110%

updated with a postscript - see the end of the post.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
mooli's aren't about to serve something we don't love ourselves.
mooli's aren't just wraps, ok?
mooli's are worn out from the hunt for the perfect bread.
mooli's are giving 110%. always.

it is 2.49am on a wednesday night. i am no longer on my 'night schedule'. we've been meeting banks early in the morning dressed in suits (i shall post a picture of mathew and i looking MIB soon) so its been a long day. today we met HSBC followed by our now usual flat white in fitzrovia. later, we had a big cooking session with raju followed by a tasting for anon nyc and andrew.

i'm physically tired now but my mind is not. the balcony door is open. i can hear the buzz of the fish tank, the sound of an occasional water droplet hitting the sink but otherwise it is dead quiet. a quietness which i have known and loved for as long as i can remember. anyway. time to focus.

i am finally going to write a post about the bread again. i have been struggling with this for a while now. on 1 nov 2008 i wrote a post titled finding moolita about the search for the perfect bread. we're now in may 2009 and we're getting closer but i don't think we're there just yet.

the bread is absolutely key. the earliest idea was to make roomali roti's. fresh. but then cost, skill, process and scale considerations made that seem impossible. a lot of people in india said we could use a tortilla machine, put our own flour mix in, adjust the settings and make our own great bread cost effectively and without skill constraints. but we realised that outsourcing bread would reduce complexity immensely and make our lives easier. so we searched for good tortilla suppliers (tortillas being the closest thing to roomali's in terms of thinness). the only good tortillas i have had in london are made by Dodie Miller who runs the Cool Chile Co. (best Habanero sauce in town) as well as Taqueria (incredible Mexcian food in Notting Hill). Dodie is a really cool woman who has created a great company from scratch. i visited Dodie at her unit in Willsdean Junction and she showed me Lupita (Taqueria's first tortilla-making machine from Guadalajara, Mexico) and her replacement - a huge tortilla making machine which spits out hundreds of fantastic corn tortillas in minutes. the corn tortillas are fantastic because Dodie does not use dodgy preservatives, E22 (or E213449 for that matter) or gluing agents. wahaca and chilango both use her corn tortillas for their tacos even though they are more expensive than some commercial suppliers because they know they're the best game in town. and guess what? their tacos are great.

unfortunately, Dodie does not make wheat tortillas. and corn tortillas are not strong enough to hold a mooli (or a burrito). all the wheat tortillas i have tasted are synthetic full of gluing agents. the one thing wheat tortillas have going for them are they are thin - but synthetic is not good. its not real bread.

today, anon nyc pushed me on what mooli's was really about. and i said 'we'll have these incredible wraps and people will say - i'm dying to have a paneer mooli'. simple. we need to create mooli's we love. that's the core of mooli's. 110%. if we stick to that and create mooi's we are mooli madly deeply about, we'll be there. i found this written in an internal word doc (not for use in the store etc.) ages ago: "When you eat (or for that matter drink) anything at Mooli’s, we want you to go ‘wow’." much as we love our branding and design, we know this business is really about food and location. get those two right and chances are you'll be ok.

the one thing mathew and i have noticed in the last month is that all the places which serve really really good food or coffee are always packed (duh). sometimes they also look very nice (eg Lantana, a lovely cafe in Fitzrovia - the owner Shelagh Ryan keeps a cool blog, other times they look shit (Maoz in Soho) but it comes down to quality.

a lot of people (Dodie, Tara, Vrinda) pointed us towards Khobez bread (Lebanese flatbread). we checked out Dina and Omnia in Park Royal and quickly realised that Omnia was MILES better. its real bread. made fresh everyday. it feels soft, and as mathew says 'it smells like bread'. and a lot of people love it (Fran, Vrinda). and today i realised that i love it too (as did Mathew I think). there is unfortunately a but though. its not thin enough. the reason its not thin enough is that it has two layers. that's why it becomes chewy (if i put together 3 roomali rotis, they will be chewy too). we tore it today (just as some Lebanese places do) and made a roll with just one layer - it was amazing (the Lebanese places tend to use both layers after splitting them WHY do they bother tearing it then???). you can't just use one layer though - its too thin and one side isn't cooked so its too weak. but its real bread. Fran even came up with a 75% khobez idea (which i only got once it was demonstrated to me so i shall not attempt to describe the concept).

in many ways, mathew and i are both getting very practical - we're becoming smart 'businessmen'. that is good (i'd go as far as saying probably essential) but we cannot lose our focus. my uncle sent me an email about the bike picture and pointed out that it appropriately says FOCUS. i say this because it is tempting. dozens of places use synthetic wheat tortillas to make wraps/burritos (from WrapItUp to M&S to the Mexican places), LEON does 4 wraps with wholemeal khobez from dina (the inferior khobez supplier). most of them make good money. but going down that route would be a mistake. imagine someone saying 'their fillings are great but the bread is a bit chewy.' or 'their fillings are fantastic but the bread is a bit synthetic'. and how would we feel if we didn't absolutely love our product.

where does that leave us at this late hour? i think we are close. the khobez is actually great bread so maybe mathew can convince the owner to make it thinner for us. we'll look into sourcing and testing Lavash (a thinner option). we're also going to find places/Guju women/TAB lookalikes who make chapatis (though i am convinced that making bread by hand is going to be just way too expensive. we did the rough maths today and if you paid someone £7 per hour you would pay more than £0.40 pence for a chapati - 4 times anything else out there. and definitely not scalable either.) OR maybe we'll find our own moolita (or borrow Lupita) and create mooli's own bread. we'll do what it takes.

our fillings are genuinely wow. both mathew and i were so touched that many of our investors (you know who you are) basically wanted in not just because they think we're ok but because they absolutely love the goat, the paneer or the beef as the case may be. we'll make sure the fillings are always wow (we'll process this baby like no one has done before to ensure that). if we find our bread, we'll be there.


postscript: spurred on by comments by jonathan and anon nyc, as well as the countless people at our tastings who have pushed us on the bread, we're happy to say we are very seriously considering using a machine to make our own mooli's bread. Raju is confident and he really pushed for this option yesterday while we 'worked' (yeah right, i'm sure Mathew is going to put some pictures up soon about this really fun trip!) and 'brain-stormed' looking for breads in Ealing.

imagine each Mooli's store making fresh bread. now that would be something else. as Richard Branson says, 'Screw it, Let's Do it'. this machine looks like the right size and the tortillas/chapatis look incredible. look at this video for a slightly bigger size. also check this video of Chevys Fresh Mex using El Machino ("The Machine" in Spanish) right in the restaurant (the machine is featured in the later part of the video) - those tortillas totally look like chapatis - all puffed up just like at home!!

I found out who supplies Chevys Fresh Mex their tortilla machines - BE&SCO Machines. And you would not believe it but BE&SCO machines can be found in Gandhinagar, India. On the right, HH Pramukh Swami Maharaj observes the BE&SCO BetaMAX used to make chapati. As their website says, 'BE&SCO machines are also used all over the world to make a variety of ethnic breads, such as chapati, naan, lavash, greek pita and many other flat breads.'

Bicycle bicycle bicycle

I want to ride my bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my bike

I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride it where I like


PS: Mooli's should deliver by bicycle.

........isnt it good?

The Incredible Lightness of Being Self Conscious

Paris is an enchanting city for many reasons, not least for the behaviour of its locals. Although most of my my time here has been full with happy unfulfilled thoughts and experiences, I have enjoyed the privilege of observing another culture for an extended period of time.

That much became very clear recently as I have slowly begun to persuade, ever so suggestively, genuine French people to invite me to their parties. Entering a party where you do not really speak the language enables you to focus on things other people forget or overlook. For me it began at this recent party, when I cracked why it is that, despite not always being classically beautiful, French women can be so attractive. It is in large part to do with their lips.

I am not talking about some collective decision by French women to pout. It is simply that spoken french requires a greater movement of the mouth, and flip of the lip, than spoken English. Whereas the idealised English entails minimum mouth movement, and praises vocalisation through closed teeth, French is quite the opposite. Indeed there is a rhythm about the way they speak each word, dwelling on it a bit longer than your average English speaker, and ending with a little flourish. All this simply means that a French three breasted freak is likely to be more attractive than the equivalent in England.

I noticed all this at a party where I was passed around from lady to lady. I thought it was because of my fragrant (I recently purchased a new perfume with notes of rose and wood) exoticism, but I later found out that they were unnerved by my staring at their lips. The most charitable of them thought I was severely cross eyed (I don't have anything against this type of illness or disease, some of my best friends are cross eyed).

I should also say something about the men of course (although I am not Gay (TM)) (I have nothing against Gay (TM) people, some of my best friends are Gay (TM)). French men, in many cases, can be beautiful creatures, accentuating their "otherness", and therfore some mystery, through their penchant to fit scarves into their attire come what may. All this is usually twinned with a fitted jacket and 3 or 4 days worth of 9 0'clock shadow. But perhaps more than anything else, I noticed (at this party and others I have been to) their proud (usually furry) chests. Perhaps like some other European nations, all the men at this party had 3/4 buttons undone, revealing a lot of chest with long almost combed hair, all framed with a very well starched shirt.

To be quite frank I was strangely attracted to this look-it felt so carefree, confident and Enrique Eglesias. And so, and I am not afraid to admit this, I went into the toilet and undid my buttons too. Except that my now exposed chest was not really ready for this sudden exposure, because you still needed some sort of tan so as not to provide such a great contrast between the chest hair and relatively pasty brown chest. But even worse I realised that I was afflicted with patchy pubic style chest hairs, unlike the combed, slightly ruffled, solid growth enjoyed by the French male. All this I am afriad made for an unseemly sight which could not be ignored no matter how much confidence I tried to display. Another lesson learnt.

I think Mooli's should open a branch in Paris, hire French waitresses and give away chest wigs.

there are places i'll remember

.......fanoos to fort kochin, calcutta club to bangalore club, martins & britannia, itsu, taylor street baristas, russel market to bangalore ham shop. oshiwara, ballard pier and colaba.......ottolenghi , kenwood cafe.

To Soar

This is certainly not of the creeping kind

Just taking the first step will always be a bind

It lies vacant amongst us all

We dream, we wonder, we try and ignore 

But you know and I know it will always be there

Oh God please help me find/Oh God don't let me submit

But when it comes you will know

You will taste the stars

You will covet the fear

A child you will be once again

For if you look up you will see

It is the year of the ________

2 minutes to midnight....

stay ahead of the game

coffee@bermondsey street was selling swine flu masks today for £1. some guy actually bought one. apparently he was seriously worried. the masks looked pretty dodgy (girl in the cafe said they were from the DIY store). LOL.

do you have the swine flu? find out.

thanks to anon nyc for this important resource.

Rhythm of the Beet

My ode to the humble Beetroot, a vegetable overlooked for too long:

Underrated for too long

Hiding a history which spans the Earth and Beyond

They just can't see it

Why can't they see it?

With a rare faculty to engage all senses

They still just confine you to some cold bed

oh! what a waste

Your versatility does not deserve this fate

Just carry on crying and bleeding

Because one day you will be saved

you are what you eat

'hang on a second! haven't i seen this title before?' in case you're experiencing any sort of déjà vu it is exactly what hit me late on saturday night after eric, fran and i had just finished a very good fusion meal with paneer, guacamole and some old but still decent lavash & khobez bread.

the déjà vu requires some sort of explanation. this post will be long and in the now familiar rambling style but bear with me. there is a point to it somewhere. the story takes us back to the khumbu region in december of 2002.....

i post a dodgy note in a cafe in kathmandu looking for trekking companions for the trek to everest base camp proclaiming i am a fit & experienced trekker (i was fit in that in those days i could run about 18kms but i discovered that that is very very different from walking 12 hours uphill with a heavy backpack. as for my experience, well eric and i still laugh about the fact that i ended up doing the entire everest trek with running shoes basically). a day after i post the note, i meet up with eric (the protagonist of the story - more on him soon), daniel (an experienced german trekker who on day 2 of the trek mentioned that my shoes didn't look like they were gore-tex!) and fabio (an italian who really looked like he should have been in goa instead). we decide to take the bus to jiri and walk to namche rather than take the easy way out - a flight to lukla which is just one hour away from namche. fabio decides to fly to lukla - he says he has a bad knee but looking back now i think he was just lazy. usually, the jiri-namche trek should take 8 days but eric (a very fit canadian from montreal who at the time was a baker but also cycled competitively) says we can do it in 6 days. daniel and i nod thinking yeah 6 days, should be ok. so we tell fabio we will meet him in exactly 6 days in a particular lodge in namche. little did we know....

the jiri-namche trek is very hard. the trail crosses valleys (rather than follows them) which means you're constantly going uphill and downhill with heavy bags. daniel wrote about the trek on his website.

"To give a conclusion on the Jiri-Namche part, it has to be said that this is probably the hardest Trekking I have done in my life. It is really only going up or down all the time. Even parts were really rare."

"I am now in the state that I don't feel the pain anymore. Knees, ankles, back - everything is ignored. Just walking on. Setting one foot in front of the other. In the end even Sameer caught up on me. Together we stumble the last hour from Puiyan to Cheubas. It is well after 5 p.m. when we arrive. I am completely exhausted."

i like the 'even sameer caught up on me' bit. but like i said i wasn't very fit. i made sure i took a 'foot bath' every day to reward my tired feet. after 4 days, we realised that making it in 6 days would be very very difficult - it would mean waking up at 5.30am and walking long. it occurred to me that maybe we could do it in 7 days. what's one more day? like this guy fabio - we don't really know him and well if he has to wait one more day fuck it. eric then told me we have to give it our best shot - after all, we gave him our word. so we said ok, we go for it. and this excerpt from daniel's website sums it up:

"It is an altitude gain of 600m, but I am already dead when I reach the foot of the hill. Meanwhile my achilles heel joined the concert of pain in my body. Every step which is not on step-like rocks is painful. Knees and ankles are probably aching as well. But I don't feel them anymore. In a monotonous rhythm I set one foot in front of the other. Completely dumb. But suddenly I see the first houses behind a corner. I let go a scream of triumph. I made it. When I reach the hotel it's well after 5 p.m., more than ten hours after starting in Cheubas. Sameer arrives even later. It is already dark."

and what happened of fabio?

"We are told that Fabio who we wanted to meet here, has left in the morning. Bastard! We really hurried to make Jiri-Namche in six days and then he's gone!"

it was worth it though. we ended up being really fit and basically almost chilled the rest of the way!

i ended up meeting fabio again 8 days later and we even did a day trek together from gokyo (though he turned back halfway!)

i'm not sure why i wrote about this trek. maybe because i miss the mountains but mostly to tell you about how i met eric. also i guess its a roundabout way to say that mooli's would do it in 6 days. its the way we'd like to be with our investors, our employees, our customers and each other.

eric and i did one more trek together. this time in zanskar in february. after jiri-namche even -23 degrees was no problem. notice the new gore-tex shoes btw.


eric was passing through london last weekend and it was great to hang out with him after 6 years. he's traveled a lot more, worked in afghanistan and somehow looks exactly the same. on saturday we talked a lot about moolis (he would definitely go green - ie with green chillies!), about food (him devouring all that porridge in zanskar! bread is very important!). many times that day he said 'you are what you eat'. i told him i'd write a blog post with that title and when i opened mozilla there was TAB's post with the exact same title: you are what you eat.

You are what you eat

Stationed in another country, away from home, I am  better able to appreciate the horror that Sam and Fran must have felt during one conversation we had sometime last year in a bar on Marylebone High Street. I am not quite sure how it arose, but it began with my confession that it would be unlikely that I would be a regular of any sort to Mooli's. In fact I said I don't think I would go there that often. This was not because I did not believe in the concept, indeed my statement was based on the assumption that Mooli's would be making the tastiest indian wraps/roll around. 

It was more, as I explained to Sam (who was still in horror, as if I had eloped with his favourite chess piece, Tanusri, to a poker tournament in Las Vegas), the fact that I had Indian food fatigue, due to habits at home. My stellar mother would cook wonderful indian dishes but, unfortunately for Sam and Mooli's, also, what I like to call, intellectual indianised world cuisine ( "IIWC" ).  IIWC involved cleverly inserting or indianising every dish from around the world so that fruit salads would be spicy, coriander would suddenly feature in Italian cooking, slowly replacing basil completely, burgers would evolve into kebabs or at least be spicier than anything McDonalds ever envisaged...we could go on. And so it was against this background that away from home at work the last thing I wanted to do was to eat Indian food. In fact I craved something pure and non-indian, so non-indian that if I was ever served by a S Asian looking person I was scared that they may surreptitiously add some spice or coriander to my food. 

But I am happy to report that I am enjoying a happier balance, and now find myself in this lovely foreign country sometimes even craving for a good dosa or lamb curry. So the IIWC complex has gone. And I would love a Mooli's here. 

But the strange thing is that Mooli's has itself undergone a change from what was envisaged during that night on Marylebone high street. It is no longer about doing classic dishes well, such as tandoori chicken or other types of kebabs. Although the boards will say "divine street cuisine", the food inside will be nothing like the street cuisine one imagines from S Asia. The innovation and originality of the dishes and their surroundings mean that Mooli's will be serving up something quite unique, it will be Sam's and Mathew's version of street cuisine. And faced with such inventive choices even those badly afflicted with IIWC will want to take a peek, at least once a week. 

mooli's are old delhi meets tokyo.

mooli's are respecting the radish.
mooli's aren't full of artificial stuff.
mooli's are hungrily pounding the streets of calcutta, delhi & lucknow.
mooli's aren't into making life difficult.
mooli's are adamant that alphonso mangoes make the killer lassi.
mooli's aren't glow-in-the-dark tikka masala.
mooli's are liberal with their use of apostrophes.
mooli's aren't best accompanied by beatles' classics on the sitar.
mooli's are partly funded by late night poker sessions.
mooli's aren't just wraps, ok?
mooli's are the chai espresso pioneers.
mooli's aren't putting mayo on anything.
mooli's are worn out from the hunt for the perfect bread.
mooli's aren't about to serve something we don't love ourselves.
mooli's are all about dry roasting their spices.
mooli's aren't happy unless you are.
mooli's are the culmination of 56 years of careful mastication.
mooli's aren't missing their old jobs.
mooli's are sharing the joy brought by chachas's, fanoo's & frankie's.
mooli's aren't about to start using a microwave.
mooli's are still undecided about TAB's 'breakfast mooli' idea.
mooli's aren't doing 'chips' with that, sorry.
mooli's are reinventing pappadums. with fresh chutneys.
mooli's aren't missing their old jobs. did we say that already?
mooli's are probably something rude in other languages. we didn't check.
mooli's aren't a power-hungry multi-national conglomerate (yet).
moooli's are always hand-rolled to order.
mooli's aren't about to give you cold food.
mooli's are finding it difficult not to eat all the stock themselves.
mooli's aren't deep fried, even on request.
mooli's are giving 110%. always.

mooli's are loving the anonymous comments on their blog.

you know mooli's, you know us, so....

mooli's are ....

mooli's aren't ....

ps - many thanks to phil from mystery for coming up with 95% of the above lines. he is our guardian angel.

Drunken Master

As a young, sometimes obedient, sometimes horny, child growing up in a muslim Pakistani/Italian* household in Essex it was inevitable that I would try the forbidden Alcohol at some point. 

I still remember my first taste of A-it was at a family friend's house (I think) and with everyone distracted in the dining/living room, I (about 5 or 10 yo) found some glasses in the sink with a drop of whiskey. Cue a quick sip and exit. As a large lad, this first foray was not enough to have any effect really, but I was committed to the whole experience in my head and so followed all the films I had seen and started acting drunk in my room. Indeed I think I beat up my uncle's little son, little Mo, because the last film I had seen involved a drunken man and violence (thank god I didn't see a drunken man doing something else, otherwise my sister's Barbie would have got it). I think I also even tried slurring my words. 

I blame Amitabh Bachchan and his 80's classic film Shaarabi for pushing me over the edge. He just looked so cool being drunk. And he was a Brown Guy (TM) too, especially a Brown Guy (TM), who knew how to dress well (with shoulder pads that fit). Even now when I feel lost and need some geeing up I return to that movie. 

In the time since then, wine, beer and sprits have provided some fun filled evenings for me over the years. But there have been some sad moments too. I remember once being introduced to a rather pretty girl and our connection was, as my Latin friends would say in their rather emotive expression, beautiful.  Everything was going smoothly then she directed the conversation to one question. I should have guessed what this probably was, given her religious/cultural leanings:

Pretty Girl (PG): TAB, do you mind if I ask you a very frank question

TAB: Look, I don't live with my parents [trying to be funny and play on Asian boy stereotypes, hoping she gets the message that I don't take myself too seriously]

PG: No seriously. It is just that I think you are cool, but I don't want to waste both our time, because there are some things that I hold dear. 

TAB: Sure [all the time thinking what happened to the PG of 5 mins ago]

PG: Do you drink? It is just that..

TAB: Yes, I do. 

PG: Then I am sorry but you know, I am sure you are a nice guy, but this is important to me and I can't really be with someone who does. 

TAB: Fine, but you know...[I was about to say that I am quite philosophical about this, but then realised that I had just met this chick]

The funny thing about this story is that the conversation could quite easily have gone like this:

PG: Do you drink? It is just that..

TAB: No, I don't.

PG: Phew I just wanted to make sure

TAB: Sure, but I should let you know that I have stuck a few ferrets up my arse from time to time, had sex with meesri (on which see below) and used to smoke 5 bags of weed a day.

PG: That is fine, it is just drinking for me is a vice. You know religion/culture...

Luckily for me I got out of that although I am still looking for my liberian girl. If I had more energy and was not too sensitive to the fact that this post is probably past its read-by date/stage by now, I would tie all of the above with my main point: Mooli's should consider serving alcohol in its late night shift. Not least for my sacrifices. Please. 

*probably fiction

return of the mini mooli

for the last week, mathew and i have been mulling over whether we should have the mooli and a monster mooli OR the mooli and a mini mooli. pat & laleh made a great case for the mini mooli and right now we think they are spot on.

[of course, it is possible to have both the mini and monster but we think this might be over complicating things plus a few of the reasons against a monster still hold if we have all three - see below. it is also possible just to go with one size.]

before we talk about monster v. mini, we should clarify how big our mooli is. ahem. its made with a 10" diameter (around 25 cm) thin khobez bread (regular or wholemeal) and is much more filling than a PRET wrap (£3.67) or even a LEON wrap (£3.85 or so) but not as filling as a burrito (above £5.00). a monster mooli would have a 12" diameter while the mini mooli would have a 8" diameter. we're thinking of pricing our mooli in the £3.90 - £4.20 range while the mini mooli would be around £2.80 - £2.90. the monster mooli would be over £5.00.

there are two reasons why people think the monster mooli is a better idea than the mini mooli:

1. you want people to feel like they have eaten enough for lunch (or dinner) - they'd leave thinking this was good value. a 12" burrito sized mooli will be more than enough.

2. you don't want to cannibalize yourself. if you have a mini mooli, people might down trade and not spend as much, its better to up-sell so they say (no one in particular, just you know)

here's why we think the mini mooli deserves to stay:

1. it's called a mini mooli.

2. it fits better with our brand. why? read on...

3. its hard to see us doing a monster paneer mooli (sorry pat) - as mathew says, 'that's just too much paneer!' or a monster aubergine mooli. we don't want people leaving god that was too much.

4. we allow people to mix & match in many ways. you can have a mini mooli and a soup. or here's the exciting one... wait for it... two mini mooli's!! so now you can eat your goat mooli and have it too (the paneer mooli).

5. the regular mooli will be enough food on many days but on the days you're really hungry you can get yourself 2 mini mooli's for 5 quid! (this may be in the form of a promotion) or perhaps a mini mooli and the keralan chicken stew.

6. does the cannibalization point still hold against the mini mooli? some people (perhaps super models) would have only a mini mooli - previously they would have had to buy at least the mooli. but i personally believe that a company which allows customers to have what they really want (as long as it is good for them!) will probably do better in the long run (the SLIM PRET/half baguette is a good example). anyway, supermodels will probably buy the salad no?

7. the mini mooli is a perfect afternoon (3-6pm) snack.

8. it's called a mini mooli.

it would be great to know what you guys think. you can vote - see the question on the left side bar.

ps - thanks to all those who voted on the lamb (now goat) mooli question. the goan version was the clear winner with 54% of the vote. and it makes a fantastic goat mooli (rivals the beef for some).