The word in culinary circles in Dubai is that it can take months to get a table at progressive modern Indian restaurant Farzi Café. A call confirms that while this might be a slight exaggeration, it will be at least a week before a reservation is available for a weekend sitting.
Such is the popularity of the year-old City Walk establishment – the brainchild of Indian restaurateur and MasterChef India's newest judge, Zorawar Kalra – that any negative comment or review unleashes a backlash on social media.
The 39-year-old managing director and founder of the Massive Restaurants group has harboured an ambition since his teenage years to reimagine traditional desi chicken tikka masala and dal by fusing it with elements of molecular gastronomy. It seems that this is paying off.
Though a few Indian dining spots in Dubai have experimented with the cooking form, which uses science to change the taste and texture of food, Farzi has made an undeniable mark.
“I am on this crusade to make Indian food the dominant cuisine in the world,” says Kalra who visited Dubai recently to launch the cafe’s breakfast menu. “I want it to be occupying the front of the mind space whenever you go out for a meal anywhere in the world, just like the status Japanese or Chinese or Italian restaurants enjoy.”
Farzi is the hip younger brother to fine-dining restaurant Masala Library, which was launched by Zorawar’s father, Jiggs Kalra, two years ago in Mumbai. Farzi Café followed as a more affordable haunt for a more youthful crowd, but with the same playful approach to Indian food. There are plans for more in the UAE.
“I want to be remembered as the one to make Indian food global,” says Kalra. “And this can only happen if we open restaurants like Farzi, where all the core elements of flavours, depth and sophistication of Indian food are there, but are being introduced with a lot of flair, panache, style and cutting-edge techniques.”
Each serving at Farzi plays out a little like a Bollywood film, with the star ingredient of a dish presented with charming props in vibrant colours and wrapped in liquid nitrogen smoke.
Breakfast is a focus. “I always have loved breakfast,” says Kalra. “There is a huge breakfast scene here, so I thought it was a creative outlet to play with traditional breakfast food, at the cafe. We’ve got a mix of Indian and continental, with eggs Benedict, parathas and an Indian spin on French toast.”
Kalra honed his knowledge of world cuisine by accompanying his famous father – known as the “Czar of Indian Cuisine” – on his travels since the age of 10. Jiggs Kalra began his career as a food consultant for international hotels before becoming a food columnist and author, and is now a household name through his television appearances.
His son, meanwhile, brings a no-nonsense attitude to the table for season five of MasterChef India. He replaced Indian celebrity chef and former judge Sanjeev Kapoor, whose restaurants can be found in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, on the show, and will appear alongside Michelin-starred chef Vikas Khanna and celebrity chef Kunal Kapur.
“When they got me on board, I shared the idea of ‘glocal’ to take the show forward,” he says. “Just like what my restaurants are doing: global food with a local twist or local food with a global twist.”
Kalra doesn’t feel disadvantaged in any way by not having any formal culinary training.
“I’ve been exposed to food since an early age and I know what works,” he says. “I’m like the conductor of an orchestra who knows everything about all the other instruments and how they work together.”
Farzi Café is at City Walk Dubai Phase 2. For reservations, call 04 394 2556. For more details follow @farzicafedubai on Instagram
aahmed@thenational.ae
TWISTERS
Director:+Lee+Isaac+Chung
Starring:+Glen+Powell,+Daisy+Edgar-Jones,+Anthony+Ramos
Rating:+2.5/5
Globalization and its Discontents Revisited
Joseph E. Stiglitz
W. W. Norton & Company
A Round of Applause
Director: Berkun Oya
Starring: Aslihan Gürbüz, Fatih Artman, Cihat Suvarioglu
Rating: 4/5
COMPANY PROFILE
Company name: Co Chocolat
Started: 2017
Founders: Iman and Luchie Suguitan
Based: Dubai, UAE
Industry: Food
Funding: $1 million-plus
Investors: Fahad bin Juma, self-funding, family and friends
Biography
Favourite book: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Holiday choice: Anything Disney-related
Proudest achievement: Receiving a presidential award for foreign services.
Family: Wife and three children.
Like motto: You always get what you ask for, the universe listens.
UFC Fight Night 2
1am – Early prelims
2am – Prelims
4am-7am – Main card
7:30am-9am – press cons
COMPANY PROFILE
Company name: Almouneer
Started: 2017
Founders: Dr Noha Khater and Rania Kadry
Based: Egypt
Number of staff: 120
Investment: Bootstrapped, with support from Insead and Egyptian government, seed round of
$3.6 million led by Global Ventures
Brief scoreline:
Liverpool 5
Keita 1', Mane 23', 66', Salah 45'+1, 83'
Huddersfield 0
Company Profile
Company name: Cargoz
Date started: January 2022
Founders: Premlal Pullisserry and Lijo Antony
Based: Dubai
Number of staff: 30
Investment stage: Seed
KEY DATES IN AMAZON'S HISTORY
July 5, 1994: Jeff Bezos founds Cadabra Inc, which would later be renamed to Amazon.com, because his lawyer misheard the name as 'cadaver'. In its earliest days, the bookstore operated out of a rented garage in Bellevue, Washington
July 16, 1995: Amazon formally opens as an online bookseller. Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought becomes the first item sold on Amazon
1997: Amazon goes public at $18 a share, which has grown about 1,000 per cent at present. Its highest closing price was $197.85 on June 27, 2024
1998: Amazon acquires IMDb, its first major acquisition. It also starts selling CDs and DVDs
2000: Amazon Marketplace opens, allowing people to sell items on the website
2002: Amazon forms what would become Amazon Web Services, opening the Amazon.com platform to all developers. The cloud unit would follow in 2006
2003: Amazon turns in an annual profit of $75 million, the first time it ended a year in the black
2005: Amazon Prime is introduced, its first-ever subscription service that offered US customers free two-day shipping for $79 a year
2006: Amazon Unbox is unveiled, the company's video service that would later morph into Amazon Instant Video and, ultimately, Amazon Video
2007: Amazon's first hardware product, the Kindle e-reader, is introduced; the Fire TV and Fire Phone would come in 2014. Grocery service Amazon Fresh is also started
2009: Amazon introduces Amazon Basics, its in-house label for a variety of products
2010: The foundations for Amazon Studios were laid. Its first original streaming content debuted in 2013
2011: The Amazon Appstore for Google's Android is launched. It is still unavailable on Apple's iOS
2014: The Amazon Echo is launched, a speaker that acts as a personal digital assistant powered by Alexa
2017: Amazon acquires Whole Foods for $13.7 billion, its biggest acquisition
2018: Amazon's market cap briefly crosses the $1 trillion mark, making it, at the time, only the third company to achieve that milestone
Living in...
This article is part of a guide on where to live in the UAE. Our reporters will profile some of the country’s most desirable districts, provide an estimate of rental prices and introduce you to some of the residents who call each area home.
'Gold'
Director:Anthony Hayes
Stars:Zaf Efron, Anthony Hayes
Rating:3/5
EMIRATES'S REVISED A350 DEPLOYMENT SCHEDULE
Edinburgh: November 4 (unchanged)
Bahrain: November 15 (from September 15); second daily service from January 1
Kuwait: November 15 (from September 16)
Mumbai: January 1 (from October 27)
Ahmedabad: January 1 (from October 27)
Colombo: January 2 (from January 1)
Muscat: March 1 (from December 1)
Lyon: March 1 (from December 1)
Bologna: March 1 (from December 1)
Source: Emirates
Dates for the diary
To mark Bodytree’s 10th anniversary, the coming season will be filled with celebratory activities:
- September 21 Anyone interested in becoming a certified yoga instructor can sign up for a 250-hour course in Yoga Teacher Training with Jacquelene Sadek. It begins on September 21 and will take place over the course of six weekends.
- October 18 to 21 International yoga instructor, Yogi Nora, will be visiting Bodytree and offering classes.
- October 26 to November 4 International pilates instructor Courtney Miller will be on hand at the studio, offering classes.
- November 9 Bodytree is hosting a party to celebrate turning 10, and everyone is invited. Expect a day full of free classes on the grounds of the studio.
- December 11 Yogeswari, an advanced certified Jivamukti teacher, will be visiting the studio.
- February 2, 2018 Bodytree will host its 4th annual yoga market.
Company profile
Company name: Fasset
Started: 2019
Founders: Mohammad Raafi Hossain, Daniel Ahmed
Based: Dubai
Sector: FinTech
Initial investment: $2.45 million
Current number of staff: 86
Investment stage: Pre-series B
Investors: Investcorp, Liberty City Ventures, Fatima Gobi Ventures, Primal Capital, Wealthwell Ventures, FHS Capital, VN2 Capital, local family offices
