Chef Matteo Boglione, at the newly opened Le Cirque Signature in Mumbai, said that when he was getting started at the offshoot of one of New York’s elite restaurants, he was told repeatedly: “We want more vegetables.”
So, alongside the pricey US$130 Florentine-style T-bone steak (for two) the menu features dishes such as a cauliflower flan with porcini and avocado panzanella, buffalo mozzarella fondue and black truffle shavings, at a more affordable 1,250 rupees (US$20.40).
The branch of New York’s venerable Le Cirque, at the Leela Mumbai hotel, is the latest in a wave of overseas-based high-end eateries to enter a country that has been slow to embrace the global-restaurant trend that has taken hold in cities like Dubai and Hong Kong.
Photo: Reuters
Top-end restaurants are targeting India’s growing affluent classes. Indian household wealth nearly doubled to US$2 trillion in five years through last year, according to Boston Consulting Group, which expects that to grow to US$4.5 trillion in 2017. Millionaire households totaled 164,000 last year.
Other global chains in India include London-based Chinese-themed Hakkasan, which opened in 2011, and its less-expensive sister, Yauatcha, a hit in Mumbai that will soon open its fourth Indian location. Last year, Spain’s Arola opened at the JW Marriott in suburban Mumbai.
Top flight international chains in India face the challenge of matching the standards of the original, while adapting to preferences in a country where many people are vegetarians and most do not eat beef for religious reasons. Most ingredients are imported, which pushes up costs and prices.
Meanwhile, Indian consumers have proven reluctant to splash out on branded luxuries, such as designer labels, said Vir Sanghvi, a journalist and food writer.
“So far, India has been immune to the culture of the global restaurant, because India is a price-sensitive market,” he said.
While foodie culture of the sort that is rampant in many places is in its infancy in India, operators of fancy restaurants hope to build their niche as incomes grow and more Indians who travel develop a taste for high-end dining. About 6 to 8 percent of guests at Le Cirque in New York are from India.
“It feels a little pioneering to us,” Mario Maccioni, whose father Sirio opened the original Le Cirque in 1974, said at a pre-opening dinner at the Mumbai restaurant.
High-end chains in India and other emerging markets tend to be in hotels, which operate them as franchises and bear much of the cost, but have a built-in customer base and use the brands as a draw for other hotel business.
Given a poor track record for French restaurants in India, often perceived to be meat-heavy and for special occasions, the local Le Cirque menus play up the Italian side of the chain’s French-Italian offerings.
“French restaurants have struggled. We didn’t want to be put in that category,” said Rajiv Kaul, president of The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts, part of Hotel Leelaventure Ltd, which in February will open a Le Cirque Signature in Bangalore.
At the Le Cirque in New Delhi’s Leela Palace Hotel, which opened in 2011, the average check is 5,000 to 6,000 rupees per person, putting it among India’s most expensive restaurants. It generates nearly 10 million rupees a month, Kaul said.
Another import at the New Delhi hotel, New York-based Japanese chain Megu, does nearly as much business, but at lower margins because almost every ingredient is imported, he said.
Kaul expects spending per person at Le Cirque Signature in Mumbai, which is smaller and less formal than the New Delhi restaurant, to be about 20 percent lower than in New Delhi, where customers tend to buy more expensive wine.
For Boglione, a 38-year-old native of Florence, Italy, adapting to India means cooking more vegetarian items than he was accustomed to and planning further ahead to source hard-to-find ingredients. He recently found purveyors of porcini mushrooms and yellow beetroot.
“With vegetables, you can do nice stuff,” he says.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six