As buzzy restaurants top eating-out lists, have luxury hotels fallen behind?

Sadhu’s career graph mirrors that of many other young chefs in India—starting in a large kitchen and learning the ropes of the food and beverage (F&B) business, moving to work as a chef for a restaurant with a concept, and finally opening a speciality, gourmet restaurant to make a name for themselves. “Back then, if you had a job in a hotel, you had arrived," says Sadhu, 38. “It was the epitome of success. Over time, though, room revenue and banquet billings have taken precedence over dining concepts. The restaurant industry has evolved, but the hotel playbook hasn’t changed since the late 1990s or early 2000s. F&B has taken a backseat," he says, explaining why a number of young chefs prefer to go it alone.

There’s never been a better time for Indian food: it is being championed by talented chefs abroad and at home, our restaurants are winning prestigious awards, diners are enthused about sampling regional cuisine, and hot restaurant reservations are viewed as social currency. At Sadhu’s Naar, the tasting menu experience set in the foothills of the Himalayas turns the focus on seasonal ingredients of the mountains. In Bengaluru, Kavan Kuttappa has a 20-seater restaurant, Naru Noodle Bar, that is best known for four ramens in beautiful broths. In Mumbai, Hussain Shahzad’s intimate 12-seater chef’s table experience at Papa’s recreates the relaxed feel of an old home while serving Indian food that’s a little bit playful and inspired by global techniques. Chef-entrepreneurs are coming up with some of the most sophisticated dining concepts to feed the demands of the well-travelled urban diner. But barring a few exceptions, hotel restaurants are not part of this great experiment.

The 2024 India Food Services Report, published by the National Restaurants Association of India, states that the restaurant sector contributes 1.9% to India’s GDP and is projected to grow to ₹7.76 trillion by 2028 from ₹5.69 trillion currently. This growth is being driven primarily by standalone restaurants, but this wasn’t always the case.

“In the 1990s in India, good food meant dining at a five-star hotel. Now, the high-end diner in India is eating out in standalone restaurants—that’s where they can be assured of unique storytelling, a pampered experience, superlative service and of course, an excellent F&B product. The scene is buzzing with ideas, eager investors, new takes on cuisines and ambition," says Siddhaarth Jalan, academy chair for India and subcontinent, The World’s 50 Best Restaurants.

From the 1970s till about the 1990s, the Taj Group was considered the tastemaker of India. Camellia Panjabi, now known for popularising fine Indian cuisine across London via restaurants like Chutney Mary, Amaya and Masala Zone, was then an employee of the Taj Group and launched restaurants that are now regarded as institutions. The papers and glossy magazines were full of dazzling stories of glamorous folks dining at Zodiac Grill at Taj Colaba and Thai Pavilion at Taj President in Mumbai and Orient Express at Taj Palace in New Delhi, all exciting new restaurants at the time. In the 1970s, Bukhara opened at ITC Maurya and introduced an eat-with-your-hands philosophy.

That spirit of experimentation and excitement seems to be lacking today. Amid rising operational costs and economic shifts, luxury hotels have turned their focus to the more lucrative opportunities of hosting weddings and conferences. Instead of standout creative menus, they offer special shaadi packages that cater to big wedding spenders and play it safe.

That said, hotel restaurants and standalone restaurants cater to entirely different bands of customers and have distinct ways of operating. Says food author Marryam H. Reshii, “Standalones have a one-point agenda, while hotels have to balance room revenue, guest preferences, banquet billings and all kinds of overheads. By the time a hotel launches a concept, the world has moved on. I’d personally love to see more representation from across India on our hotel menus. How much can you flog a butter chicken?"

Since hotel restaurants run full, either with in-house guests or non-residents, the incentive to change things up and take a risk to attract younger, more experimental diners is low. But, corporate hotel chefs and F&B managers are realising that the dining-out scene has transformed.

“We aren’t just competing with other hotel brands, but with the entire restaurant industry," says Satbir Bakshi, corporate chef de cuisine at The Oberoi Hotels & Resorts. He had a chat with his management about this a few years ago when they realised that roughly 50% of diners at The Oberoi New Delhi were non-residents. “Frangipani and India Jones (at Trident, Nariman Point, Mumbai, part of The Oberoi group) have been successful restaurants for 20 years. But they’ve also been the same for that long."

Prompted by this realisation, the group is revamping F&B across their properties with a view to draw back local diners. “Building a successful restaurant brand requires strategic positioning within the hotel and a clear, distinct identity. Gone are the days of generic hotel restaurants. Each outlet now needs its own personality," Bakshi says. In Mumbai and Delhi, for instance, their guests include business travellers, expatriates, HNIs, and affluent millennials. “They are well-travelled, and so our F&B offerings align with global trends. In tourist-centric locations like Udaipur and Jaipur, guests seek hyperlocal culinary experiences."

SHOWING THE WAY

While young diners might be excited about what hot new chef-table restaurants bring to the scene, hotels help build a robust restaurant ecosystem. There is an upside to scale. Bakshi points out how hotels can open up supply chains for the entire industry. “In 2012, Indian diners weren’t familiar with burrata. Having tasted it abroad, I hunted down a supplier in Bengaluru, we figured out a distribution system, and slowly, other hotels and restaurants began ordering from him. Thanks to the scale and volume of orders that hotels make, homegrown brands can thrive and contribute to better quality ingredients across restaurants, building a better ecosystem."

Nikhil Nagpal, chef culinaire, Avartana, a south Indian focused, fine-dining restaurant chain, ITC Hotels, has a different view about what hotel restaurants bring to the table. He says diners come to hotels expecting consistent quality. They aim to create dining concepts over time, which can scale across multiple locations. While expanding Avartana (which opened in 2017 and is often on “best restaurant" lists) across Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai and Delhi, certain ingredients, like the pepper and cumin for the restaurant’s clarified ‘rasam’, are shipped from Chennai to ensure the same depth of flavour for the dish that has become the restaurant’s calling card. Chefs too travel between the different cities to ensure consistency and quality. The concept of elevated south Indian cuisine itself took two years to bring to life. “When a distinct restaurant identity is brought together with a good team, it leads to great results," says Nagpal.

Both Bakshi and Nagpal highlight the need for a unique identity to make a hotel restaurant stand out from the crowd. Restaurateur and hotelier Abhishek Honawar, who owns 28 Kothi and The Johri in Jaipur, says that a restaurant can survive within a hotel only if both have “separate identities that are cohesive, with independent storytelling abilities. Yes, the diner still wants to experience traditional cuisines, but it must be made relevant to them". To do that, classic flavours and ingredients have to be reimagined without compromising on history.

Pune-based Ajit Naimpally, 83, dines out at least twice a week with his wife and friends, and loves sampling new menus at hotels. He says for older customers, restaurant hotels offer predictability, comfort and personalised service. “When I dine out, I want to be assured of not just good food but comfortable seating, valet parking and accessibility. I can’t take my wife to a dimly-lit place with only high seating that serves small bites and clarified cocktails."

In other words, the idea is to keep customers returning by offering a sense of dependability without being boring. While the hotel dining scene and the standalone restaurant industry serve different purposes, the diner looks at the restaurant segment as a whole when making a decision about where to go for dinner. Factors like consistency and price are important, but also, elements like vibe, the chef’s persona and backstory, and the level of experimentation with a cuisine all come into play when this dining out decision is being taken. And it’s here where hotels fall behind.

DIFFERENT FLAVOURS

While diners may desire sameness, it can become tedious for chefs. When asked why he moved away from a career in hotels, Sadhu replies: “Honestly? I was bored, burnt out and tired of all the politics. In a hotel structure, the more you grow as a chef, the more you move away from the kitchen. There’s so much admin and paperwork involved—if you want to grow as a chef, you need to be in the kitchen, not signing documents."

Other chefs who have made a similar shift include Niyati Rao of Mumbai’s Ekaa and Bombay Daak, Pallavi Mithika Menon, co-founder of Bengaluru’s NAVU Project, and Countertop India’s Pankaj Balachandran, the man behind some of India’s coolest bar concepts. All of them began at the Taj Group. Hunger Inc.’s Hussain Shahzad started at The Oberoi Hotels & Resorts. Whether it’s burnout, the desire for creative independence, or dissatisfaction with corporate constraints, their journeys from hotel employees to entrepreneurs weren’t linear. But they all point to the fact that the hotel ecosystem in India may not inspire or foster young talent.

It isn’t hard to see why: standalone restaurants offer faster career growth and high visibility, especially in the age of social media and storytelling. For a young chef slaving away in a back kitchen of a hotel, the standalone life is bound to seem more glamorous.

“Young talent doesn’t see that Prateek is the exception, not the rule. They are enamoured by the success, but they don’t see his years of training, hard work, the risk he took or the financial uncertainty that comes with running your own business and learning on the job," explains Bakshi. Still, to retain talent, the group offers structured culinary programmes, leadership development platforms like The Oberoi Centre of Learning and Development (OCLD) and global training stints with brands such as Mandarin Oriental hotels across Asia.