Let them eat cake

JUST THE OTHER DAY in Delhi, someone protested the price of a macaron: “Rs 130, I tell you.” Not that it stopped her from popping in a passion fruit macaron and going on to decide between a matcha tea- or a pistachio-flavoured one. The site was L’Opera, the city’s new bakery in Khan Market, a favourite gathering place for the well-heeled.

L’Opera is the brainchild of 26-year-old Laurent Samandari, who first came to India as a management trainee for fan maker Usha in 2008. Once in Delhi, the hunt for his daily bread led nowhere. “I just could not find the kind of bread and bakery products that I was so used to in France,” he says. So he borrowed about $1 million (Rs 5 crore) from friends and family and invested it in the bakery, which now has outlets at the French embassy and at the DLF Golf and Country Club in Gurgaon. The choice of location is critical. At Rs 150 for a loaf of brown bread, Rs 250 for a chocolate pastry, and Rs 350 for a brioche, L’Opera sells some of the most expensive bakery products to India’s beautiful people. It even has fans in Kolkata.

“The critical elements are the ingredients. From the chocolate to the butter to the prunes—we import them all. The taste entirely depends on them,” says Samandari, who plans to open a second store in Delhi next year. “People thought that our customers would be foreigners. Actually, 70% of them are Indians,” he says.

At Le15 Patisserie launched in Worli, Mumbai, last year by Pooja Dhingra, a Cordon Bleu pastry chef, the customer profile is similar. Dhingra dishes out a sumptuous array of desserts from verrines (a Parisian classic with ingredients layered in a small glass), to a simple chocolate mousse and raspberry sauce creation. Though the pricing is more socialist than L’Opera’s (macarons are Rs 50 a pop), Dhingra says her dream—and her customers’ demand—is a true Parisian taste and feel.

Apart from desserts and baked goods, French food has been a tiny niche in India, unlike the ubiquitous Chinese cuisine or even the increasingly de rigueur Italian.

There is the iconic French restaurant Zodiac Grill at Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, but interest is clearly growing, as evidenced by the success of Chez Vous, in downtown Mumbai. French owners Frederic Fernandez and Cedric Combe, and their Indian partner Satyen Melwani, serve Chateaubriand with foie gras, ratatouille, Les Oeufs Meurettes (poached eggs in red wine with onions and grilled bacon), and even an absinthe pick-me-up.

Fernandez, who, with his partners, put in Rs 2 crore to start the restaurant in December 2010, says he broke even on “day one” as French cuisine was a natural progression for the changing Indian palate.

“French food has been getting simpler and less heavy over the years, and now it is ready to come to India,” he says, dismissing traditional beliefs that French food is too heavy for Indians. “The global Indian was ready and so was the food.”

At Chez Vous, where the average bill with liquor is Rs 1,600, there are regular guests who “earn around Rs 20,000 a month but come and spend Rs 10,000 for a meal”. Some people obviously can’t do without their French Chateaubriand.

This year’s marquee release was Le Cirque from New York at the Leela Palace Hotel in New Delhi. However, in keeping with the infant market, only about 25% of the menu is French; the rest is Italian. “The taste is growing gradually,” says Sirio Maccioni, Le Cirque’s founder.

In Gurgaon, on Delhi’s outskirts, Roger Langbour has been raising and selling free-range Peking and Muscovy ducks at The French Farm for more than a decade. He says even the five-star hotels used to be barely capable of differentiating foie gras from paté; today, he serves an increasingly knowledgeable market that ranges from restaurateurs to housewives, and has expanded his offerings to include turkey, quail, pheasant, and pig.

“The market has grown many times,” says Langbour. “Today the customers are discerning and you cannot fool them with exotic names. They know what something should taste like and they are tired of fakes. They are willing to pay for the real thing.” Bon appétit.