in trying something new. I think people are going to continue ordering in. But the product, and the way that kitchens think about their product while delivering it, is going to make the difference and be the deciding factor in whether that brand succeeds or not.

RD: The perception of a ghost kitchen or a cloud kitchen before the pandemic was that it must be a small place, probably not very hygienic. The food wasn’t supposed to be great, just cheap. But over the last three years, people have realised that these small kitchens are often serving better food than established restaurants. And they’ve allowed them to come into their lives on a daily basis.

What is the perfect order from Kiki & Pastor?
KR: My favourite customer’s order is the same every time and he doesn’t modify anything. It’s three of this, two of this, four of this…. And he gives us an hour’s heads-up. I feel like that’s the perfect order. It’s a big ticket. It’s straightforward.

So, you’re not particular about what is being ordered?
KR: No, order anything from my menu and I am happy. It just gets tricky when a customer makes too many modifications and the food loses its essence.

KR: Our other favourite customer orders a burrito bowl every week and says, “No corn please and thank you,” and I love that. We are quite emotional about our orders.

Previous: Rehan Mehta, East 7th Pizza & Deli
Next: Divesh Aswani, Commis Station

Wine & Dine

Text and Photography by Mallika Chandra.

Divesh Aswani, 33
Commis Station
Location: Mahim
Speciality: Baked goods, kitchen staples, condiments, confectionery, ice creams

What led you to start Commis Station?
I was 70 per cent down the line with my research and development for a restaurant when COVID-19 hit. The only thing that had been left to do was to find a space. So, a year after the lockdown, I kind of just broke the menu down into its basic elements and decided to take off. The only model that seemed to work at the time was the delivery model.

What was the concept of the original restaurant?
It was going to be a very casual space with no specific theme. A place where you could get a really good bowl of pasta, a nice noodle soup, a good roast chicken or sandwich.

And was that the kind of food that you had been making even before you ventured out on your own?
I left Mumbai when I was 17 and I had the luxury and the opportunity to train at Le Cordon Bleu in Sydney. During that course, I was working part-time. I lived in Australia for 10 years and worked at different cafes serving various cuisines. That’s where I picked up most of my cooking style from. I also ate out a lot which kind of defined how I cooked. Australia being a melting pot of cultures, there’s a lot on offer in terms of food and that just opened me up creatively.

So that diversity of cuisine has been carried into Commis Station?
It’s basically what chefs would now define as modern Australian cuisine. They’ve taken influences from different kinds of cuisines and put it together as elements on the menu. I like that you can go to a restaurant as a family of four where a child could want a noodle soup, the mother might want a sandwich or a salad or a fresh pasta and so on. I wanted to create a space where there’s something for everyone, really.

The name Commis Station itself is a nod to professional kitchen structures. An interesting choice instead of something more related to your product. What was the thought there?
There was a lot of thought behind the name. Essentially, a commis is the most junior person in the kitchen hierarchy. The first role that you can apply for in the kitchen is that of a commis and then you climb up the ranks.

Following that hierarchy, the idea was to tell our clients and guests that we are your commis chefs. Everyone was cooking during COVID-19, but they didn’t necessarily want to make fresh noodles or baos or gyoza wrappers. We wanted to be the place where people would reach out and say, “I feel like eating burgers tonight, what can you do for me?” And we’d say, “We can send you the buns, the BBQ sauce, the pickled cucumber, the hand-cut fries and you just have to put it together.”

In our logo, you’ll see the stripes on the lettering. The stripes resemble those on the aprons that commis chefs would wear back in the day. The commis station is where all the mise en place gets done. So basically, the commis station never stops. Even during service, they’re doing last-minute prep jobs and making sure that the kitchen is fully ready to serve.

Why offer simplified gourmet? What gaps are you filling?
The idea is very simple. We use our skill set and provide something that cannot be easily achieved at home. People learned a lot about cooking during COVID-19, but even then, they needed to get staples and condiments. If you look at our sauce range, we started with something familiar — a Sichuan sauce. One of our top-selling dips is the Lebanese garlic spread, which is essentially a toum but we add confit garlic to it to give it our twist. Everything had to be elevated, fresh and something that cannot be made or replicated easily at home. It is a constant battle to do things that other people aren’t doing.

I was surprised to see how short a time it took for a product to get made from scratch and get packed in the box.
Yes, but that does backfire sometimes. For instance, people would like to eat bagels for breakfast. But we start our shift at 8 am and by the time it’s ready, it’s like 10 or 11 am and by the time it reaches them, it’s noon. But it is important to me to create a very comfortable work environment for the team. It was difficult when we started because we didn’t know how much we would sell. Now we are almost certain that we’re going to sell X number of sauces every week so those can be made in small batches. And we’re quite vocal about the things that we make in small batches, things that are made-to-order, things that need 48 hours’ notice. It tastes different when it’s fresh. As opposed to any fancy restaurant in the city, which may still be serving portions that did not sell the day before.

How did you go about setting up your operations and space?
Tough! It was very tough. I don’t even want to think about those days. Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. You kind of have to just be ready for it. We faced a lot of issues from licensing to water to the builders not showing up, and we were building during COVID-19!

I was scouting for deals all around town because so many places were shutting down. So, I was shopping for a coffee machine from one place, picking up someone’s shelves from another part of town, a second-hand oven from somewhere else. It was just full-on hustle mode.

But it was a labour of love and obviously we had to be very careful with what we spent. I wasn’t sure whether this was going to take off. Fortunately, things worked out and Commis Station has been growing both in terms of the services we offer and the business that we can take on.

How do you manage to keep growing?
It really helps to have a very strong team. My team has supported my decisions and backed me up with the long hours, when needed, or adapted to serving at catering gigs we take on at the last minute. I try to lead by example. I’m very proud of the fact that I’m always the first one in and the last one out, I’m very hands-on and that is central in keeping the morale of the team up.

The fact that I speak to all my customers and take their orders also helps. I feel that people have gotten so used to ordering on apps that they have forgotten the old school way of ordering food by calling a local restaurant guy and asking what was available that night. I have this group of select clients who just randomly pick up the phone when they don’t really feel like cooking and say, “Can you sort me out tonight?” And I think that’s a very nice part of the business. I’ve built very strong relationships with my clients, some of whom have even invited me over to their homes for special occasions!

It must take time to maintain these strong relationships. Do you take out time to focus on marketing and social media?
It’s not as well planned or designed as you may think it would be. When you’re an entrepreneur and you’re hands-on and you’re cooking, managing a team, doing sales and talking to customers, you just look for that five-minute gap and you jump on Instagram and post whatever is being done. Sometimes, I’ll be walking by a pile of bread and think that it looks great. And I’ll post that. A lot of it is just very spontaneous and very unplanned and I think that’s what makes it stand out. It’s organic and not staged.

Given that your offering is so much about being chef-driven and elevating staples, do you feel like the business is closely tied to your persona as a chef? How much of yourself do you have to put out on social media when it comes to creating content?
If you look at my profile versus Commis Station’s, I personally have more followers. But I’m not a chef who’s constantly on social media. It’s not that I’m not a social person. But I’m not someone who craves Instagram likes or thinks much about hashtags. I follow very few people. For me, being on Instagram for business is enough.

What are some of the challenges you face as a cloud kitchen?
The toughest part is figuring out how to get the food or the product to the client in the best possible way. That’s always been the challenge and always will be. Some days you can pull off a dessert and then a few months later it’s so hot that you cannot serve that dessert anymore. There’s a lot of science behind cooking, but it’s very hard to convey that to the customer.

It is also difficult to stay motivated while doing the same thing over and over again for years. That’s why I like the catering aspect of the business because it breaks the monotony. We go out, we cook in front of people and we interact.

Do you take time off?
I don’t. It’s mainly because of work that I travel. I’ve been working with Ishka Farms and producing a condiment range with them that’s caper-focused. So I travel to Kochi quite often because I have to be there for the production part of it. I love pop-ups. I do a lot of collaborative dinners. Once the work is over, I spend an extra day or two for fun and come back. That’s always going to be the luxury of being a chef — you can go to any part of the world and have a job.

How do you stay inspired?
It’s a process in itself and it actually happens when there is a lull. A quiet period might feel like something is wrong but usually it’s nothing to worry about. It could just be a festive weekend or maybe people are travelling. And so, every time there’s a lull, I use the time to create something new, post about it and get eyes back onto Commis Station. An idle mind is not always the devil’s workshop.

Some of your items, especially the tiramisu, have a cult following.
It does. I actually got the coffee machine for the kitchen thinking that I’d be this cool guy selling coffee in the compound. That never happened but because of that coffee machine, I started making tiramisu. Life works in mysterious ways. On average, we sell about 150 to 160 kilos of the dessert per month.

What is the perfect order from Commis Station?
It’s always going to be the tiramisu because that never lets you down and it’s in the sharing format, so everyone’s happy. But we can also help you put a meal together, so ordering something from the bakery, some sauces, some condiments, some staples, is a good way to go. I like to encourage people to kind of mix and match. Whenever someone calls for baos, I’ll also suggest ordering the kimchi and sesame. People don’t always have the knack of putting things together so the perfect order would always be to take the suggestions of the chef.

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