There was the word and the word was… Well we didn’t know, to be honest there are yet undiscovered Pygmy, ape-man tribes in the amazon who had more grasp of a business concept than we had. We were flying by the seat of our pants and those pants were a pair of gold thong budgie smugglers.
Nonetheless we both wanted to try to work together even if it meant that arguments meant one of us might end up throttling the other in Nandos (the affordable Scott’s restaurant). We wanted to try to make something fun, quirky and unique that didn’t try too hard.
The bar we found was in Tooting Bec, quite a site for sourcing a curry and in my humble opinion (having lived in Pakistan and India for a number of years) I think it tops Brick Lane hands down on the Indian culinary fun front. So it occurred to us, that it would be best to create something that might compliment the local area and not contradict it by standing out like a sore thumb. Coffees, teas, cocktails and beers all indian in a venue that could be appealing to the local community as a cafe during the day and full of the fun of a cocktail bar in the evening. The look of the place might be a bit of melange of the fun of Dishoom or Gymkhana meeting the East India Trading Company and Victorian England with perhaps a soupcon of Flashman thrown in. Only time will tell if we can some how visualise this in the design. But in any case it is going to be good deal of fun sourcing and putting together the venue.
The Imperial Durbar 