WHEN VIR Sanghvi started writing for the Indian diner all those years ago (1979), he was writing for a very different reader. Also, it was much more hard work than it is today. “I no longer have to explain everything or aim for a lower common denominator,” he says. Today, the conversation around food is far more advanced and challenging, and the reader more informed and discerning. It’s been a remarkable and quick transformation.
It was only some 10-odd years ago when ‘multi-cuisine’ and ‘speciality’ restaurants came to India. Today, it is normal for a five-star hotel to have at least two restaurants serving international cuisines prepared by chefs coming from those respective countries. The commitment to authenticity is now mainstream, with free-standing restaurants placing their money behind cuisine that’s accessible and also widens horizons. An interesting example here is of a restaurateur who lured an expat chef from a five-star hotel to much incredulity.
If innovation, invention and experimentation defined the food scene in the last decade, what has been added to the cauldron now is technology. The Internet has increasingly become the freeway to gastronomy be it through information, user review or access. This is where Sanghvi’s latest venture, EazyDiner, comes into the conversation.
He is quick to inform me that he has been an early adopter of the Internet. That much is true, as he has never shown the petulant reluctance that many of his vintage and experience have. Let’s go back in time to 2008: he launched his own website and created a YouTube property called Webchef (one of the most watched on the site)—he even has his own YouTube channel now. This is unsurprising, as he was an editor long before others in his age band, had a popular TV talk show when the satellite TV boom hit India and got on the Internet before others.
And now, he’s looking to break it, but not quite how Kim Kardashian did, but with food and drinks involved in the form of EazyDiner, a concierge service for diners that comes with authoritative reviews led by Sanghvi. You might be forgiven for believing that everyone is a reviewer today, climbing over each other to rate a hotspot, competing at getting ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ on their reviews and being a ‘voice’ in the cacophony that is the online space. Many a chef grumbles about routinely encountering ‘reviewers’ who tell them how to prepare their food. More reviewers dine at restaurants today than diners. So do we need another restaurant review site? Here is where EazyDiner’s ambition—to take the experience from surfing online to actually reserving a table—to be a concierge of sorts for diners kicks in: to prompt impulse buying or rather impulse dining.
Anyone who has worked in the F&B business in India will tell you that we are terrible at making reservations and, furthermore, we don’t like to be kept waiting. It’s a strange paradox, but it seems to co-exist quite amicably. It’s a little improbable then that a website would influence behaviour to that extent. But it’s something Sanghvi thought about very early on in the project. He says, “Consumer behaviour changes faster than we realise. There was a time when nobody bothered to book a cab. You walked out and found one on the street or at the cab stand. But apps such as Uber have changed that.” A generation that is increasingly on the smartphone and app-dependent will find it a lot easier to make a reservation online than to pick up the phone and dial a number. Also, EazyDiner sweetens the deal with every reservation with an ‘add-on’, be it a cocktail or an appetiser.
Another aspect is that of the review. The online space is a democratic one: those same app-savvy youngsters turn more to their peer group for reviews than to critics, be it films or food. At a time when the review has lost its mojo, how does EazyDiner legitimise its recommendations? Sanghvi should know, as, in many ways, he kickstarted the review game in India and still leads it. But he doesn’t agree that the review has lost its mojo, for reviewers still have jobs and publications still make space for reviews. Every service, he says, is reviewed as much by users as by critics and this only proves that there is still an audience for a considered review by a well-known critic. The two do, and can, co-exist. But the question is, will EazyDiner fill that wide gap when it comes to credibility in restaurant ratings?
About this, he is circumspect, “I am not arrogant enough to believe that EazyDiner can fill that gap. But we can certainly provide ratings with authority.”
And we can certainly hope that India has its own version of the Michelin guide at some point in the near future.
Advaita Kala is a writer, most recently of the film Kahaani. She is also a former hotelier having worked in restaurants in India and abroad