Expat chefs light up Mumbai’s indie fine dining scene with their inventive cooking

Almost three years ago, French chef Alexis Gielbaum and his business partner, Canadian Nick Harrison, got together with Riyaaz Amlani of Impresario Entertainment & Hospitality, to give Mumbai its very first French restaurant.

Slink & Bardot broke more than just a few stereotypes. For one, it is located deep within the bowels of the fishing hamlet of Worli Koliwada, an area considered a restaurant graveyard. More audaciously, it focused on modern French cuisine in a country that hasn’t warmed up to it or understands it. The Zodiac Grill, The Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai’s classic French restaurant called it quits a few years ago.

And yet, Mumbai has taken to Slink & Bardot much like, well, a duck takes to water. In a city where restaurants close dime-to-a-dozen, this cavernous, vintage-inspired restaurant-cum-lounge with dim lighting, velvet sofas, foliage and botanical paintings on the wall, black and white chequered tiles and an interesting bar, has held its own.

Warm Chevre cheese salad, La Loca Maria.

It also introduced Mumbai to the phenomenon of indie restaurants run by expat chefs. Delhi has always had its share, but in Mumbai, they were largely confined to luxury hotels. Entrepreneur Nick Harrison and Chef Alexis Gielbaum first met in 2014, when they were working at Le Bistro du Parc in Delhi. Both, incidentally, studied at culinary schools in Paris and dreamt of opening a French bistro. “We moved to Mumbai, tried a few times and were almost giving up, till we met Riyaaz,” says Harrison. “We sold him the concept of a restaurant. The name is partly inspired by French superstar Brigitte Bardot. Think about Bardot slinking into the unglamorous Worli Village,” laughs Harrison.

So successful has this venture been that the two, along with Amlani, just opened a second restaurant Soufflé Si'l Vous Plaît, this time a French bistro, at Churchgate. There is not just a difference between the décor but also the cuisines served at Slink & Bardot and Soufflé, says Chef Gielbaum. “While we focus on modern Parisian cuisine at the former, the latter is dedicated to traditional French dishes.”

Slink & Bardot: The modern French experience

Slink & Bardot’s menu has a lot of small plates in the long-standing French tradition. The food isn’t particularly stuffy and Chef Alexis draws upon his classical French cuisine training, even as he breaks some rules. Steak Tartare is paired with mustard ice cream, while Seafood Paella has been reinvented with Assamese black rice.

Chef Alexis Gielbaum.

The chef scours local markets and farms for ingredients that can replace the ones used back home. Some time ago, he reveals, he went on a road journey into the innards of Maharashtra to source celeriac.

Slink & Bardot.

For dishes such as Tomato and Mozzarella Tart with parmesan sablé, local tomatoes, sautéed spinach and an oil ice cream, he uses local tomatoes. Instead of a classic tart case, it has a crushed Parmesan biscuit-like base on which sweet, skinned tomatoes and gooey mozzarella is cylindrically stacked. “I use a lot of French classic techniques. The tomatoes in this dish are smoked and assembled.”

Soufflé Si'l Vous Plaît: The traditional bistro

Soufflé, inspired by the baked egg-based dish that originated in early 18th-century France, recreates the Parisian bistro experience within Mumbai’s Art Deco district. “We have reimagined Veer Nariman Road as a boulevard and the restaurant to be a tropical bistro,” says Harrison.

Nick Harrison.

The interiors have a pink accent and a photograph of Brigitte Bardot looms over the bar. On the menu are classics such as light-as-air Truffle and Camembert, French Onion soup and salads, says Chef Gielbaum. The bar serves an unusual Jackfruit Cocktails and Calamari. Homard Thermidor (Lobster Thermidor) is coated in Cognac Mornay and Champagne Sabayon, served on a bed of Assamese black rice risotto, with lemony asparagus and clams. Souris d'agneau is slow-cooked for seven hours in white wine and eaten with Gratin Dauphinois and Rosemary Jus.

Soufflé Si’l Vous Plaît.

The superlative vegetarian dish, an old-fashioned French Vol Au Vent with a soft puff pastry, is infused with grainy flavours of mushrooms. In a dish simply called Carottes, the chef presents carrots cooked in different ways, from cured to dehydrated, with carrot pesto. “We want to offer a true blue French dining experience through Soufflé. We have opted for rustic and comfort food from France this time around,” says Chef Alexis Gielbaum.

La Loca Maria: Spanish inventive cooking

The other expat leaving his large footprint on the buzzing Bandra dining scene is Chef Manuel Olveira Seller. His La Loca Maria is inspired by the food cooked by his mother, Maria, who ran the village’s first restaurant in the UNESCO heritage town of Toledo in Spain.  Years later, the ever-effusive Chef Manuel paid tribute to his mother’s wholesome cuisine at this pretty restaurant in the heart of the star-studded suburb, which he runs with his Indian wife Pratima Tuljapurkar.

Chef Manuel Olveira Seller.

“I serve a very small menu focusing on tapas,” says Chef Manuel, seated in his restaurant with murals of a bohemian woman in a languid state of rest on a beach. Gambas al Ajillo or Garlic Shrimp is served with the crunch of crisp garlic, sea bass crudo, grilled octopus and buff carpaccio. Croquettes of mushroom and truffle are simple and wholesome, while warm Chevre Cheese is a riot of flavours bequeathed by poached pear. New Zealand Lamb Wellington is an adventurous dish served with salsa verde, as is Crispy Skin Smoked Salmon with lotus chips and fermented chilli sauce. “We are good for the vegetarians too,” says Chef Manuel, “with dishes such as Miso Glazed Purple Cabbage.”

Charred Octopus.

Much like good European restaurants, Chef Manuel, who cooks himself, serves up a wonderful dessert menu with experiments such as Crema Catalana, infused with flavours of orange sorbet and crumbs, and Sweet & Sour that tastes of lime, chocolate and salted caramel ice cream.

Chef Manuel, whose work experience includes stints in some of the world’s best fine dine restaurants, including Le Cirque Dubai and St. Regis Abu Dhabi, contends Mumbai’s eclectic dining scene is a fertile ground for chefs like him to bring in world cuisines. “There has been quite an evolution in how people dine. The city, at the moment, is exactly where, say, Paris or London was a couple of years ago in their history of culinary evolution. It has a new-found passion for global and experimental cuisines.”

The local produce has got much better and it is easier to find farmers producing organic and fresh produce, as well as suppliers of gourmet ingredients. “Keeping in mind the seasonal produce, I try to balance the flavours and textures.” La Loca Maria is particularly famous for its seafood menu, particularly the much-in-demand charred octopus served on a bed of potato, paprika, mustard and arugula.

This old-school European restaurant with mural festooned walls and alfresco seating is among the long line of restaurants that have allowed expat chefs to bring their little part of the culinary world to Mumbai.

The pioneer: Chef Alex Sanchez at The Table 

A couple of years ago, the former San Francisco chef Alex Sanchez had infused vigour into south Mumbai’s dining scene with The Table, which introduced Mumbaikars to global trends such as farm-to-table and ingredients-driven cooking five years ago. The market-fresh, globally-inspired fusion menu, designed by Chef Alex, changed daily. He was 26 years old then. He now runs his restaurant, Americano that serves simple but delicious food such as handmade pasta, pizzas and roasted chicken and veggies. “Making pasta and rolling pizza with my hands is when I feel most connected to what I do. And so we decided to do just that, with Americano,” he says.

Chef Alex.

But the menu isn’t as simple as that. Chef Sanchez creates sophisticated versions of classic comfort food. The Sweetcorn Ribs has strips of corn on the cob sprinkled with a chilli spice mix and served with green garlic aioli. The Crudo of sea bass is a dish with thinly-sliced sea bass, dusted with cilantro, fried garlic and sprinkled with lime.

Then there was the Korean chef, Kelvin Cheung, who made the seafood-forward restaurant, Bastian, and whom Mumbai lost to Delhi. The dynamism that each of these chefs has introduced to Mumbai’s fine dining scene is likely to inspire more expat chefs to flirt with the city’s indie dining scene.