VIKRAMJIT ROY has worked at the Taj (Wasabi by Morimoto) and ITC Hotels (Tian), and two acclaimed independent restaurateurs, namely, Anjan Chatterjee (POH – Progressive Oriental House, Mumbai) and Ashish Kapur (with whom he launched Kimono Club), but it was the lockdown that made him realise that it took more than individual successes to be counted as a leader. Thirteen young chefs with whom he had spent most of his working life were without jobs. Three of them had shacked up with him at his Gurgaon home because they could not afford their rents, nor go back home.
Compelled to do something for his Band of 13, Roy, his long-time colleague Anurodh Samal and an old Taj hand, Sandeep Mahajan, pooled in their lives’ savings, opened a cloud kitchen at Sector-57, Gurgaon, in June, and launched their home-delivered food brand, Hello Panda. From one, they have grown to four – the additions being Park Street (an ode to the biryani and rolls of Roy’s home city, Kolkata), Ginger Garlic (popular Chinese) and Kuchh Meetha – and they have found an investor, Vir Kotak, who, when he’s not developing port terminals and railcars, rolls out the craft brand Thirsty Beers; runs bars and speakeasies; and pursues art photography.
With Kotak on board and his Band of 13 (“all small-town boys with swaad in their hands”) gainfully employed (“each one paid the salary of two and doing the work of three”), Roy’s next stops are a Japanese-led breakfast-to-dinner restaurant serving fresh seasonal beers in Delhi and an street-style Izakaya serving only ramen, gyoza and yakitori in Gurgaon. With such turnaround stories, how can’t hope spring eternal in the human heart?