Walk around Connaught Place today and almost every other business is a restaurant, café or bar. But, in the 1920s, two young bachelors who moved to Delhi from Patiala found there was no good food in the new and developing Capital city.
Lakshmi Chand Nirula and Madan Nirula were forced to hop onto a tonga and head to Old Delhi for a decent meal. “They said this was a hell of a way to live and decided to start Hotel India, from which the Nirula’s story began in 1934,” says Lalit Nirula, son of Lakshmi Chand Nirula and former co-managing director of the restaurant chain.
“In a family of doctors, they were considered the black sheep as they went into business,” chuckles Mr. Nirula. At that time, Kashmere Gate boasted a few Western-style restaurants, while Chandni Chowk was the place for desi food.
Before the hotel, the Nirula brothers ran a photography shop at Connaught Place. Interestingly, a train track ran through Connaught Place that time to carry materials to the under-construction Rashtrapati Bhavan.
“The only other hotel in New Delhi was The Imperial. There was Maidens Hotel in Old Delhi and smaller ones at Fatehpuri. So Hotel India did really well,” says Mr. Nirula, who lived in one of the two flats next to the hotel in D-Block of Connaught Place.
At a corner in L-Block, the brothers then started a restaurant called the Nirula’s Corner House in 1942. Mr. Nirula was born at Lady Hardinge Hospital, grew up in Connaught Place and spent over 60 years living or working there.
Now 71, he learned how to play cricket and ride a bicycle where the parking lots and the Rajiv Chowk metro station now stand.
“A tree in the middle of Connaught Place served as the wicket. The park was bigger. What the road is today, was part of the park, and what is the parking today was the road,” he says while sipping a decaf macchiato at his South Delhi residence.
As a child, he would see hundreds of cyclists going to work in Connaught Place, which was otherwise quite empty.
“Delhi was a civilised place,” says Mr. Nirula, both in terms of food and behaviour. “If you go around Chandni Chowk, even now there is a certain style, a tehzeeb ,” he says.
But everything changed with the Partition, when refugees arrived in Delhi. “They changed the character of Delhi. Food habits changed too.”
The Nirula’s restaurant, which had bands, cabarets, magic shows and flamenco dancers in the 1950s, gave way to a more relaxed brasserie , which in turn became the first modern cafeteria.
Also in the 1950s, the family set up the first Indian-owned Chinese restaurant — Chinese Room. Chef Li Wo Po claimed to have come to India with former Chinese leader Chiang Kai-Shek. In 1960s, an Indian restaurant, Gufa, and an Austro-Hungarian restaurant, La Boheme, were started. At a time when there were only multi-cuisine restaurants, the Nirula family had three speciality restaurants.
As a boy, Mr. Nirula attended Delhi Public School, which was being run from tents outside the Cathedral Church of the Redemption, near Rashtrapati Bhavan, by Reverend James Douglas Tytler.
“He was a pink-cheeked, bearded man. It was a very interesting school. We used to see earthworms and kites, which would grab food from our hands.”
Later, while studying Economics at St. Stephens’ and working part-time in the family’s business in the early 1960s, Mr. Nirula says he would go to restaurants to listen to live music. “There was a good accordionist at Gaylord’s, jazz at Volga’s and jam sessions at Alps. Rock and roll had just started, so we would go dancing.”
Nirula’s, however, switched to piped music and a more modern arrangement. After returning from the United States, where he undertook a post-graduate course in hotel management, Mr. Nirula started an ice-cream shop. “We imported the second soft ice-cream machine in India. I and a boy would make the mixture. On a good day, we sold 600 ice cream cones.”
That eventually led to the opening of the popular Snack Bar in 1972, Hot Shoppe in 1977, an ice cream parlour in 1978 and Potpourri in 1979. With taxi drivers and maharajas sharing the standing-only tables at the Snack Bar, it broke not only culinary ground, but social taboos.
The familial trait of risk-taking re-emerged when the younger Nirulas decided to introduce fast food. In the late 1970s, they introduced three popular American fast food items — pizza, burgers and hotdogs — which they had eaten abroad.
“As a family, the basis of our restaurants was the food we liked. We would test all the products. We spent a year experimenting on ice creams.”
The Nirulas then expanded their restaurants in scale and menu, with new dishes being added as food habits changed through the years. Different parts of Delhi had distinct preferences.
“Our coffee ice cream only sold in Connaught Place and South Delhi. We introduced flavours like Gulabo and Zafrani Badam Pista keeping the Dilliwala taste in mind,” says Mr. Nirula.
Incidentally, the senior Nirulas had started the Indian Coffee House before the government took over. They were also the agents of Italian espresso-maker, Gaggia.
Nirula’s started expanding outside of Connaught Place in 1980. At its peak, it had 2,000 employees, 200 in food processing alone and sold food to 40,000 people a day. The company made 200 tonnes of mozzarella cheese every year, plus a range of sauces, including the legendary hot chocolate fudge.
But with the coming of multinational fast food chains, Nirula’s suddenly found itself facing competition. Mr. Nirula and his brother Deepak Nirula were managing directors of the company when it was sold to a private equity firm in 2006.
“We were getting a little disillusioned with doing business in India. Corruption had gone up tremendously. We did not make black money and we did not pay. Plus, we wanted to give the next generation the choice to do what they wanted,” says Mr. Nirula.
These days, Mr. Nirula is re-learning how to paint, take photographs and play golf — interests that had taken a backseat to the demanding restaurant business, where he spent 46 years.
With his two daughters settled abroad, his wife Manju and he enjoy sampling what new restaurants around Delhi have to offer. “I recently went to a new Mexican restaurant which was nice. I like Ritu’s [Dalmia] restaurants for Italian food,” he says.
He insists in the past decade, Delhi has started to “mellow down”.
“People take pride in the city now, maybe it is due to the metro. Delhi is coming into its own,” says the self-described Nayi Dilliwalla .
