Of pastry shop and restraint

What is the secret of a success story? Staying true to recipes and focusing on quality without caring much for ‘catering to a local palate’ could be one

In the pipeline, more savouries and a cafe too, so watch out for that name next time you are in the capital. I sure hope they can serve champagne at the outlet because nothing lesser would suffice besides this array of absolutely delirious deliciousness.
In the pipeline, more savouries and a cafe too, so watch out for that name next time you are in the capital. I sure hope they can serve champagne at the outlet because nothing lesser would suffice besides this array of absolutely delirious deliciousness.

This story comes hot on the heels of a very heady afternoon that I spent in the company of two very passionate people. They run a small dessert store which, at the time of writing this, only operates online and in the NCR, and are easily among the finest in the business. Their passion is possibly the biggest reason why I decided to make the trip to not only visit them but to absorb as much of their passionate energy as I could over the course of a conversation. Their outfit is called Monique, named after the head chef Maxine’s gran, whose receipt he tries to emulate, recreate, and continually be inspired from.

I ordered them for the first time during the first pandemic and I do recall wondering why such a low-key name for a bakery. Had I, in my (sans humility) extensive studies of French gastronomy, somehow managed to miss the name of a famous chef? The curiosity was enough to make me try them and even though, they were far higher priced than most fancy cakeries around the city, I only later realised that the stuff was value for money enough to keep coming back for more.

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But, here’s the fun bit, Max isn’t really a trained chef. And no, it didn’t take a lot of champagne on our said afternoon to make him divulge this; rather they were quite upfront about it. In fact, his partner, Shivan Gupta, who may not seem as active in the proofing and baking processes, is an equally important lynchpin in the success story of Monique. He happened to try some of Max’s produce during the first lockdown and was convinced that there was a bigger platform to showcase his talent. And so Max the food engineer became Max the baker.

Together, they launched Monique with the sole objective that they would stay true to recipes and focused on quality without caring much for ‘catering to a local palate’, a “recipe” that most commercial endeavours embrace heartily to ensure volumes but one that this duo disdainfully eschewed. Add to this the dilemma of launching in the middle of a pandemic and a lockdown and chances of success would have seemed slim, but they nonetheless persevered. A few months in and a French TV interview later, the phone started ringing and hasn’t stopped since – they were in the process of expansion when I visited—and people just can’t get enough of their true traditional French goodies. Sure, they use egg (although they do have some eggless options), and flour, and there’s definitely dairy and sugar; they don’t change the recipe to accommodate requests at the cost of authenticity and this stoic stance is what makes them, to me, more special than any other bakery out there. This is not a bakery for the, pejoratively speaking, the woke hipsters who measure goodness on a calorie scale but rather for the true gastronomes and the bacchanals, folks who understand and appreciate finesse and taste with a sense for restrain and balance.

In the pipeline, more savouries and a cafe too, so watch out for that name next time you are in the capital. I sure hope they can serve champagne at the outlet because nothing lesser would suffice besides this array of absolutely delirious deliciousness.

On the flip side, I was privy to the launch of the Aujasya wellness programme at The Leela, a chain-wide effort to live more consciously and healthily. It starts with a menu that will be incorporated into all their properties and will go on to encompass other aspects of our lives too; the key takeaway being mindful living. It’s quite novel, even if too pristine for someone as decadent as me on a daily basis. But on days I feel the need to tone it all down (often aka nursing a hangover), I will certainly find the strong urge to help myself to their quinoa biryani or millet risotto and my digestive tract will thank me and the chef for it.

Moving on, this is an unsolicited shout-out for the restaurateur Varun Tuli, who has been on the scene since long and seems to be running some of the most successful series of outlets, all of which are different and yet offer a fabulously comprehensive experience in their respective fields of gastronomy—Noshi, Pot-pot, Tbsp—the list seems to keep growing. The reason I mention this here is because a simple calculation of our family F&B expenditures yielded us the data that we spend an inordinate amount of money frequenting these outlets as compared to any other. And that’s when I realised that the purveyor behind all these names was one experienced hand in the field. So, chapeau to the man and I hope others can take a cue from his gait and conjure up similarly serious eateries rather than pandering to foreign trends or opening places that try too hard to sound cool or else disguise themselves like fancy restaurants but are nothing but a teeny-bopper night club at heart.

The writer is a sommelier

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This article was first uploaded on August twenty-one, twenty twenty-two, at fifteen minutes past one in the night.
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