Caviar at the Club: Gastronomy has a new destination — private members’ clubs

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Mehrotra and Shantanu Mehrotra of Indian Accent served as part of their nine-course dinner at a pop-up in Singapore recently. It was not held at a restaurant or a hotel, but at a private members’ club, Mandala. The three-week pop up, which was extended to a fourth on popular demand, fed 2,200 diners.

“It was the biggest event the club has done (as part of its Mandala Masters series with a star line-up of other global restaurants like Narisawa),” says restaurateur Rohit Khattar. Is this a precursor to Indian Accent opening an outlet in Singapore, especially since it is finally growing into a chain with a Mumbai branch opening next month? The pop-up was partly a recce, acknowledges Khattar: “I came back very satisfied with Singapore as a market. We just took a chance with the pop-up as the team was free then and our entire cost was underwritten.

We did not have to worry about numbers and could do what we do best, which is serve Indian food,” he says. With dinner costing S$288 per head with S$188 more for wine, the numbers were substantial. Khattar & Co need not have worried at all.

While the pop-up showed Singapore’s penchant for luxury dining, it also shone a spotlight on a new direction gastronomy is taking globally — as exclusive experiences curated at private members’ clubs. In a post-pandemic world where “all those large luxury restaurants are going, and chefs are doing small, 12- or 20-seaters”, as Mehrotra says, the economics of luxury dining have changed. Its new outposts are not restaurants but private members’ clubs.