By PRANAY GUPTE - Special to the Sun
http://www.nysun.com/article/20848?access=990529
Nandini Mukherjee of Bleecker Street believes in reincarnation. She also believes in reinvention.
And she believes there's a connection between the two.
"I'm that connection," Ms. Mukherjee said yesterday. "As an Indian-born Hindu, I believe that our soul is born and reborn many times over. As someone who studied in America and now works here, I believe that it's possible to reinvent oneself during the course of a lifetime."
The reincarnation part of her statement may be difficult to establish, but Ms. Mukherjee has certainly had several avatars in her 31 years. She founded and runs a successful small business, the Indian Bread Company, in Manhattan's West Village. Earlier, she obtained a master's degree in lighting at the Parsons School of Design, and then worked at the prestigious architectural lighting firm of Fisher Marantz Stone, which, among other things, lit up ground zero's twin beams.
And still earlier, Ms. Mukherjee was an architect who gave up a promising practice in New Delhi to return home to the steel-manufacturing town of Jamshedpur in the eastern part of India. There she designed and built a futuristic house to accommodate a sprawling joint family - her father, Pronab, a businessman, her mother, Suchitra, and her father's two brothers and their children.
"My father had always encouraged individuality when I was growing up as an only child, so I was able to have my way in building that house," Ms. Mukherjee said.
The individualistic tendencies instilled in her resulted in a pivotal decision a couple of years ago. She and a friend, Rupila Sethi, were ruing the shortage of restaurants in New York that offered truly indigenous foods from India's 28 states and seven federal territories. Ms. Mukherjee quit her job at the lighting company to start an eatery that focused on bread.
Why bread?
"There are endless cuisines in India," she said. "But there's one staple common to all those cuisines - bread. The idea was to give Indian bread the center stage - an Indian twist on the bread cafe culture."
But the entrepreneurs immediately encountered a problem: Neither of them knew how to start an eatery.
Not one to let such a trifling issue hold up her dreams, Ms. Mukherjee took courses at the Institute of Culinary Education, and attended seminars at the French Culinary Institute, both in Manhattan. Giving her imagination free rein, she began concocting bread-based dishes with exotic names such as Naanini, a sandwich with spicy dry curries, or kebabs of grilled lamb and chicken between slices of traditional Indian flat bread.
Coaxing some financial assistance from her husband, Chetan Gandhi, who works for Intel, Ms. Mukherjee opened a bakery-cum cafe on Bleecker Street
In doing so, she joined the ranks of 500,000 small businesses that account for 50% of all businesses in New York City and collectively employ 1.5 million people, according to the city's Department of Small Business Services.
Her business, the Indian Bread Company, was a quick success. It began getting standing take-out orders. While the facility can accommodate only 21 tables, more than 200 people course through it every day - tourists, students from nearby New York University, and, of course, South Asians yearning for freshly prepared traditional bread.
That traffic increased exponentially during last year's Republican Convention, where Ms. Mukherjee's foods were showcased. And a few weeks ago, the North Indian Bengali Association - representing the ethnic community to which Ms. Mukherjee belongs - hired her to cater for 10,000 people who'd assembled at Madison Square Garden.
How did she manage to fulfill that daunting order?
"My mother happened to be visiting me from India," Ms. Mukherjee said. "So I cajoled her into my kitchen, and we cooked and cooked and cooked. I know how fussy Bengalis can be about their food. So just imagine 10,000 Bengalis judging my dishes. I survived."
So who knows? Today New York, tomorrow India.
Indian Bread Company,
194 Bleecker St., (212) 228-1909.
Nandini Mukherjee, a Calcuttan,
left architecture and design to bake bread! “I come from a
family where cooking was considered on par with any other art
form,” she says. “My year at Parsons was spent experiencing and
exploring the fascinating New York City budget gourmet scene.”
She says that while she
enjoyed great meals from all over the globe in New York City,
the Indian food was disappointing: “The choice was between two
day old mass-manufactured curry at prices that you could afford
or formal, sit-down wonderful meals that you’d have to spend
days saving for. It was during those days that an idea called
Indian Bread Co started taking shape. I dreamt of a fast-casual
Indian café serving fresh, flavorful, hassle-free Indian food.”
She started the Indian Bread
Company in 2003 with her partner Rupali Sethi, whom she had met
at New York’s Parsons School of Design. The New York Times
commented: “You probably could not find a naanwich or a naanini
on the streets of Delhi, but you can in Greenwich Village, now
that Indian Bread Co. is making creative use of naan, the
traditional Indian flatbread … stuffed parathas are like
quesadilla and the kati roll is essentially a wrap, but a
delicious one.”
Asked as to how her
establishment is different from those owned by first generation
Indian Americans, Mukherjee says, “Though India has a wide
variety of distinctive breads, in most Indian restaurants Indian
breads are relegated to being add-ons to the main meal. The idea
was to give Indian breads the center stage — our take on the
bread café culture that we see around us. We wanted a
fast-casual Indian café that reflects the mindset of the global
Indian who enjoys parathas as much as paninis.”
While the naan and the paratha
in all their avatars are kings at Indian Bread Co., there are
also sides like chick pea chaat and yellow dal soup. The
restaurant is very much a part of the neighborhood and Mukherjee
is constantly adding new items. She is looking to grow the
company either as a private company or through partners. She
says, “There’s a sense of satisfaction in knowing that I have a
vision and every single day is a step toward realizing it.
Ideally, I’d like to see Indian street food included in the
mainstream American fast-casual sector.”
The franchise golden egg seems
to be on the mind of many entrepreneurs. While many of their
parents started out and built their fortunes with Burger Kings
and Dunkin Donuts and Blimpies, the younger generation is going
for trendier ones, those popular with the younger set — or are
going even one step further and inventing their own concepts.