Atul Kocchar Atul Kocchar

Acclaimed chef Atul Kochhar explains why it’s modesty over ambition that will take your business to new heights

Atul Kochhar is becoming a firm favourite on the Dubai food scene. Despite having a huge amount of Indian cuisine in the UAE already, he hopes Zafran restaurants, for which he is the face behind and works for on a consultancy basis, will become the new local Indian restaurant.

“I know the UAE is laden with Indian food already,” he admits. “But having worked in Europe, especially in the UK, I can bring new twists to Indian food. There is a massive expat community in the UAE, which relishes the food we do, and I think the Indians are in for a treat too, seeing how we are pushing Indian food forward.”

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Back in the UK, Kochhar’s main interest is his London fine-dining restaurant, Benares. He also owns a restaurant in Dublin called Ananda, and one onboard a P&O cruise liner called Sindhu. He is working on his third book, Curries of the World, and regularly appears on television in the UK and all over the world.

But with two Zafran outlets already performing well, and plans for 2012 expansion, Kochhar is now setting his sights on a new market in Dubai.

“I am opening a fine-dining restaurant on Sheikh Zayed Road in the JW Marriott Marquis [opening Q4 2012]. It will be under my name and it will be called Rang Mahal, which means palace full of colours.”

What’s more, Kochhar is confident that it will do well in a saturated market.

“There’s always room for a good restaurant,” he says. “If you do a good job, people will come to you. I think I will add to Dubai’s fine dining scene – I will be adding to the colour, not competing.”

Looking further afield
It’s not just the UAE Kochhar has plans for: “I do want to develop Zafran in the UK in a year or so. That was the original idea and I will go back to it and create it, for sure. The UK is the place where Indian food is biggest outside of India – that quest is there and I’m going to achieve it.

“Back in 2008 I was going to have joint venture with Foodmark,” he explains. “It was to create a similar concept to Zafran in the UK, but we saw the recession coming so fast and furiously we abandoned the project.

“Then six months later we thought, why don’t we start it off in the UAE – not a joint project, but I helped Foodmark set it up and became a bit of a consultant to them. That’s still the arrangement at the moment.”