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Busaba's backstory: Chef-owner Nikhil Chib's biggest secret
How globe-trotting kept his Southeast Asian restaurant in business for 10 years
Nikhil Chib has traveled extensively across Southeast Asia. The Busaba menu is a resultant mix of various cooking styles from Vietnam, Burma, Thailand and Korea.It was 10 years ago today that the original Busaba restaurant and bar opened -- on September 22, 2001 -- in a beautiful bungalow on Mandlik Road, Colaba.
Once a momo and kaukswe caterer, 40-year-old chef owner Nikhil Chib has been collecting milestones in the food business since 1995.
Today he owns Mumbai’s most well-loved Southeast Asian restaurant.
Along with Busaba's 10th anniversary, this year Chib also celebrates the opening of a second branch, next to Blue Frog in Lower Parel’s hip old mill area mid-town.
You don’t go that long in a food-fickle city like Mumbai without a few secrets.
More on CNNGo: Busaba 2: New address, same yummy kaukswe
May I make a recommendation?
Entrance to Busaba 2 in Lower Parel.
Three years after graduating from college in the United States, Mumbaikar Chib opens a seaside restaurant in Goa called Busabong in 1999.
“They were completely mad days," says Chib. "I had no experience in running a restaurant, but a friend in Goa found a great space in the same lane at Tito's, it was almost a shack. We had a Thai chef from Bangkok. I drove down from Bombay in my Fiat with bottles of fish sauce in the back. My friends handled the bar, my dad handled the cash and we had two CDs on repeat. We had absolutely no idea what we were doing and 300 customers a day."
He brings a slice of that bohemia back to Mumbai, opening India’s first Southeast Asian restaurant and bar in 2001.
He loses the “bong,” and calls it Busaba. But it’s a laid-back space and has always been.
Regulars start to call it Busa for short and keep coming back for seconds of kaukswe.
“It's the kind of place you can come to alone and have a drink and some food at the bar -- the food always tastes fresh,” says Sumeet Chopra, Busaba’s oldest client.
“Nikhil’s really honest about his food, he’s conscientious,” says Chopra. “You ask the manager Gary if the crab’s good today and he’ll be honest. And not just with me, with everyone.”
This may not add up to the most profitable way to do business reckons Chopra, but there you have it: a case for integrity.
Chib says Chopra orders Busaba food four to five times a week, and has done for the past six years. Obviously they’re friends now.
Chopra estimates it to be more like eight times a week over seven years.
Repeat orders include the steam fish with chilies, the sizzling fish, the kaukswe and the prawns with lemongrass and rock salt.
Fish sauce and suitcases
Busaba's tiger prawns in lemongrass.
Travel forms the big inspiration in Chib’s life, and has led him to discover not only culinary success but love and marriage as well.
“Travel has helped him,” says Chopra. “I remember Nikhil telling me about going to Vietnamese homes and picking up recipes first-hand.”
After
one of these trips to Vietnam in 2002, Chib brings back Vietnamese chef Nhan Nguyen to Busaba
and discovers the art of pho, a Vietnamese rice noodle dish.
On one of his numerous trips to Thailand, Chib brings back his
own kaffir lime, 50 bottles of fish sauce in his suitcase and a Thai lady
chef.
In Seoul in 2004 Chib indulges in bibimbap and bulgogi and invites back yet another chef, Korean Kim Moon Ja.
While surfing the Internet one year, Chib chances upon a Burmese chef and student of climatology. He sends her a ticket to Mumbai and welcomes her to Busa.
Liberatta makes her version of kaukswe. Chib adapts his recipe to hers and that is how the distinctive Busaba kaukswe was born.
No, they
do not fall in love and get married.
That happens in 2005 when Chib meets an Indian-American girl stopping
by Mumbai on her way to backpacking with her sister in Southeast Asia.
By the
end of the year they’re in Paris, where he’s learning the French art of
cooking and she’s working in fashion.
All September, lunch momos and kaukswe for Rs 500, all inclusive.
Busaba sheds its bohemian outfit in 2007 and gets a classy avatar. Nikhil and Natasha get married.
A television show on NDTV Good Times called “The Chef and His Better Half”, starring them both, completes 48 episodes in 2008.
In 2010 Busaba is awarded best stand-alone oriental restaurant by the Times Good Food Guide. And in 2011 the original Busaba turns 10 and Busaba 2 opens.
What's in it for you? An unlimited lunch offer at both Busaba outlets all September. Momos (chicken, prawn, pork or vegetarian) and kaukswe (chicken, prawn, lamb or vegetarian), at Rs 500 all inclusive.
4 Mandlik Road, Colaba; +91 (0)22 2204 3769; Also at Mathuradas Mills Compound, Tulsi Pipe Road, Lower Parel; +91 (0)22 6747 8971; www.busaba.net
Lunch noon-3 p.m., dinner 6 p.m.-1 a.m., seven days a week.
A rare shot of the original Busaba in Colaba, before the 2007 renovation which toned down its bohemian side down and upped its sex appeal.
