Restaurateur Vicky Singh On His Journey And Mumbai’s Evolving Food Scene

“Mumbai is home to the country’s most exciting dining scene, and its cosmopolitan nature gives it that quality,” said Vicky Singh, the man behind Mumbai’s Slink & Bardot, Banng, and Mezcalita. Born and brought up in the City of Dreams, he says the coexistence of various cultures creates a diverse demography, varied cuisines, and palates. He sees this as the foundation of his journey as a restaurateur.

Singh started as a Pizza Hut delivery driver in England and went on to open restaurants in three of the world’s most challenging yet dynamic food capitals, shaping a career driven by instinct and passion.

When I asked Singh about the start of his stint as a restaurateur, he said not being from a business family was his greatest asset. “I didn’t have the pressure of inheriting a business that my forefathers had established for me, and that became my biggest source of freedom to choose my own path,” he added. To him, the F&B industry seemed glamorous. “I often found myself watching movies where restaurants were glorified, and without much thought, I was convinced that I wanted to do this. I was driven by instinct and passion,” Singh added. He said that only when you can use the virtues of the F&B industry to overlook the vices can you stand a chance to be successful. “You need pure passion,” he said.

After he moved to London at 17 to attend culinary school, his first gig was as a Pizza Hut delivery driver. He then worked at the St. James’ Court, A Taj Hotel in London.

He returned to India in 1996 and began a catering company before taking on the catering contract for the USI Club. Three years later, Singh opened his first, 30-seater restaurant, Out of the Blue, in Pali Hill. Next came Rain in Juhu, followed by Dish Hospitality, which included restaurants like Aurus, Sanchos, the Cinnabon franchise, and a large central kitchen that supplied food to multiple institutional clients. Along the way, he also ventured into frozen seafood exports, taking Indian food products to markets including Spain, Portugal, Canada, and France.

His journey soon took him beyond India. An attempt to develop a boutique hotel in Goa did not materialise, but the setback prompted another move. He relocated to Dubai, where he opened a restaurant with Chef Greg Malouf, before moving to London to open Flavour Bastard in Soho.

The London venture eventually closed during the pandemic, bringing Singh back to India. Rather than treating the return as an endpoint, he used it as another opportunity to start afresh. He founded Smartco Kitchens and returned to the restaurant business, relaunching Slink & Bardot with Riyaaz Amlani in 2022. This was followed by Mezcalita and newer concepts, including Banng and Koliwada Cocktail Club.

“I allowed my passion to determine the direction my career took. Back then, I never deep-dived into numbers but allowed myself to follow a sentiment and instinct without asking myself too many questions,” Singh remarked.

I was curious about how Singh decides which kinds of restaurants he wants to back. He said that, for him, more than location, a restaurant has to fill a gap in cuisine or concept. “While we put a lot of emphasis on the location of a restaurant, I believe that every location can sustain a restaurant, but it should fundamentally do something that the market has not experienced before. If you are launching a generic restaurant just for the sake of launching one, then you are doing yourself a disfavour,” he said.

As someone who has opened and operated restaurants across three cities, he said that each place brings its own struggles. “I can’t say for any country that you go to and open a restaurant that you will have smooth sailing. It is a challenging business with multiple balls in the air at a given time,” he added. He also said that opening a restaurant in England was easier than in India because the online bureaucratic process was seamless.

Dubai, on the other hand, had manpower restrictions since most people had to be flown in from other parts of the world, and the employer was required to cover their insurance and even their flights back home. He said that even in England, labour was very expensive, while rentals (even in Soho) remained affordable. “In the West, many people enter restaurants and become staffers as a side hustle while they are studying, and that is a huge problem, because then it is tough to retain the staff,” he added.

As his final advice to young and aspirational restaurateurs, he said one must be as sure about entering this industry as one would be about doing anything else. It’s not for the faint-hearted. “There are enough statistics to show how many restaurants succeed and how many don’t, but that’s not really the point. In every business, there are winners, and there are those who don’t succeed. But be ready to be fully committed and work hard,” Singh added.

He said that many people who enter the industry don’t necessarily want to be career restaurateurs; they are attracted to the perceived glamour or the image associated with owning a restaurant. “But the reality is that it is physically and mentally very taxing,” he concluded.