I Quit My Job, Had Zero In The Bank and Built London's Hottest Indian Restaurant - The Tamila Story

0:00Everyone thinks about opening their own restaurant. Actually doing it and thinking about it are two very, very different things. We're constantly just coming up with weird and mostly terrible ideas. Most of the things we've done at the beginning have been relatively slow or not well received. It takes time. Talk to me about the Sunday roast. Roasting on a roast dinner is unbelievable. Soon enough, we ended up getting rid of the Yorkshire pudding. Yes, people, today's podcast is absolutely banging. It is the story of Tamila. it's a story of hard work grit determination hustle thinking differently thinking creatively having absolute blind belief in your vision when you've literally just quit your job and you've got no money whatsoever signed a personal guarantee and he said look if it goes wrong i'll come in your house and take your telly kind of like in this perpetual cycle of treading water we were on the edge of probably like dying and then the review came in we just weren't prepared for it to be full we had no idea or any like ability to cope with it i think prince and i blindly believed in what we were doing and i'm glad that we did you have to be slightly unhinged in those moments and that's kind of how the tamil prince was born yes yes people so the hungry reading list is here right if you listen to the podcast regularly you know i love reading i think books are the most beautiful thing in the world as stephen king said they're teleportable magic or something like that these books i whittled down my gargantuan bookshelf into 46 absolute 30 bangers the link is in the show notes to get the list whatever and it'll also make you a subscriber to our weekly newsletter which i think is sick so yeah get your fucking books buddy mate thank you for doing this i'm a die-hard zealot fan of uh your restaurants and i've been munching my way through um so i'm buzzing to do this and i think kind of looking a bit into your backstory with i think as we were saying before we hit record kind of the wild wild west of patty and bun compared to the kind of more corporate uh jks you've got this kind of weird juxtaposition of learnings and lessons that have all kind of summated into into this place yeah which i think super super fascinating um and i want to definitely explore that but i think it would be good to let's start with the wild wild west let's start with working at patty and bum when that was um you know beginning to bubble up yeah talk me through that experience what there was well to be honest it's probably a bit before patty and bum that kind of led to that yeah go into that then yeah like well i've gotten hospitality was kind of i just got into it through like uni like everyone just working in bars uh i was doing a lord of me at the time which was fine but didn't love it and then I ended up doing the LPC when I moved to London uh ended up not particularly loving it again which was probably quite obvious uh and then uh and I was working at a pub at that time um called the defectors wild in Sheffield's Bush um which was part of 580 which is the same what's 580 580 was the pub group which I ended up meeting like a load of amazing people who worked there just by chance.

3:07Yeah, yeah, yeah. The guys that did Smoking Goat and Keel, what's his name, Ben? He worked for that company. I didn't really know him that well, but he ended up there. That was what, 580 was like almost like a breeding ground for amazing. It was just this weird kind of start where I, like my introduction to hospitality in London was just weirdly through this pub group where loads of amazing people would come from, like the guys who own the Compton Arms and Islington Nick used to work there Tom who ended up helping Joe start patting bun was my boss at one stage he worked there and that was kind of I was like I ended up when I dropped out of law school I was just basically working behind the bar pulling pints and I was just meeting all these like kind of or being in the same sort of circle is these kind of really interesting people, I was just like, okay, there's something.

3:59I was kind of finding my groove because I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do. Yeah, sure. I kind of had like a bit of an existential meltdown, dropping out of uni and not dropping out of the LPC, not really knowing what my plan was, but just really loving working in hospitality, working in the pub. And then obviously Tom left and went in and worked with Joe. Sorry, Tom. he worked at the pub uh with us yeah um and then he he met joe and they went off and he basically helped joe yeah yeah yeah start um patty and bun and then ended up nicking me which is how i went over there and then yeah that was kind of the start of what was the um what was that sort of pub like was it do you know it's this it's like it's now it's like just a pretty ordinary booze i think it's owned by like young's or something yeah uh but at the time it was it was like really The BBC was down the road.

4:53It was in Shepherd's Bush. Okay, yeah, yeah. White City BBC was like fully pumping back then. And it was just always full of people. It was a great vibe. And it was just this like great little boozer in the middle of... I was living in Shepherd's Bush at the time. And it was just completely out the blue. I had no idea what it was about or the company that it was a part of. And yeah, that was kind of how it all kind of started. And what was the energy you were getting from those interesting conversations? I was just being around people that were like all everyone was just super interesting and they also ran like a festival at times they ran field day it was just like it was just madly creative like everyone was pretty driven like it was an interesting place to be yeah yeah yeah and then yeah and I had like a load of drinks experience I'd worked in bars and stuff before and my first job was actually I worked in a kitchen as a KP when I was 13 in the small town that I lived in um and yeah so i'd always been in and around hospitality and i'd never really been you know i'd never i'm not like i wasn't overly interested in food i was i was like really kind of finding my groove in the bar stuff in the pub stuff and then ended up going to patty and bum at that like amazing time where burgers just like kind of blew up in 2012 and it was okay yeah it was around 2012 i think i started working there when it'd been open like two weeks oh wow where was their far sight it was on james street right and it was at a time and like burgers like no one could get enough of it yeah yeah yeah yeah uh we had like a massive queue down the road and like on a monday tuesday wednesday it was just ridiculous uh and i said okay this is actually like a whole new kind of part of the industry that i hadn't really explored and it was a bit of a revelation and it was amazing at the time we got a load of like really good chefs come through because people were like trying to figure it out wanted to have a look and see like we had a couple of lads from the ninth come and work there um and like great restaurant yeah yeah yeah we have like jim's been on the show he's okay i've stuffed my absolute face it's so good so good um and like the head chef was this like michelin star guy i've forgotten um forgotten his name um but he'd like worked in like that kind of stuff so we had all this amazing like kitchen talent wow just making burgers it was honestly mental to be around and there was just a queue the whole time and I was just like this is like like wild and wildly fun yeah also like Joe I don't know if you've met Joe Grossman no he's a like amazingly creative really intelligent interesting guy um who I learned so much from but like is equally what were some of the wild creative lessons you picked up from Joe I think like just his enthusiasm for everything, regardless of how small it was, like down to the packaging or like, you know, he'd get like really into just like, how long did you cook that one thing?

7:45Like he just met wild enthusiasm for everything, being really kind of a part of all of it. I was like, that was quite inspirational. And I was like, right, okay, I understand. I saw like raw passion. So like what sort of, yeah, because I believe, what is it like? I think Bourdain used to have on his thing, which was just enthusiast. like it was like frequent flyer and enthusiasts and i just love that people who like kind of geek out on every little small detail but that that kind of you know fastidious energy towards that one thing yeah it's amazing i don't know it's just the energy can spread do you know what i mean so so when you said creative vision like how would he paint that picture in the team's head like where it was from i almost want to understand the journey from like one site to the meet metropolis it became i ended up working there for five years in the end uh like i worked there for a good old time um and yeah worked with them long when they opened the site in compton old compton street i was the gm there they'd done they'd done like maybe liverpool street by the time i'd like they had like two or three by the time i left um and yeah it was just it was a wild kind of ride but um yeah it was just like wildly disorganized as well how is it specifically disorganized no it was just well just when joe's just like he's a madman he's like there is an insane insanely impressive but complete mentalist in the best possible way yeah yeah yeah um and then yeah so i kind of like i felt like we were just on the edge of our seats just like trying to like you know keep up with all the demand and stuff it was just it was it was wild um and like obviously it was like a new growing business everyone's trying to figure it out as we were going but then we're also opening sites and it's like oh my god yeah yeah yeah trying to keep that gave you that kind of that you're saying about you couldn't really find your groove and you came out of the law yeah see whatever it is yeah that kind of wild roller coaster sort of melded with glenn's groove yeah yeah to be honest it kind of did suit my personality fancy at that time I was like in my early 20s and I was just you know having an amazing time I was hungry to learn I was meeting really amazing people from like the chefs to the front of house like it and also like there was such an atmosphere around all the customers because it was so popular at the time it was just like oh oh this is cool this is fun this is it yeah yeah I I want to figure out how to create something like this down the line um it definitely it stuck with me well yeah so I was going to say like what the the lessons that residually still stick with you today when you're running this place or these places like that you took from your time at patty and bum well i think joe was like really customer century he was like you know like really just like how are they feeling like check on the end like almost incessant or to a degree uh which i think the customer experience like the that even though it's just a burger restaurant like everything down from the music to the lights and the app like everything was like it was well thought out it was curated it wasn't an accident um and yeah i think that probably stuck with me and also just his wild energy enthusiasm for life.

10:47Yeah, yeah. It does rub off on you. And you're kind of like, okay, this is fun. Yeah. What's, because that's what, when, so I went in, so it's Tamila in Clapham. It's different names. There's like Tamil, Tamil Crown. I want to separate it in two. We kind of have the pubs, Tamil Prince, Tamil Crown, and then we have Tamila, the restaurant. Yeah, what's the why behind that decision-making? Because it's like, it's almost like a brand extension. but they're they're different things but similar things like what's the crap yeah we actually started our journey wanting to do tamla with the tamla concept in our mind we got we started in um hatney bridge and this uh as like in a little like food market like a three meter squared box basically so i've been takeaway and that was tamla and i mean we prince and i we kind of developed this you know um this indian like restaurant concept that we call tamla um and it just so happened that as we were looking for new space we're trying to find like ways to we basically we didn't have any money and we were just looking this was this was 21 21 right 21 and we were looking for like cheap ways to kind of try new things and going into pubs that had empty kitchens and just like basically knocking on doors and being like hey can we uh you've got an empty kitcheneer can we take this kitchen and we figure out like some sort of like turnover deal with the pub operator um so you'd give them a percentage of the revenue yeah exactly so like we went to this one kitchen in um in i want to say it's like bethnal greenway yeah um and they they had like they had like an they had a full like kitchen setup but it was just used as storage they had all the kit in there yeah just like boxes everywhere and they were serving like the local pizza shop you could like order them in and bring them in the pub they didn't have any food and so we were like can we do you like Indian food any chance you reckon we could uh just give it a go um and that we did a couple of those we did another one in um in Deptford because it was just cheap easy way to kind of get presents how did you so back to the point of being customer centric and like all that energy because again we'll get into all this yeah I love it when you walk through and there's the smell that's something you've clearly fucking thought about very deeply yeah it's that almost that transportive and teleportive whatever that word is um feeling as you're almost going into this different universe right um but when that's not your own boozer how did you control that because you still had to get the brand going it was so difficult and to be honest like we really struggled because it was a really disjointed experience you had like old man boozo people just go in smash pints you know your local who's been sat at the bar for like the last eight hours cobwebs on him yeah yeah that man immediately and get him some doses like typically not like a food-led pub right so we were we were really swimming upstream trying to get it going but we had no real resources so we didn't have much choice i was like fuck it i'm gonna try it um and for all intensive purposes they were a failure uh like they made no money we worked super hard um and it was like and the experience didn't translate from amazing indian food to boozer um and uh to like the boozer customer like the pub customer it like they didn't really so we were just some days we'd make like yeah so what was was the thinking like right we'll go in but there's going to be the old old boys saturday you know drinking a pint of bitter we're gonna we're gonna bring in this amazing food offering we may sell a few to them but we'll use like socials to get other people in was that kind of the thinking yeah yeah how if you were to we were to put it through a microscope and dissect the failure like what um what went wrong with that kind of uh disjointed experience like the fact that it the fact that it was disjointed okay you could never have uh married the two together because they were just intrinsically separated yeah yeah yeah and like the the people who worked in the pub didn't really care about the food and they were like oh yeah we've got these indian uh they've got this indian chef making curry but yeah what pint you want kind of and people like i'll go see the menu and they hadn't printed any menus and it was just in general it was like trying to fit like a square peg in a round hole like it just it didn't really work and we did a couple of them um because really we we just wanted to try and get the brand out there um and to be honest the only thing that was really successful out of those um like pub pop-ups was delivery uh we just did loads of delivery on them um out of them which kind of helped and kind of propped up the other side of the business well the the lack of and then yeah so we did a couple of those and then off the back of sorry to go back to like how did it jump around by the way we were looking for a dark kitchen at the time and I met I met this landlord he's like I've got this pub and he's in turn but I'm like he separated the kitchen from the front from the pub he'd actually put like a partition wall in and he was like come and have a look you can rent this kitchen out and we're going to rent out the front half to a like a wine bar kind of concept and we're going to get two rents from one space it's this brilliant idea and it's gonna be amazing uh and we went and we were like we obviously we've done the pub thing uh it hadn't really worked and i felt like it hadn't worked because we hadn't really had you know uh control autonomy over the space we weren't able to deliver a consistent or like coherent experience um and then we just ended up pitching this landlord for ages and just really nagging and i think we kind of just went um ground him down to the point we eventually said yes we're like we have this idea we look we've we've kind of been doing it but very badly so don't look too close but we've kind of been doing it over here and um it wasn't our intention to set up to do a pub but we found this one and we were like look we think we have something that we that we think would work if we could control the whole space and and that's kind of how the tamil prince was born so tamil prince was yeah with tamil prince was the first um like site bricks and mortar uh over in islington um and that's kind of how it came about and yeah and then in terms of so you again the disjointed experience of the wet pubs get this landlord you know badger them down but even i mean it was kind of the back of covid as well so a lot of places were like that gaff had been empty like six months oh wow so and like i I think it had been, you know, like just struggling through COVID as well.

17:28So we did have to kind of fight our corner a bit to get like, because he was like, who the hell are these lads? Like they have no idea what they're doing. How were you selling them that? What was the sales pitch? Because I love it. Like it's so easy. That's why I love doing this conversations is that it's so easy once you've got X number of followers to call you, like let's do this. But I want to know the bit when you have no brand awareness, you've got no fucking money. yeah what were you what was the glenn shit sales thing it's just relentless i think uh i think we just grounded down to the point where um i think they just said yes just to get us to stop fucking annoying them all the time uh inviting them to our uh happening bridge site which is you know just this market uh where we did takeaway and they're kind of looking at us going like how are you going to pay rent in a pub when you've got this takeaway joint and you've got essentially two terrible pop-ups that you're telling us are amazing um we just kept going and just was like look i'd be pretty sure like so the way we ended up getting it done was i signed a personal guarantee which is mental looking back at it put literally put um put myself on the line and um and signed an incredibly short lease and he said look if it goes wrong at least you know you're only on a short lease and you have to give me a bit of uh you know i'll come in your house and take your telly if you get it super wrong yeah yeah yeah but yeah i think that was it and that was just we just had to do it that way yeah and then when you start when you've got your own autonomy space like what are the things you put in place to make it flow and the energy and to be honest like when we opened the tamil prince like we had no idea like we didn't know what it was going to be We didn't really, you know, we'd taken some learning.

19:14We knew what we didn't want to do from our, like, pop-up experience in the pubs. What were some of those things? Just, like, we needed to control the space. We needed people, it needed to feel like it was cohesive. And we wanted to stick with the traditional pub thing because it's really kind of, that's my background. British boozer. And we also wanted to deliver amazing, authentic Indian food. And that really leans into Prince's background. And it felt like this like perfect marriage of basically both of our backgrounds and, you know, printers from like a family of restauranteurs in India. And he grew up like working in his uncle's restaurant.

19:50It's just it felt like it was the right thing. And it was just cross your fingers and hope to make it work. We didn't really know what we were in for. I remember saying to the staff, like, the manager we had when we opened, I was like, look, if we're busy at the weekend, we'll probably survive. And that was basically the aim. I mean, before we opened it, we'd walk around Barnsbury and we were like, this place is empty. We got this really residential pub in this, like, it's in N1. It's, like, kind of central, but, like, no one's around. It's, like, super dead around. There's no one out and about walking around.

20:28and then we were just like, this is going to be really tough, but hopefully we can just squeeze a bit of juice out the weekend and we'll survive. And then what, so in that first three, six months, what were you doing to get punters through the door? Well, weirdly from the beginning, the first three months the kitchen wasn't built, so we were just selling pints just to get some money in the till. So literally me and the... Under the name Tamil Prince. Under the Tamil Prince, yeah. Yeah, we'd come up with it all. We'd come up with the concept. And, like, we had everything ready. It's just the kitchen.

21:04We had no money. We were running out of money. We were buying second-hand equipment. And we need to get some guidance to change extraction. Like, there was just no end of issues. And so, anyway, it was just taking ages. So, we were like, fuck it. We're just going to open the doors and see if we can just get some money in the till. We did, like, the first couple of months just as a boozer. No one came. it was like it was pretty hard but it was good because we got to meet all the neighbors and people were coming in and like the neighbors are really what kind of gave us a good uh head start there is like because it is super like neighborhood and once we did you know we're telling people we're getting people excited about you know we're going to do this food and it actually used to be an indian restaurant oh wow like 10 years before yeah yeah yeah called roots um and so there was that little bit of like indian heritage and people were like oh this used to be an amazing indian restaurant but they can make it work and best of luck and we hope that you guys make it like work or whatever um and then we got up and running and uh like it was quiet really really quiet for ages and we weren't really sure like we kind of just like oh don't really know like we just got to keep going like i'm sure hopefully fingers crossed it will figure itself out um and then we got we got i remember the day we got the marina loughlin uh review um she's that's right i should put in She's not writing anymore, but she's a well-known food critic for the Times.

22:31Right. Sunday Times, maybe? Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah. And that really, that was the start. I remember the day we got it, I was like, oh, my God. My missus was working in New York at the time, and I called her, and I was like, I think it's going to happen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sick. We have been grafting, and literally the first, for not really very much, like the first all the takings from the first month we had to put into the first month of the restaurant being open we had to put into upgrading the extraction because the extraction didn't work and like we were setting off the fire alarm because all smoke was coming out the kitchen because we had we were cooking on a robata barbecue and it was just like all the chefs were like my eyes are stinging and it was just like we were literally just like worked really hard then empty the bank account to try and go to the next month and it was just the case you know and then we pay the wages and i was like this we're just we're kind of like in this perpetual cycle of treading water we're on the edge of probably like dying yeah uh and then the review came in i remember calling my missus being like i think this is it i think it's gonna work yeah yeah yeah uh and then pretty much like within a month of the review we got another we like uh grace dent came and did the guardian we had jimmy when he was working for the standard at the time um then we were just like fully booked and we we had no idea or any like ability to cope with it um and you know we kind of got we got slagged off a little bit in the marina review because the front of house were a bit uh a bit clueless and probably i was included in it because we just we had no uh how are you clueless and what have you learned from that honestly we were just like we just weren't prepared for it to be full and also we were very gung-ho we were just kind of like yeah listen we sell curry it's a few pints it'll be chill it'll be fine and then like all your uh you know like food people like genuinely interested in restaurants all your restaurants seeing people coming in and be like asking loads of questions about like you know where these prawns from how what's the masala and being like oh we look like idiots yeah we need to figure this out we actually we've gone from being just like what we thought was just like we didn't really know what it was and then we were like right okay we need to figure out there's um hurry up and get you read that have you read that book will by will godara unreasonable hospitality that yellow book that's a sick book i went to nashville to interview him he did union square in um new york when that became the world's best restaurant it details how he is really ultimately it's like it's a book about service in front of house and how you create those magical touch points and it's it's such a such a such good book it's like i don't think it's not even yes it's applicable to hospitality but it's applicable to life really it's an amazing book but anyway he recommended a book to me called um the art of gathering by priya patel and it's all again how do you get people to gather in the right way possible and you know i said we you came to the subacupage the other week and my whole thing when we started doing them was just be chill like we'll serve some food serve some grinding grills it'll be fine yeah i read this book and i was like it's like something hit me like a light bulb from you know like but i was like fucking hell like wow and she was saying like chill is being chill is um she didn't say gives me the ick but it said something along the lines of like being chill is actually really a disservice and she said what you need to be is the generous, generous authority.

25:53So you need to like take control of the dining room, be, you know, endlessly generous. I love that kind of generous authority thing. How do you think you went from being kind of chill and the transformation to kind of command, commanding that your fleet, commanding that generous authority? I think the responsibility of it kind of like gets you, whips you into shape. Once the restaurant's full and you're like, okay, we actually we have responsibility to all of our guests we want we also like we started it because we love it like and we owe it to like prince's all the hard work that he does in the kitchen um and you know we obviously we were ambitious and we wanted to wanted it to be a success and it's just like right okay we didn't really you know we'd gone from market stall to a full restaurant uh and with with not you know with a bit of respite in between but it was um you know with a few failures in between as well but it would kind of gone from market store to full restaurant in like no like pretty quickly yeah yeah yeah off the back of the reviews and we had to figure it out and i think that was that was it i was like it was almost the shock we were like what the hell let's it shocks you into action yeah yeah what are some of the stuff you specific things you literally put in place like was it the smell like was that because again i know that's just something that really as when i walk into your restaurants is is arresting yeah and and welcoming at the same time like what were some of those things you put in well i think it was just figuring it out i think really it's honestly there was there's no rocket science behind it uh we were just yeah get better get quick yeah yeah yeah serve people faster streamline the kitchen uh everyone needs to know the menu on the back of their hand and you know chat to people and a lot of it was like all of our neighborhood guests you know you just ask them questions like how could this be better yeah yeah well we i remember when some of the neighbors came in when we were painting the gaff and we had all the swatches on the wall.

27:41And we were like, all the paints, different... Oh, like the different colourways. Yeah, yeah. That'd be like, what colour do you want us to paint the restaurant sort of thing? Oh, wow. We had our two neighbours. What did they say? They were like, that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool, that's the green we were thinking of. Yeah. So, yeah, we would just constantly chat to the neighbours all the time and people giving us feedback on what they liked, what they didn't like. because, like, we were figuring it out as we were going. Well, this founder of Soar House has come on the pod next week and he's obviously reading some stuff up on that today.

28:18And his whole thing is, like, the customer's the smartest person in the world. And, like, the amount of people that don't ask their customer, like, which colour should we fucking paint it? It seems so obvious, but, like, I think people can get wrapped up in the rock starification of chefs and the ego. It's just like, well, what do you want? here's four options i mean if you look at the way that we plated the food at the beginning yeah for when like the first say six months to a year to where it is now like everything has changed how so uh just like like everything from presentation crockery garnish like we we we were literally just throwing it together at the beginning uh and like it's every like over time you figure out what how to get better naturally you're just constantly thinking right what can i do and like the presentation got better everything's like the food's got much better um the menus changed we took some things off the menu had to put them back on because all the neighbors kicked off uh we took off the dal mackney and they were like what the fuck are you doing um we had to put it back on uh but yeah so you definitely listening to like being in such a neighborhood um residential spot like that you have to listen to your neighbors and our neighbors were our biggest fans and at the beginning before you know lots of um lots of people traveled to come and see us our neighbors were you know how we paid our bills um and they and like you know the people of barn our neighbors and barns really got behind us i'm eternally grateful to yeah yeah yeah he helped us no end in what's so during that bit where you feel like you're pushing water uphill you know quite literally and like what are you saying to yourself when you wake up in the morning everything think is going peat tong it feels like the whole universe is crushing on you like what was the what was glenn saying to himself just to keep on keeping on yeah i mean well once it got going it was kind of we were less it was more just trying to no but i mean pre pre yeah yeah yeah god we we were especially in like around the time we were doing the pop-ups and we were working so insanely hard um for literally sometimes minus um it you just you have to like i think prince and i were like blindly believed in what what what we were doing uh and and i'm glad that we did because if i think we both had enough experience if it was genuinely shit we would have pulled the plug but we were like we just believed in what we were doing and we wanted um we just wanted we're like i'm sure that it's gonna figure itself out yeah kind of like you almost you have to be slightly unhinged in those moments yeah it's like like yeah also at the same time you've no idea and you're kind of figuring it out just ride that roller coaster yeah if we run out then we run out but like we're kind of clinging on so let's just keep clinging on yeah yeah yeah i think we're also really lucky we have a really like tight uh group of people around us when we you know we like prince's um father-in-law would like deliver the food uh prince's wife would on like her domestic home uh dosa grinder would like make our dosa batter um my missus works in graphic design she would do all the like branding do the menus and all like the little stuff that's so like that you would have to pay someone else to do that you can just you know we have like we're a really tight small little team and prince and i have um we're you know i know it sounds cliche but we're genuinely like really good mates.

31:44Yeah. We were literally, we were traveling together a couple of weeks ago, like last weekend in Lisbon. Oh no, whereabouts in Lisbon did you go? We were. My mate lived out there so I was there, quite spent a lot of time there. Such a good city. It's so good. I had a couple of recommendations and I just kind of followed those blindly and it was amazing. There's a place called Sal Grosso. Did you go there? Sal Grosso, I can't remember. The menu's on the wall and I went with my mates extremely hungover. They had the whole menu on the wall. And this cute little Canadian couple, they were probably about 70.

32:16Yeah. I think they'd just come off a cruise or something. They came over and my mate, me and Maureen, I was like, I want that, that, that, that. And the guy, she was nudging her husband going, oh, my God, these guys are crazy. But it was one of those places, like, you know, a small little boutique taverna. It was so sick. I thought it was really cool. It was good fun. And we went to this place called La Ponta or something. You get the boat across and the sun was shining. and he sat out like on the on the like little harbour bit it was cool um but yeah like we literally like i speak to him all like we chat every day always have the hundreds kind of um you know we have i also think there's a piece about like being relentlessly resourceful there's so much stuff in within your your pals yeah yeah you can people want to help as well want to help also i think people like if you want to start a brand or business they think they again you need to go and get Saatchi Saatchi to do your logo.

33:10And you can go on Fiverr, you can just go and put it in AI, mate. Well, now you can. Back then you couldn't. But, yeah, I suppose, well, you probably actually might have done, but you've been able to if we had the foresight. But, yeah, you're banging ChatGBT and sort of that. Yeah, create a restaurant, please. What's the... I should have done that. Well, yeah, I use it for, like, way too much now. Like, even when I was telling me how much porridge I should be eating for this run. For this run. Yeah, and it was coming out of like, you could have this. I was like, it's almost like I've got little power in my pocket, it's sick.

33:44So, sorry, when you met Prince, yeah, detail that story and your long pilgrimage up to Sheffield. Well, yeah, so we, Prince and I, once I left Bow, I, well, actually, I worked for someone else in between, but then I worked for Market Halls. Yeah. And Prince worked for, and I was the opening GM of Market Halls of Victoria. Prince worked for one of the traders. And so that's how I met him. And we kind of were like, you know, we'd chat and we kind of were like, it was the beginning of friendship. And then in COVID, we ended up working in this restaurant together. And that's where we really became like good mates.

34:26And like, he was kind of like the exec chef. I worked in operations. We're kind of working in shells pockets. And that's when, you know, when you're, you know, you go to war together every day, you kind of learn a lot about each other. And you kind of, I'd see that he was like super talented and he had all this, you know, really great chef. And also just like one of the hardest working people in the world. He used to, I think he's like, I think like his work ethic's insane. He used to work at this restaurant during the day. And then he would then leave work at like, he said like 11 to 11 in the restaurant.

34:59and then he would go and work in another restaurant and do their batch cooking overnight from like 12 to 4 and then sleep in that restaurant and then come back again. He would go home, shower, and then come back to work. And he did that every day for like the year that I worked there. And he took like no days. That's where you want to go to Walsh. He took no days off. I mean, this guy is just wired differently. And, you know, you couple that like insane work ethic with like unbelievable talent. the chef talent that he has, especially like, you know, he's, he's cooking food that he knows he grew up around, you know, his, you know, worked in his family restaurants in India.

35:37Um, and you know, it's just, the guy was just unbelievable. And I was like, okay. And you know, this is a sort of this, you know, if I'm going to pick someone's go to war with I pick you. Yes. Yes. People we're trying to make hungry into the most valuable food and drink business podcast on planet earth, but I really need your help. I want to make this podcast so valuable for you to help you grow your business faster stronger better have way more fun we've got a super short customer feedback uh sorry consumer survey audience survey thing on google forms there's a link at the top of the show notes if you could fill that out it would be so helpful we make this podcast way better for you yeah i think him um and so we were like kind of just toying with the idea of like oh you know because everyone in hospitality when you work really hard and you've got loads of experience everyone thinks about opening their own restaurant i think probably actually doing it and thinking about it are two very very different things um and did you cross that castle like honestly with just blind ignorance i think yeah yeah well covid was a massive part of it um and i think everyone in the industry because the industry just kind of like melted away overnight everyone had to take stock and like it was it was like yeah you know you're kind of just on the on the like in on the rabbit on the um on the hamster wheel just going round and round and then all of a sudden when everything stops you actually stop take a breath look around and go okay fuck i need to i don't need to just keep going round and round and uh and just jumping another hamster wheel which your own business is a bigger more treacherous one yeah you go on a much bigger wheel with obstacles and no uh no and no reward really well at the beginning but yeah you're just like so i think covid was like a great like um wake-up call almost yeah and we're like okay what you know what am i actually doing um and then obviously i was working with prince over covid and i met this great guy um who was like you know all the things i've said and the owner of the restaurant we're working at the time we were opening a prep kitchen for them and so that was prince and i we were tasked with right we've got to you know find this location you know find the site kit it out get it ready and then we'll start doing the production there so and it was all on a pretty tight budget so we were like um i'd found these second-hand fridges in like sheffield or something uh and so it feels like sheffield's always a place for second-hand fridges you know what i mean yeah it's all it was this basis like warehouse this guy was like a second-hand equipment dealer proper kind of like rodney character like all right uh but the sheffield version yeah and he was like come in my you know my pandora's box of like grills and planches and ovens and all kinds of stuff uh and i was like i was looking this up online because the budget was tight and i was like look i think i found a gaff where we can go and maybe pick up some like decent like refurbished kit sure and the owner was like right go and jump in a van and you two lads fuck off and sort it out and it was like a four-hour journey to sheffield and it's just prince and i and i was like we got to scheming uh we basically came up with most of the the idea of leaving and like what we were going to do and what the menu would look like on this like eight hour return journey with a couple of fridges in in hand yeah um and that really that kind of you know you're sat next to each other you figure out if you like each other as well you figure out if you've got stuff to talk about um and yeah that's what i was saying to you the innocent juices hiring rule was could you sit, you could have the best CV on planet Earth.

39:12But I think the final question was, could you hang out, do a six-hour car journey with this person? And the answer is no, it ain't happening. And you're out. Yeah, you're out. So what were the stuff you were thinking about? I love driving. It's kind of the only way my brain can switch off because I can't be on my phone. I feel like it's actually one of the best ways to think about bigger picture stuff. Even Rick Rubin. do you remember rick rubin the music producer no he's he did like adele beastie boys red hot chili peppers work with uh johnny cash really he's got an amazing podcast but he says like driving his is one thing that helps him come up create universes you know i mean i feel like whether it's a car journey up to some you know rodney fella and sheffield all right mate you got some fucking fridges for you or or it's you know driving through malibu where rick lives it you can you can create your own universes like what was some of the stuff that you and prince were talking about i think we just we had ambition to to do it our do it on our own and it was really at the beginning like a lot of the stuff that were coming up was just complete rubbish menu was it like what it looked like was it definitely like uh well prince obsessed with food uh and and indian food as well specifically so yeah it was lots of menu chat i think basically on that journey we decided uh And well, we knew we needed, I was like, I need to try like your style of cooking, not the stuff that we're making at work for other people.

40:41And so we kind of, we spoke about a lot about like loads of different dishes, things that we thought would work. That's where we kind of drilled into Prince's heritage, his Tamil roots and like. What does Tamil mean? Tamil. Tamil, it's a region in South India. Tamil Nadu. Right. And Prince is from Tamil Nadu. He's from just outside Chennai. um and you know we i was we had i had this idea of you know kind of i didn't know it was really regionality wasn't like a massive thing at the time i think london's getting a lot more into regionality now and i think in a way it was kind of fortuitous that i was kind of like i think this is a gap i think this is opportunity and i think what you have really interesting story i think like you know let's try some of your food i think on that journey we organized you know we were like right, we'll do a tasting.

41:26And we went to work one, you know, worked in the prep kitchen. And then we're like, okay, we're all going home and like locked up at the end of the night. And we kind of came back at like one in the morning and we're like, right, come on, let's cook up all the food. Because we didn't, you know, you don't have restaurant grade equipment in your house. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I was like, oh, oh, this is good. What was the dish that was like, bosh, this is it? Like he made, I think we had like, he made us a couple of curries that were like amazing. the chicken curry which is still on our menu now spellbinding yeah yeah um we made a bunch of doses um um yeah just some yeah that was basically like doses like typically south indian um and yeah we tried a variation of a couple did some masala doses i was like fuck i think this is actually really really good i think you'll i think i think we should do what we've discussed and we should yeah we should leave uh we should give it a go and that was that was really that was it it was all very exciting with not really too much of a plan we were all just kind of like fuck it let's go and how long from leaving that job to um moving on it so like it was kind of covered time at that time and i was coming it was in the height really of covid right um and that restaurant was just doing takeaway so we're doing a lot of that and i would i lived i live in um in clapton in hatney and i would like my missus and i would do like you know like in cover you couldn't really go out you could just go for like walks and stuff so we just were it's so boring so go to the pub nightmare man so we would just do walks up and down the canal and i live not far from hackney wick and we would walk up the canal towards hackney wick and that's where they were building um hackney bridge and i ended up one of the lads i worked with at market halls was uh gonna work there uh i knew that he was working there and they were as they were building it so we were walking up and down i said this place is gonna get bill this would be perfect uh because it would be like pretty cheap way to get some space right just open a market store like you know we didn't really have you know what you kind of knew it wasn't your first rodeo because you had yeah yeah horse experience yeah yeah and i was like maybe this is like a real kind of easy like cheap way to get going um and so anyway i went and spoke to the guy called nico who worked there and uh because i used to work with him and he was like i was like oh are you doing this thing he's like yeah do you want a job i was like all right mate no i actually i do want to chat to you but i don't want a job i actually would like a a stall and he was like oh um i don't know if like he's like well like what are you doing like what like what do you want a stall for kind of thing and then i was like right okay well i got this kind of like indian thing he's like yeah i think indian might be okay let me speak to the guys who are like deciding what the food um and i like get on an email chain with And I'm like, so you've never heard of me, but I've got this idea.

44:17And they were like, right, we want to do tasting. And I was like, oh, fuck, Prince, we've got to do, like, where do we do this? We don't, and they were like, we can come to one of your venues. We're like, fuck, we don't have a venue. Like, we're just starting out. So I ended up getting, like, the three decision makers from the people who were opening that market, or two of them, who were opening that market into my flat. And Prince cooked the full menu in my one-bed flat in Clapton at the time. and they came around it was just the most like weirdest surreal feeling I'd done like a mini presentation and like Prince was like cooking saving away yeah dosa like it's all open plan like in my flat and it was like we just got like Prince just making dosa over there I'm kind of talking them through this like completely made up business plan and just being like can you let us sell some food some takeaway yeah and it was just this wild little story and I like um uh and yeah they ended up saying yes and then that was kind of how it all got going wow what is it mate i love your story because it's like as i say it really is a story of hustle and as i say i see the restaurants you see the the acclaim the michelin bib like all that stuff but but going deeper and deeper into this you know the journey is just relentlessly resourceful hustle basically making it fucking happen exhausting yeah exhausting something you see the light then some look i think a lot of people like love to talk about how fun and great it is and it is it's all of those things uh but i don't know if enough people really talk about like it's kind of like just get amnesia you forget about all the uh all the graft and all the hard yards that actually get to like that restaurant concept where you you know your favorite like you know your favorite booze or favorite restaurant what would you say are those take it so we you know dispel the mist of um amnesia what would you say are some of those things you wish you knew about or or you take into new openings now like some of those the obstacles that kind of just blossomed up from the weeds yeah well i think like you're constantly learning and figuring it out as you go and you have i think you have to do it in order to kind of you know there's no like there's no rule book it's like everyone's everyone's journey is different everyone's learnings are different um i think to be honest i think blind relentless uh um just resilience is what kind of got us going but equally at the same time we had no fucking clue what we're doing so yeah yeah yeah it's the same with this if i knew everything that was gonna yeah i take to do this i would never have started do you know what i mean but it's but it's that yeah do you need luck as well um and you you but you need to be prepared for like when the luck comes around to kind of grab it with two hands and we got really lucky one of the first people we hired in Hattie Bridge was this uh was this wonderful woman called Sandy who used to just come and sit with me out the back and peel onions because it's basically the base of all the curries and Prince was like I need like 50 kilos of onions and I was like I can't you know and she would come and sit at the back and just like peel onions with me and she um she introduced us to the landlord of the town of prince because she was like i used to work for this guy he owns a load of pubs and um you know you should really chat to him because you know you're doing the pub thing and then maybe that or maybe there's a conversation there and then you know fortuitously through this gal who like lived in hackney wick at the time and just wanted like a weekend job we ended up meeting the landlord who's also the landlord of the tamil prince and also king's cross so like literally Sandy was like the key that unlocked so much of what happened you need to be ready for when that you can be the architect of your own luck if you work hard enough yeah I feel like you increase your surface area of luck yeah that's mad yeah yeah honestly what a wonderful woman so I want to talk to me about the thought process the Sunday roast because that became like a viral sensation like a hero product yeah Yeah, talk, talk, talk, talk about that.

48:17The Sunday roast is a bit of a funny one. We'd always like done really authentic. The whole concept of the pubs, the British pub feel, but like amazing authentic Indian food was that real separation. It was like British boozer at the front, amazing Indian food, you know, coming out from the kitchen at the back. And I was like, listen, I feel like we're missing an opportunity here, given that it's a pub, you know, it's a pub setting. and you know Brits love a Sunday roast and there's this whole like cultural thing around Sunday roast and going to the pub and sinking a few pints it didn't really fit with our like concept so to speak when I was saying to print I was like I think there's something in it and I don't really know I subsequently found out there were people that were doing kind of fusion roasts but at the time I didn't I genuinely didn't know and I was like let's do the roasting I think it could be really interesting um uh but my my one thing i was like but it you know we can have like it's basically like a thali uh like an indian like a plate platter yeah lots of different things a roast dinner is like an english version of itali in a way it's like you've got all your different bits you've got your potatoes you've got your meat you've got your cabbage and it was like okay let's just swap out those those british bits with indian bits but then still have like that one big piece of protein like the the lamb shank or you know your roasted chicken or whatever and kind of um keep it kind of feels familiar but it's different and so i said to prince i was like i really think that we should do a yorkshire pudding just to kind of really send that message you know that kind of feels familiar but isn't but it kind of is um i thought that would be really interesting to do like kind of indian thali style but um uh and he fucking hated it He hated it.

50:04He would like, he just thought, yeah, making the Yorkshire puddings is just like a nightmare in the oven because you have to keep making them all fresh. Were you going to do a fusion Yorkshire pudding or were you going to do... No, I was like, just that would be the only like kind of like traditional British thing on the menu. You have everything you can pick. That is the, that's the bulwark of pub Sunday roast. That's what a roast was. Yorkshire pudding is the best bit. such a great vehicle for all sorts isn't it yeah when i first like had my roast and i had my first dinner i was like like what is this thing like because it's not on anything else it's only on a roast dinner that i'm aware of uh and i was like so that kind of symbolized that was like a marker that's right oh that's a roast dinner so i was like let's stick that on this indian like roast dinner thing that we were trying to do uh prince just hated it and um so he just used to make like 20 and then be like oh no it's too much like with the oven and you know kind of making them all fresh and then he was like he would just like he absolutely presented it maybe like 20 and then he'd be like it's run out and then he'd make put roti on and then feedback was that people were like actually do you know the fucking roti on a roast dinner is unbelievable uh this like kind of like paratha flatbread that we do um and so then yeah soon enough we ended up getting rid of the yorkshire pudding um and then yeah but the roast dinner was um it was didn't it took a while to like catch on no one really for the first like six months like what year did you watch that yeah that was it must have been like 2022 right yeah uh no 23 yeah it was 2023 yeah we opened the tamil crown we did it we did the roast from then um and yeah so like no one really for the first like six months no one really came like sundays were dead and i was like oh man i really thought this was like quite cool thing and i thought it was like a great idea and like it was just people came liked it so we kept doing it but it wasn't like it took a while and then i think like the tiktokers and the instagrammers of the world got uh got onto it and uh and then like now it's the busiest day of the week and it's like fully booked i can't like my my parents-in-law came over uh from Ireland and they were like, oh, like on like last minute, we're like, oh, can we come to the Crown and get a roast?

52:23I was like, we actually fully booked. Wow. Couldn't get my parents a lot. So, yeah, like it's just completely evolved. And I feel like that's just cognizant of most of our story. Like most of the things we've done at the beginning have been like relatively slow or unwell, not well received. It takes time. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's such a refreshing lens look at things. Yeah, it's easy. It's so easy to bin stuff off if it's not moving as quickly as you want it to. I think I also just like blindly believed that it was good. And I'd have it every week. And I'd be like. So how did you. So, yeah, just for people who don't know, what detail, what's on the roast?

53:05There is a bunch of different stuff on there. We do like a masala potato. There's roti. Obviously the protein. So we've got like fish. we do fish roasted lamb and we do a roasted chicken and we do like a lamb shank and then there's other stuff there's like perital there's like a pickle I think it's like ten different things it's basically like a tali on one plate with a roasted joint or something and a roti yeah oh mate it's really I'm getting hungry thinking about that but yeah it took ages and then finally I think kind of As I was sort of, yeah, to say again, it's refreshing, the slow burn of things.

53:53So you said like Prince is super hardworking, that his family and his Indian heritage definitely flow into the business. What are they like, culturally, what lessons have you picked up from their way of working in business? oh well prince is like a massive uh yes man he wants to do everything all the time like he's just like he's so uh hardworking and just like he backs himself to the moon and i love that about him uh and he's just he's just like he's he's never um he's never like oh we can't do that or oh i think actually we've got a bit too much on at the moment like he's just constantly saying yes to stuff puts more on his plate yeah he's just like he's like man i work seven days a week and i haven't seen my wife or kids in three years but like yeah let's open another restaurant like what are you no like are you serious um and so um yeah like he's just wired in a in a very different way i've never met anyone what's his backstory like if you know much about that well yeah yeah well he um As I said, like, he worked in, like, his uncles and his cousins had restaurants over back in his hometown in Tamaradu, just outside Chennai.

55:09So he came from, like, a restaurant family and then came over to London, I think, around 2010, 2011. And he ended up getting a job in, like, a French bistro restaurant. Wow, yeah. In, like, Covent Garden. I forgot the name. It's closed now anyway. I think we have, I've Googled it. it's closed just to try and figure out like what it was. I forgot the name of it. And he ended up, so then he ended up getting like, having all of his Indian cooking background, but then ended up getting kind of really traditional French training. And he was cooking all these like French dishes. And so he had like, he's got this like weird mix of like classical French training.

55:53And then obviously all the, his amazing Indian skill set around, You know, all that regionality, the food of that region. And it's just, it's kind of like, that's, I think, what, you know, as I said earlier, how like a lot of our food is developed in terms of like the garnish and presentation and style and the way that we deliver the food. I think because Prince kind of like tapped into, he's married those two experiences together. And then, yeah, he just, he ended up, he worked in, he worked in Taste of India in East Ham for ages. And he worked in a load of Indian restaurants and, yeah, ended up working in market halls where we met.

56:34And then, yeah, eventually. He's got that kind of eclectic mix. Oh, interesting. It's very unique, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then also, like, super traditional and authentic. Like, now he's just doing what he wants to do. Sick. And, yeah, it's formed this kind of weird, like, mix. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just kind of worked really well. On the mix note, again, we talked about the wild, wild west of Joe and Patty and Bun. Hmm. Going to the other side of that dichotomy and the structure of JKS, because, again, I want to almost meld the two things together in terms of how you got this place moving.

57:08What were some of the lessons you took from that? Well, I kind of, yeah, like I would say this with complete love and respect for Joe. It was crazy. And then I kind of was like... Crazy how? Just crazy. Like everything was happening at once. And I felt like you couldn't really see the wood for the tree. So if you go into work on a Monday, was there like, what was the crack? Just generally queue and don't stop running until like everyone leaves at the end of the night at like 11. It was just full on. And then some of it like was, you know, it's just, it's a luxury. It's a great place to be. And it's like, you know, when a place is vibey and buzzing like that, it's just, it is really, really fun.

57:49But I wanted to, you know, I was really hungry for like experience. And like, I wanted to understand. I never knew that at the end I would open my own restaurant. but I was just wanting to, you know, I wanted to see what, you know, what else was out there. And going to work for JKS, this, like, really respected, well-oiled, like, restaurant group, you know, arguably one of the best restaurant groups in London. I was like, okay, I'm just going to go see what the other side of the coin looks like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was just hugely, like, process-driven, and it was, like, felt a bit stiff at times, a little bit corporate, but, like, incredibly well-oiled.

58:24When you say well-oiled, like, just go into that anymore. The way that it was structured, I had an amazing operations manager there. I think she's now probably director of operations, Joanne Seely. She was unbelievable, boss to have, incredibly strict and get the job done, but incredibly talented and loads working alongside her or underneath her. and yeah like I learned a lot more about processes and like you know the things that if you if you you know if you onboard people and train them properly they tend to do a better job than if you're just like hey grab a notepad and hit the floor it's burgers and chips mate yeah yeah yeah

59:10and it just it was just a totally different way of working and it was great but it also then just became quite boring um in the in the best possible way um and yeah and then i was like right okay i kind of feel like i've absorbed enough of this um and i was like right what's next and i met chris um who was um a guy he used to be a customer at patty and bun uh he's this guy who'd come over from america he'd been working in like marketing uh corporate marketing over there what sort of brands was he doing because just for chris's own story and now yeah yeah that was an it's like amazing twist to the story but yeah he um i think he was working for like general motor chevrolet oh so proper big yeah yeah i don't have to work over there in my memory yeah um i remember him saying the last job he did before he left was put putting the chevrolet logo on the man man united kit or something yeah yeah um and he was like you know big corporate kind of but like massive visionary super creative highly intelligent madman and i'd kind of gone back to kind of like the joe s kind of looks like he'd come up with this um this conscious chicken sandwich concept where the bun uh mirrored it was like a teardrop it mirrored the bun would look like that chicken breast yeah okay so when you cook you know you clean down the chicken breast it would come out in this like teardrop and it was this equal protein to carbohydrates like michelin was it like a healthy concept yeah well it kind of was but it was still sandwiches um it was this wild um like hugely like creative kind of i saw the vision um but it ultimately was he saying to you to paint that vision uh just he kind of just ran me through like in like his mad way like how he thought that this was like revolutionary and you kind of drink the cooler you're like yeah i see that you're like a highly driven like really intelligent like massively successful person i'm And, you know, he didn't really have any hospitality experience and he wanted someone to kind of guide him through that side of it while he was just, you know, being this creative force.

1:01:17I was like... So where was it going to open? What was it like? So we ended up... Was it like a restaurant like Patty and Bar? Was it a food to go sort of shindig or what was it? It was going to be a restaurant concept, but like most things, you know, you want to prove the concept. So we got this, we kitted out this amazing, like, huge van, this mercedes vario uh with like rationale ovens in it and like uh like load of plunge it was like a restaurant setup in a van it was honestly it was in broadgate circle for um for about two years uh in the city uh behind liverpool street and it was you know it was like it was unbelievable style of like level of cooking on a van and i think that's what didn't translate people you know street food customer who wanted value we were selling sandwiches at the time for you know like 11 or 12 quid and this is like in 2017 you're just thinking you know it didn't you know your value customer didn't appreciate the level of what they you know the experience and like the hard work and like the quality of what they so they would just go and you know buy pies from the pie man and he'd have the massive queue and it was just like it didn't you know this it that you know that again this goes back to the um uh the you know the the pubs pub thing when we do the pop-ups like it didn't translate to the audience there was this disconnect between what you're doing in the kitchen and the people that are um you know that you're trying to serve yes yeah and that was again another learning i was just like you know but that was a wild story you know that was great and you know working for a startup really trying to help this um help get this concept off the ground um and we did that for like a couple of years and then you know chris he's ended up gone and opened Dorian.

1:03:01Supermarket of Dreams. Yeah, Supermarket of Dreams, a non-heel fish shop, like eel sushi. Like again, just like super... He gets a massive opportunity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even like just seeing those three things and it is alone to understand the way the guy thinks. Amazing like visionary. Yeah, I was going to say like what did you almost learn via osmosis just by being privy to Chris about vision? I think like, to be honest, I managed to download or like distill loads of stuff like from my interactions with like Joe, the kind of stuff from JKS, being around Chris and like learning almost, you know, what not to do rather than what to do in terms of like that cohesive.