50% guest come back not just for Hotel but for food and services they experience states Chef Nitish

Nitish Kumar Singh, Executive Sous Chef, Renaissance Bengaluru Race Course Hotel

How important is the food behind the success of any hotel?

Chef Nitish:- Providing good and exemplary food makes a guest happy and it has a huge impact on the hotel business. What I think as a chef, every hotel has a key and bed to sleepover, but they can’t deliver the same quality and great taste of food.

Its food and not to forget beverage, which makes a huge difference in turning around guests experience and making them have a memorable time. Which makes your guest loyal to come back to your hotel. I have also worked in a hotel where I have seen 50% of the guest are frequent and they come back not just for hotel, but for food and services they experience.

Renaissance Bengaluru Race Course Hotel is famous for weddings and conferences, how different are the menus which are curated for weddings as compared to food served in the conference?

Chef Nitish:- The menu for conferences has to meet the basics expectations of clients where we have to assemble their basic requirements and quick access to food such as maximizing food to layover into the buffet, lesser live counters and more of deli and salads to be quickly available and a satisfactory taste keeping the guest in mind.

Whereas in the wedding, it’s a showcase event for one, you have to put more focus on giving them an experience and a journey to the food. Guest will have a good amount of time to explore your food. Maximizing food to be kept live counters, showcasing chefs skills and giving them experience and the entertaining environment will lead to the success of any wedding event. Also, we try keeping food real, rich and royal.

Fusion cuisine is quite trendy these days but some say that fusion is nothing but confusion. What is your take on it?

Chef Nitish:- Fusion is good until it’s not overdone and overpowering the essence of two cuisines or ingredients which has been combined. Who will not like a schezwan chicken masala dosa?? The best example of fusion cuisine is indo-Chinese, which is one of the most popular in India. As far as my take is concerned, I believe in keeping it simple with a twist of flavour having customer requirements in mind.

Chef, please tell us about the research which goes on in curating a menu?

Chef Nitish:- While creating a menu various factors have to be kept in mind.

• Current trends
• Readily available ingredients
• The capability of the team who produces
• Creativity and innovation
• And finally the customers’ demands and needs.

Chef, please give us some insights on handling the food cost in hotel kitchens?

Chef Nitish:- This is very vast and takes a good experience and control over it, few insights are as below:-

• Locally sourced ingredients over imported ones
• Having a set of Menu grid priced accordingly
• Matching clients expectations and looking over offerings with a price
• Waste control, Zero waste policy
• Last but not the least, having market research done over raw and perishables and indenting keeping your profitability and revenue in mind, which is deep detail and quite of good work for one to do on daily basis.

How do you manage your team to provide non-stop service throughout the day? What is the key point you tell your team while training them? 

Chef Nitish:- Being a chef and hotelier, we have been trained in such a way where our only focus is on delivering a memorable and delightful experience to our guest and we all are committed to it. This we repeat in our every briefing and we all have it in our blood.

Also being in Renaissance Bengaluru Race Course Hotel, Our GM has a philosophy, “That if you have to say yes to any customer requests, please go ahead but if you have to say no, please seek Sr. leader’s permission.” So you can see how empowered a team is to say yes for all the guest request.

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