#blahvsfood meets the Legends: Camellia and Namita Panjabi

 What do you do when you’ve done it all?

Camellia Punjabi went to Cambridge.

She was the first woman to join the Tata Admistrative Services. 

She was part of the group that helped build Taj Hotels as we know it today.

She helped create the world of restaurants in India as we know it today.

She introduced India to Szechuan food.

She introduced India to Italian food.

She introduced India to Thai food.

If that wasn’t enough, she set up India’s first high end restaurants serving South Indian regional food, restaurants like Karavali and Raintree and Konkan Cafe… restaurants that endure decades later in a world where five years is a lifetime. 

And if that wasn’t enough, she wrote stunningly illustrated cookbooks that made the world realise that Indian food could be as complex and beautiful as the best French or Japanese cuisine.

For most people, that’s a legacy to last many lifetimes. 

But around the time that most of her peers were settling into a life of quiet retirement, she moved to London, one of the toughest F and B markets in the world, to help her sister Namita and her brother in law Ranjit Mathrani build a Indian restaurant company that does hundreds of crores in revenue every year. 

MW Eat, the company the three of them own, has brands that cater to regular people seeking affordable but tasty food as well as Arab sheiks in Knightsbridge. Each offering is distinct from the other but with strong underlying principles in common. And collectively, they made me look at how Indian food can be presented and sold in a new light. 

Amaya celebrates grilled Indian food in a luxury environment. Not just kebabs but also seafood and vegetables. 

Chutney Mary serves dishes from all parts of India in a playful manner in a high end, nostalgic space.

Veeraswamy serves beautifully presented classical Indian food in a heritage building.  Masala Zone celebrates street foods and thalis from different parts of India, along with regional curries at affordable prices but at beautiful, upscale locations. 

Masala Zone, Picadilly Circus

The first thing that I realised is all four brands served “Indian” food. This isn’t the North Indian leaning approach that most UK restaurant companies have historically veered towards. It is also different from the recent trend of hyper regional Indian food. But at the same time, this isn’t an Indian version of “Multi-cuisine”. All the food is developed and run by cuisine specialists. A top chaatwala from Lucknow. A proper maharaj for some of the thalis. An Ustaad at the grill. You’ll find all of these people working at the outlets and making sure that the food is authentic and not “whitewashed”.

Chutney Mary

The other observation I had was that Namita and Camellia had interpreted “modern” in a way no one else had. Before Gaggan and Indian Accent created what we now understand as Modern Indian food, Camellia and Namita were presenting Indian food in a way that was trailblazing and completely original. In a time of curries that blended into each other on shared plates, they were the pioneers in serving food in a way that was plated individually and elegantly, allowing each diner the choice of eating whatever they wanted. 

Because of Camellia’s reputation as a legend in Indian food, people assume that the culinary vision is all hers. What people don’t realise is that Namita and Camellia have a true partnership and that the company was actually founded by Namita. 

A Cambridge graduate and former banker, Namita moved to the UK in 1986 after marrying Ranjit. After a few years, having quit banking, and shocked with the atrocious Indian food she was surrounded by, she (along with a few English partners) decided to open Chutney Mary at Kings Road, a glamorous central location that was a world away from the curry houses that represented Indian food in the UK at that time.

The original Chutney Mary on Kings Road

Chutney Mary started slow, with the Thatcher downturn ravaging livelihoods in the UK. It was hard for the UK to see Indian food in a refined light. But everything changed when The Curry Club (which had nearly 20,000 curry lovers in the country) voted Chutney Mary the best Indian restaurant in the UK. And if that wasn’t enough, the awards were broadcast on the National Evening news on ITV, so all of Britain heard founder Pat Chapman proclaim how Chutney Mary had redefined Indian food in the UK.

Namita built the company herself for over a decade, buying Veeraswamy in the mid 90s along with Ranjit, modernising it, and thereby rescuing the oldest Indian restaurant in the UK. It was at the turn of the century that Camellia joined the group and gave it wings. She helped elevate Masala Zone to make it look and feel more upscale with a beautiful bar programme. Chutney Mary moved and evolved into a sensibility best described as nostalgic opulence, the India of dreams and memories. And for her masterpiece, she conceived and brought Amaya to life. Amaya was an immensely technically challenging restaurant to create. Over 40 grilled items cooked at live counters while ensuring the smoke and heat and smells didn’t reach the customers. At some level it sounds impossible, but Camellia did it and it’s hard for words to do justice to what she pulled off. 

Over the last two decades, the company has continued to grow. Even at a time when Indian food has become the UK’s favourite cuisine, Camellia and Namita find a way to continue being pioneers. And strangely they do it by being miles ahead of the curve even compared to Indian restaurants in India. They were the first to serve food from across India in every Indian restaurant. They took pan Indian street food off the streets and into affordable restaurant two decades before Bhawan did the same in India. They created an Indian grill room that went far beyond tandoori that draws the likes of Sunder Pichai and Jeff Bezos and Mukesh Ambani as its patrons. 

Sitting at Namita’s warm home on a cold Autumn evening in London, I felt I could sit for hours listening to these two extraordinary people tell their stories. Sometimes we in the world of food are so obsessed by what is hot, who is important and relevant, what is cool, what the next big thing is, that we forget to honour our heroes. I am as guilty of this as anyone, as a writer and as a diner. But we need to pause for a moment and acknowledge the brilliance and impact of Camellia and Namita Panjabi.

Not as a way of acknowledging our past. Certainly not as historical relics. But as pioneers and trailblazers who continue to be lead the way. While most of India’s food scene looks towards East Asia or to the west for inspiration, they continue to show us that India’s culinary diversity has so many riches to discover, so many layers to uncover, so many elements to showcase, almost kaleidoscopic in how there is something new to see everytime you look at it with fresh eyes. 

Thank you both. It feels strange to say this after all you have accomplished. But it really feels like the best is still to come!