Meet Ashok Bajaj, desi restaurateur, host to powerful leaders in US
WASHINGTON: It’s the corner table right in the middle of the restaurant, blocked by a wooden wall on one side, and a curtain of beads on the other. Guest sat the table get a generous view of the entrance and the rest of the hall, but they themselves remain mostly out of sight.
It’s been a favourite table of some of Ashok Bajaj’s most celebrated and frequent power diners.
“That’s the seat Michelle Obama sat in,” Bajaj says, recalling the first time the First Lady dine da tR asika,a restaurant that has come to define Indian cuisine for Washington DC’s power elite. She ordered a sampler platter, paired with wine. She came back twice, and took the same table.
“Who would have thought Michelle Obama would one day come to my restaurant,” Bajaj says, still a little surprised after all these years.
Starting out in the 1980s, Bajaj says he used to wonder if he would ever get a chance to host a President oraFirst Lady.Hehad heard about the then First Lady Nancy Reagan being a regular at The Jockey Club, a FrenchAmerican restaurant very popular with Hollywood celebrities visiting Washington.
Who would have thought this Delhi boy would come to Washington DC in the 1980s, start an Indian-cuisine restaurant across a park from the White House, turn it into a city icon and go onto establish 10 more, covering the whole range from Italian to American to French-stylebrasse-ries?
Baja jo pen ed his 11 th, Bind a as, in November, cap ping a growing career that won him a prestigious lifetime achievement award from fellow restaurateurs recently — the Duke Zeibert Capital Achievement Award .
In the intervening years, Bajaj’s restaurants — starting with his first, Bombay Club — have become favourites of some of the most powerful people in the world.
President Bill Clinton, a natural glad-hander, once took 45 minutes to make it to his table in one of Bajaj’s eateries.
President George HW Bush was less effusive during his visit to one of his restaurants. Recently, President Barack Obamacelebrated his56thbirthday at Rasika with Michelle Obama, just as they had celebrated his 53rd when he was still in office. Chefs from Bombay ClubandRasika—therearetwo Rasikas — often cooked for the Obamas using the White House kitchen, says Bajaj.
President Donald Trump hasn’t crossed the street yet but his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner have been to the Ra si kass ever al times. As have the President’s national security adviser, HR McMaster, and chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn.
THEBOOM
Bajaj was born and grew up in Delhi and after graduating in Commerce, started training at Hotel Ashok. He joined the Taj group, which was then planning a new restaurant in London, Bombay Brasserie.
He moved to DC in the late 1980s, with dreams of starting an Indian-cuisine restaurant to showcase Indian food, which was then a minor blip on the larger eating-out culture. He wanted a place where Americans could go, and take their friends. It had to be a first-class establishment in an “A class” building.
But none of the landlords he contacted would have him .“They did not want an ethnic restaurant
on their premises,” he says. “They thought Indian food would smell in the lobby … and were happy to put me in the basement.”
For a year, Bajaj went around making presentations, holding meetings. Finally, one landlord agreed to let the young restaurateur from India start working on his dream, which he christened Bombay Club.
Bajaj tells the story of his journey from Bombay Club to Ra sika in a book released in October, called, what else, Rasika, which he co-authored with David H agedo rn, a former restaurateur, with recipes of some of the restaurant’s innovative dishes by Vikram Sunderam, the chain’s celebrated chief chef.
After the Bombay Club, Bajaj waited 16 years to open his next Indian cuisine restaurant, Ra sika at Penn Quarter, a buzzing downtown DC neigh bo ur hood.
Why such a long gap? “There was not that much demand for Indian food,” he says. So he turned to other cuisines, and kept growing: 701, which is Continental; The Oval Room, for modern American; Ar deo+B ar deo, serving American fare; No Pa, a brasserie serving American food; and the Italian-cuisineBibiana. They are together owned by Baja j’ s privately held company, the Knightsbridge group.
FOODFORFAME
It was 1994, President Clinton’s second year in the White House. Baja j’ s Bombay Club was coming along nicely.
He was pleasantly surprised one day to receive an invitation to join the first family at the annual Christmas Party.
While he refuses to name his favourite President, Bajaj did reveal a special warmth for Clinton— whom he mimi cs exceptionally well. On one occasion, he re members asking Clinton when he came by for a meal with his family and friends if he could spare a few minutes to meet his parents, who were visiting from India and happened to be in the restaurant then.
Clinton rose immediately, and with an arm around Bajaj’s shoulder, walked towards his parents. “My father was stunned,” he recalls. Clinton sat down and spent some time with Bajaj’s parents.
“I reminded him that his food might get cold,” Bajaj says, and doing his best impersonation of Clinton, “the president replied the ‘food can wait’.”
The restaurateur has seen multiple White Houses, starting with Clinton’ s, which he says was every bit as chaotic as Trump’s, hit by the same frequency of leaks, exits etc.
“But the most disciplined?” “The George W Bush White House. Very businesslike,” he says.
He counts off the aides who made it so — vice-president Dick Cheney; chief of staff Andy Card. And the President had learnt from his father, President George HW Bush, Bajaj adds.
So, is India calling? There are no plans yet. Bajaj has no restaurants outside DC. “A shortage of trained personnel,” he says.