Our Gastro Legacy: The enduring appeal of Rang Mahal
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CNA Lifestyle
Our Gastro Legacy: The indelible appeal of Rang Mahal
It started 47 years ago at the old Imperial Hotel with a dancer and tabla actor. At present it has its sights assault the earth and a Michelin star or two.
The sometime Imperial Hotel on Jalan Rumbia, off River Valley Road. (Photograph: Rang Mahal)
12 Apr 2022 03:17PM (Updated: 03 Jul 2022 07:39AM)
Every week, a new restaurant is born in Singapore. So various are our city'south offerings that we have eateries serving Spanish small plates, French nouvelle cuisine, new-fangled bak chor mee, gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches, and Chinese dim sum dyed bluish. No doubt virtually it — if you can remember it, we have information technology.
But like all things trendy, what's hot today often turns stone common cold in a affair of six months. Throw in high rents, a lack of manpower and rise nutrient costs, and the average life bridge of a eatery in Singapore is woefully brusk. All also often, restaurants shutter as soon as their leases run out. Which is why a home-grown eating house that has managed to not only stay in business, only thrive for 47 years, is something worth celebrating.
Many recollect of Rang Mahal every bit an Indian fine-dining restaurant that opened at the Pan Pacific Singapore in the early Noughties. What they don't realise is that its history goes back to 1971, when it started life as a casual family restaurant serving traditional Indian fare at the now-defunct Majestic Hotel, about the quondam National Theatre off River Valley Road.
"At that time, it was also quite a musical place," recalled Rang Mahal's managing director, Mrs Ritu Jhunjhnuwala. "We had a sitar thespian, a tabla player, and there was too a dancer. People used to come to Rang Mahal for the music."
Her late father-in-law Mr Shyam Sunder Ji Jhunjhnuwala, helmed the family unit-owned Hind Group, which bought what was then Oberoi Imperial Hotel in 1977. The family'due south decision to sell the hotel in the tardily 1990s meant the eatery would proceed with it. Loathe to see it disappear, Mrs Jhunjhnuwala suggested they re-open up the eatery elsewhere. "And that'southward how we ended up at Pan Pacific," she explained.
The move in 2001 spawned a new era for Rang Mahal, as it transformed from a casual, family-style restaurant to something decidedly more upscale. "We felt that in that location were already a lot of restaurants in Singapore serving traditional Indian food, and there wasn't an Indian fine-dining concept," she said.
ROYALTY AND BOLLYWOOD
Today, 16 years after that kickoff move, Rang Mahal remains in the top ranks of Singapore's Indian fine dining restaurants. Besides its cabal of regular guests who accept patronised the restaurant for generations, information technology has too played host to royalty, heads of states, and Bollywood celebrities.
Amid its roll phone call of guests are the late former President of Singapore SR Nathan, members of royalty from the UAE, and Indian celebrity fashion designer Suneet Varma.
The secret to its success, said Mrs Jhunjhnuwala, is constant reinvention while cleaving shut to its traditional Indian roots.
"Staying relevant is of import. We have to keep innovating. You tin only serve the same kind of food for a few years, then yous demand to change or people go tired of the same onetime stuff," she said.
True to this ethos, the menu's focus shifted to lighter Indian fare when the restaurant moved to a new location across the floor at Pan Pacific Singapore in 2012.
"My husband and I had get conscious of what we eat. And because our diners are made up of a mainly corporate oversupply, we knew we had to make the nutrient lighter so they wouldn't feel sluggish after a meal," she told CNA Lifestyle.
The kitchen stopped using heavier ingredients like foam and ghee, and replaced them with more healthful things similar avocado oil and basics. They began serving soups and salads, amuse bouche and palate cleansers, and contemporary dishes like clove-smoked aubergine tossed with ginger and smoked tomatoes.
IT TAKES A Village
To give her traditionally trained chefs exposure to new ways of cooking Indian food, Mrs Jhunjhnuwala invited renowned contemporary Indian chefs to cook at Rang Mahal every bit function of special promotions. With Michelin-starred names like Atul Kochar and Vineet Bhatia working in their kitchen, the chefs learned new perspectives of Indian fare and saw how they could evolve their cuisine for their latter-twenty-four hour period audition.
While Mrs Jhunjhnuwala has shaped Rang Mahal's evolution, much of its success tin also be attributed to chefs Vinod Kumar and Milind Sovani. Chef Kumar has been with the restaurant since 1990 and is affectionately described by Mrs Jhunjhnuwala equally a chef who "tin can practise anything".
"He is multi-talented," she said. "Many (Indian) chefs specialise in certain styles of cooking, like tandoor, thavaar, curries or desserts. Vinod can exercise everything well."
The much-acclaimed Chef Sovani joined the eatery in 2002 and returned to India in 2006, where he has cooked for Bollywood A-listers like Amitabh Bachchan and Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. He came back to Rang Mahal final twelvemonth and has gear up about his task of taking the restaurant into the future and, hopefully, earning them a Michelin star or ii in the process.
AND At present, THE WORLD
For Rang Mahal's next act, Mrs Jhunjhnuwala is planning to take the brand international, starting with her family-endemic Naumi Hotels in Commonwealth of australia and New Zealand.
In the meantime, the eating house continues to introduce with its successful brand of contemporary Indian fare.
The latest bill of fare serves up novelties similar tandoori fondue, comprising an assortment of grilled chicken kebabs and cubed garlic naan served with a cheese-based makhni sauce (much similar the sauce in traditional Indian butter craven).
There is as well the giant roomali masala papad, a wok-sized pappadum topped with chopped onions, tomatoes, chillies and spices.
Already, dishes like these have plant their mode across Instagram, compelling avid foodies to visit the eatery for their ain set and feeds. Popular as they are though, Mrs Jhunjhnuwala knows that these are fads.
"People hear about these out-of-the-box items and they come up considering they recall it's interesting," she said.
"They guild information technology once or twice – but these are never their favourite things. It's always the classics that people come back for."
And that, in essence, is the key to the eatery's longevity: A shrewd understanding and power to strike that fine balance between modernity and classicism.
Level 3, Pan Pacific Singapore, Tel: 6333 1788. world wide web.rangmahal.com.sg
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/cna-lifestyle/our-gastro-legacy-enduring-appeal-rang-mahal-215326
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