Before us now are scrumptious butter-poached scallops and lobster tail enclosed in disks of pasta sheet, served with a seafood-flavoured lemon sauce. As I get all the way down to sprucing it off, Ritu strolls off to greet a gaggle of 6 girls out to have fun a birthday. The restaurant is buzzing now, on a Wednesday night, and it’s no surprise why. There is nice meals, a private contact and the type of service that makes for a loyal buyer base. When she returns to the desk, I ask Ritu if she would agree that the trajectory of her journey has been a love for meals to a love for cooking to a love for entertaining to a love (quite, a pointy acumen) for enterprise. And that this highway to success has not been simple as a lady or as a restaurateur beginning off when the tremendous eating business itself was at a nascent stage.
‘It can’t be easy, ever,’ says Ritu. Among the happiest moments, she remembers, is a night quickly after DIVA opened. She couldn’t afford sufficient servers then, and cooked and ushered and served herself. Her youthful sister, Micky, and her former accomplice, Gita would come over to assist. Credit card machines had simply been launched in India, and DIVA was but to get one. So, each evening, the three of them would sit at desk no. 9, behind the bar, and rely the money the restaurant had earned that day. “I’ll never forget the day we touched 25,000 rupees for the first time. We were thrilled! We went to Pandara Road at 1 am. There’s a guy there who sells jalebis and paan, and we just ate and ate and ate. It was so satisfying—honestly.”
Her most heartbreaking expertise was when she almost went bankrupt after investing in a meals court docket at a mall in 2006. “We put in shitloads of money, and for whatever reason, the mall never took off. We ended up in a mall with not even two tenants. I used to have an apartment in London–I had to mortgage that. I took loans. If I think about it, that was not being courageous. It was stupid—taking on something so capital-intensive.”
“But,’ she continues, ‘when you talk about the art of business versus creativity, I think I’m very blessed. I was born with dreams of being a businesswoman and the creative part of my soul taught me how to cook. It’s a devil versus angel situation. Sometimes the devil wins, sometimes the angel wins. DIVA is 25, yes, but I’ve also had a lot of failures in my life. And I’ve realized one thing. All the love for food is of no point if you can’t pay your staff their salaries, and if you can’t sustain your business for others to appreciate your creativity.”
“See, I’m a good chef, but am I a super-talented chef? No, I’m not.” I take a look at her quizzically. ‘It’s true,’ she emphasises. ‘So, Viviana Varese is our business partner in Italy. She is a super, super talented, Michelin-star chef, and I’m envious of her. My talent is not at that level. And I’m also grateful for that. You know why? Because when the talent is of that level, it overtakes every other business sense. Worldwide, very creative chefs always have a business manager or another person to run the business for them. Here, the good part is, I’m a decent chef, but I’m also a decent businesswoman. And between the two, I think I have a winning formula. Because there’s an emotional quotient, and there’s also a very practical, sensible quotient. And one doesn’t overtake the other. It’s a constant fight. But, at the end of the day, I really think your bottom line has to make sense.’
Does a diva ever retire?
