Restaurant Week Mumbai: 7 days, 7 restaurants

At Rs 1,000 per head, Restaurant Week Mumbai offers some of the best value food in the city.

What do you get? Mumbai's first Restaurant Week. 

Thanks to them the lunch and dinner menu is fixed at Rs 1,000 per head (before taxes and alcohol) at seven of the city's finest dining establishments for the week of September 6 through 12.

That includes Indigo, Tote, India Jones (at Trident), San-Qi (at the Four Seasons), Stella (at the Leela), Botticino (at the Trident BKC) and newbie Koh by Ian Kittichai (at the Intercontinental).

And all it took to jump start this much-loved concept copied from cities like New York and London, was the gumption of four men: Azeem Zainulbhai, Nachiket Shetye, Mangal Dalal, and Satish Shewale.

Foursome food fetish

Not surprisingly, the foursome share a common appetite for fine food.

Shetye, 28, is chef of popular eatery East, and previously worked at New York restaurants like Penang. Dalal, 27, is a food critic and journalist with the Indian Express. Shewale, in his 40s, is a restaurant manager at Ivy and Azeem, 28, is a former private equity professional now venturing into the restaurant business. 

Each played a big role in getting Restaurant Week off the ground. Dalal is "the brains" behind the enterprise, Shewale has the know-how, Zainulbhai brought his finance and negotiating skills to the table, while Shetye is considered "the son who keeps yelling at us and asking for more," according to Zainulbhai.

By enticing Mumbai's eat-out crowd with an affordable prix fixe menu, the foursome hope to extend the restaurant culture in Mumbai. 

Washington DC native Zainulbhai recalls, "We were sitting around and wondering if Restaurant Week had happened in India. We had all traveled globally and experienced this concept. In the United States, every city has it. In a way, it forces you to get together with people. Especially because you didn’t normally go out to lunch and this gave you an opportunity to go because even your bosses were going out during that week. It was an excuse to skip work!" 

Indigo and Tote's MD and director of cuisine Rahul Akerkar suggests that Restaurant Week helps people who may be intimidated by a place overcome that fear "by making it more accessible."

Rahul Akerkar from Tote hopes Mumbaikers will pounce on the chance to explore food they wouldn't usually.

A repertoire to protect 

Each of the seven restaurants has designed a menu to reflect its repertoire. 

Joy Bhattacharya, executive chef at the Trident in Nariman Point, says, "India Jones' menu is so varied that guests sometimes tend to miss out on our signature dishes. We think Restaurant Week will be an ideal opportunity through which we can introduce -- or re-introduce -- our diners to the favorites on our menu." 

Romil Ratra, general manager of the Intercontinental at Marine Drive, home to new Thai restaurant Koh, says, "We went all out with the menu. We decided to offer customers a choice. For example, we have tuna ceviche or the chef's spicy seafood broth. We've got rice and curry of course but also a desert sampler.

"We've engineered it in such a way so that you'll get the entire Koh experience from the amouse bouche to multiple menu choices. People couldn't understand why a brand new restaurant would give away a meal at Rs 1,000, but our chef Ian Kittichai has always been part of Restaurant Week in New York and we would like to promote this culture in Mumbai." 

According to Restaurant Week's creators in Mumbai, every single F&B manager and chef involved loved the idea. 

"Restaurant Week gives a lot of people the opportunity to see the restaurant since the price point reaches out to a different market altogether," says Mickhiel Pinto, communications manager at deGustibus, parent company of Indigo and Tote. "It's a big drop down compared to our regular spend but we wanted to do it." 

The Four Seasons, famed for its great food, is also taking part.

Computer, book me a table

While the concept might sound fairly straightforward, putting it together wasn't. 

It took about a year to get off the ground. "Like in any situation we had to define the concept, talk to consumers and figure out our roles. Building the website was complicated! We had to figure out which restaurants we wanted and how to approach them," Zainulbhai explains.

The group gets no monetary benefit out of the project but managed to recover their start-up costs by getting Kotak Mahindra Bank involved via their credit card arm.

Participating restaurants have dedicated 40 percent of their tables to Restaurant Week, and bookings are only handled through the Restaurant Week website, www.restaurantweekindia.com.

You have to sign up and once registered (it's free), you can make a reservation for either lunch or dinner. Timings vary but typically lunch is 12:30 p.m. and dinner between 7:30 or 8 p.m., depending on the restaurant. 

While menus can't be accessed on the site links to each establishment are provided, so you can call to check the prix fixe menu. The only foreseeable glitch is testing this new reservation system.

I tried booking some lunches and found the process seamless enough. After making a reservations, you get a simple confirmation email in your inbox. 

If this week goes well, Restaurant Week will roll out across other cities too. With just word of mouth marketing, the buzz has already spread and tables are going fast.

Participation involves a big drop in price for most of these restaurants, so make sure you make the most of it!