Kishor Bajaj, who brought in the famous London restaurant Hakkasan to India, has just opened his own Mediterranean restaurant, Otto Infinito (below) in Mumbai

Kishor Bajaj is piling his plate up high. He’s the man behind the scenes who cooked up the deal to bring Hakkasan, one of London’s most talked about restaurants to Mumbai. Hakkasan has already become a hit with Mumbai’s celeb crowd but that hasn’t sated Bajaj’s appetite for dining out. He has just thrown open the doors of his own Mediterranean restaurant Otto Infinito in Mumbai’s Bandra Kurla Complex. And he plans to open several more outlets of Hakkasan and the dim sum restaurant Yauatcha too, all around the country.

Gaurav Goenka has also worked up a healthy appetite but is still asking for more. First, he muscled into the food business by buying out Mumbai’s Khandani Rajdhani chain of thali restaurants. Then, he followed that up by aiming at the drinking and snacking crowd and bringing the Manchester United Café & Bar and expanding the Mad Over Donuts outlets in India. But he’s hungry for more and is now bringing Ping Pong, a dim sum restaurant from London, to Mumbai within the next few months. Says Goenka: “Five years from now, we will be the leaders in the food and beverage (F&B) space.”

Food glorious food. A new breed of Indian entrepreneurs just can’t seem to get enough of it. They are opening one restaurant after another — to match the Indian middle class’ ever-growing appetite for eating out.

Once upon a time, Indians were conservative diners who were happiest confronted by dal chawal on their dining table at home. But that has been changing at a dramatic speed during the last decade. So, the new restaurant tycoons are offering everything from the ever-popular Italian and Mediterranean to dim sum and even Japanese cuisine.

Indians are now open to trying any cuisine, feel JSM Corp’s Sanjay Mahtani (left) and Jay Singh (right), who launched the Polynesian-themed Trader Vic’s restaurant and Mai Tai Lounge (below) recently

And if you want to stop for a drink, you might drop in for a bracing Mai Tai rum cocktail accompanied by a Chai-Smoked Duck Breast cooked in a wood-fired oven at the Trader Vic’s restaurant in Bangalore. It’s been opened by Jay Singh and Sanjay Mahtani’s JSM Corp. Or how about grabbing a mouthwatering hot original glazed donut at the American Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, which is opening soon, courtesy NRI entrepreneur Mickey Jagtiani’s Citymax India.

“Indian consumers now understand international cuisines and flavours. I see India as a great market for the F&B business,” says Bajaj, who built his Mumbai-based menswear Badasaab Group from scratch. After opening Hakkasan last year, he quickly followed it up with its affiliate, the popular dim sum teahouse Yauatcha, in Mumbai.

Adds JSM Corp’s Mahtani: “Most people underestimate the Indian palate. Provided it’s the right choice at the right price, Indians are open to any cuisine.”

Mahtani, who’s been cooking since age seven, should know. He first moved to Bangalore from Africa in the mid-1990s and plunged into the restaurant business long before it became fashionable by opening the popular Asian restaurant Qi. Later, in 2001, he conceived and opened the F Bar and Lounge for Fashion TV.

Meanwhile, Singh had also returned to India in the mid-1990s as country head of an American company and decided — almost on a lark — to open a restobar, 180 Proof, to make up for the lack of night spots in Bangalore. He followed that up with an F Bar in Delhi in 2003.

The two founded JSM Corp in 2004 and since then, they’ve successfully opened one restaurant after another starting with Hard Rock Café and Shiro and also the California Pizza Kitchen chain.

Gaurav Goenka is hungry for growth and he’s expanding his thali-to-Italian-cuisine offering by bringing in the Ping Pong dim sum chain (above) to India

Now, they’ve got more pots on the fire. They’ve just opened Trader Vic’s, the famous Polynesian-themed restaurant from San Francisco, after first launching its affiliate, the Trader Vic’s Mai Tai Lounge.

By the year-end, they’re also bringing in another international favourite of their’s, the popular Robata-yaki barbecue-style Japanese restaurant Inakaya from Tokyo. On a completely different note, they are bringing in the American frozen yogurt leader Pinkberry. Both of these will open in Mumbai initially.

“I only go with brands that I like,” says Mahtani. Besides, the duo is also opening four more Hard Rock Café and two more California Pizza Kitchen outlets. “We want to be a substantial player in every segment,” says Singh, who’s on the verge of tying up private equity funding to fuel JSM Corp’s expansions.

Meanwhile Goenka is cooking up even bigger expansion plans. His Rs 250-crore Mirah Hospitality group has over 100 restaurants today but Goenka’s hungry for more. So, he’s lined up investments of Rs 200 crore over the next three years. “We want to be in all cuisines and all formats and all price points,” says Goenka, who turned his passion for food into a business after he found that he had little taste for the real estate and trading activities of his family-owned Mirah Group.

As a first course, Goenka’s opening Ping Pong. This dim sum chain has 13 outlets around the world, from Washington DC to Dubai. Now, Goenka’s bringing it to Mumbai first. “The cuisine is traditional but the packaging is very young,” says Goenka who expects to open 15 Ping Pong restaurants within three years.

Besides, he’s also expanding his existing Rajdhani and Mad Over Donuts chains as well as his Falafel Lebanese fast food chain and the Café Mangii chain of Italian restaurants. For instance, he’s opening 14 more Rajdhani outlets to take the thali chain’s tally to 50 outlets by March 2013. Then, he’ll grow the Mad over Donuts chain from 40 outlets today to 100 by the end of 2013. He’s also opening six more Falafel outlets this year. And Café Mangii too will add 10 more outlets in Mumbai, Delhi, Pune and Bangalore over the next six months.

Amit Burman has moved in quickly to build a 65-restaurant chain covering a wide variety of cuisines

“I like backing brands that are ready to take the next big leap,” says Goenka, who also has a strategic minority stake in Riyaaz Amlani’s Impresario Entertainment & Hospitality, which owns the Smoke House Deli and Mocha restaurants.

Another cash-rich player who has moved into the restaurant game on a similar scale is Delhi-based Amit Burman, the vice-chairman of Dabur India. Burman has, over the last few years, opened 65 restaurants in different parts of the country. He has a string of brands including FresCo which serves up Mediterranean food, and the highly successful Punjab Grill which offers north Indian specialities. Moving down the map of India, there’s Zambar which specializes in south Indian non-vegetarian food and also Asia 7 which offers a mix of Chinese and Vietnamese food. In addition to all this, Burman has also opened several quick service brands like Street Foods of India. Says Burman: “We’ve covered 85 per cent of eating. We offer north and south Indian, Mediterranean cuisine and Asian — Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese.”

Of course, all this means more choice for the Indian diner. So, how about trying some Japanese Robata-yaki or barbecue-style preparations at Inakaya? And don’t think that Japanese means only the quiet sophisticated dining experience. “The food is traditional Japanese but it’s a lot of fun,” says Singh. The Mumbai Inakaya will have three barbecue stations: a vegetarian one, one for white meats and fish, and one station for all foods including red meats.

Or you can savour a spicy black sesame seed dumpling or the king prawn coriander dumpling from Ping Pong’s extensive menu of steamed, fried and baked dim sums. Meanwhile, Trader Vic’s offers a range of fusion food from around the world. There are house specialities like Crab Rangoon — that’s crab cooked in a Thai chilli sauce with Philadelphia cream, encased in wonton wrappers and fried to a crisp.

If that’s not enough choice, Bajaj is even serving up the dishes from eight Mediterranean countries — France, Italy, Lebanon, Tunisia, Spain, Greece, Turkey and Morocco — at his newly opened Otto Infinito. So, how about trying a Moroccan Kofte Tagine — that’s meat balls with couscous — or a Truffle Tuna Carpaccio and Beetroot Risotto here?

Citymax India’s Vishal Sawhney is eager to tap the quick service space with his upcoming offering of original glazed Krispy Kreme Doughnuts

Bajaj is eager to expand his menu-card in other ways too. He plans to launch Otto Espresso grab-and-go outlets across Mumbai and to take Hakkasan and Yauatcha to other metros too. And he’s keen on bringing in more brands. “We’re aiming to bring world-class restaurants serving the best of cuisines to India,” he says.

Of course, the biggest and fastest-growing segment of the Indian F&B sector remains the quick-service restaurant or QSR space. And the food entrepreneurs aren’t letting go of the opportunity here either. So, JSM is bringing the popular Pinkberry frozen yogurt chain. And Jagtiani’s Citymax, which owns the Gloria Jeans Coffee outlets, too will launch the Krispy Kreme Doughnuts chain, which is known for its yummy original glazed doughnuts and ones with fillings too. “We’re constantly expanding in the QSR space. Since most Indians have a sweet tooth, Krispy Kreme fits just right there,” says Vishal Sawhney, president, Citymax India, which is the franchisee for Krispy Kreme in southern and western India.

Citymax will invest Rs 75 crore to open 80 Krispy Kreme outlets over the next five years. The first one will open in Bangalore by the year-end. This large 6,000sqft space will act as a hub around which, Citymax will open 10-12 smaller outlets through 2013. And it will launch Krispy Kreme in Mumbai by the third quarter of 2013 before taking it to Hyderabad and Chennai.

Similarly, Burman is focusing on the malls. In fact, in one Delhi mall, he has bought 40,000sqft of space and is putting up several of his restaurants there. But he admits this is a cash-intensive game. Says Burman: “It costs anywhere between Rs 2 crore to Rs 2.5 crore to open a restaurant. And a quick service restaurant costs between Rs 30 lakh and Rs 50 lakh.”

Interestingly, as the competition heats up, the players aren’t afraid of overcrowding the market. “All of us have our own space,” says Sawhney. Of course, there are challenges, especially on real estate and licensing. Mahtani predicts: “Over the next year and a half, we’ll see a lot of people coming in and a lot of people going out too because the F&B business is not as easy as it looks.” Yet, that isn’t spoiling any of the food entrepreneurs’ appetite for growth.