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

A savoury payesh of gobindbhog rice with truffles and morels for a burst of umami, sea urchin and saffron butter with flaky bakarkhani, Kanyakumari crab with caviar, and Wagyu pathar ke kebab with bone marrow nalli-nihari paired with a Beaujolais to cut through the fattiness. These were just some of the dishes that chefs Manish 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.

While fine-dining restaurants the world over have been rendered unviable due to high costs and a post-pandemic discomfiture with travelling to a different city or a continent just for a meal, a certain segment of the global rich is not holding back from splurging on status-defining dining closer home. This is reflected in clubs, where engagement and revenues are sought through food with diverse flavours and local, seasonal and healthier ingredients, plated up in fun ways for the millennial and Gen Z crowd.

Private members’ clubs in cities such as London, New York, Dubai, Doha and Singapore, not to mention Delhi-NCR and Mumbai, have been booming since 2020-21, promising the elite crowd a sense of both “community” and “exclusivity”.

Ace of clubs
This is much like their precursors such as Almack’s, Boodle’s and White’s in Regency and Victorian London, catering to aristocrats. However, instead of the stuffiness associated with the old social clubs, the new ones have a crowd in their 30s and 40s, with a variety of interests that range from collecting wines to dabbling in the arts. These are thriving. The 67 Pall Mall in London, known for its impressive wine list (1,200-plus wines by the glass and 5,000-plus bottles of vaunted, even rare, labels), added a Singapore outlet last year and is set to go to Bordeaux. While the global private members’ social club Soho House turned in a 32.9% y-o-y growth in the first quarter of 2023, with $255.2 million in revenue, The Arts Club in Dubai, an outpost of the 150-year establishment in London that once had Charles Dickens as its member, is a must-be-seen-at venue in one of the flashiest cities in the world.

Gourmet offerings — through multiple bars and restaurants or prestige pop-ups and curated experiences — are driving the membership and profitability of social clubs.

“Food and private members’ clubs go hand in hand. It is impossible to have a successful club without fantastic food,” says Vivek Narain, founder of The Quorum in Gurugram, which added an outlet in Mumbai in 2021 and is launching another in Hyderabad this month. “It is the service and the level of curation that distinguish dining at the clubs,” he adds.

“Post-pandemic, upscale dining has seen a rise, whether it is because of privacy, consistent quality or (unique) dining experiences” says Kelly Wardingham, head of operations in Asia for Soho House. At the Soho House in Mumbai, menus change frequently. If it is Japanese one month, it could be Mediterranean the next. There are frequent pop-ups by chefs and restaurants from Goa or Delhi and high-energy bar takeovers by Asia’s best.

Soho House, in fact, can be credited with starting the trend of “restaurantisation” of private clubs in a bid to engage its members when the chain opened in the mid-1990s, breaking the mould of old-fashioned clubs that relied on routine and familiarity. Today, it has 15 restaurant brands across houses.

Newer clubs are upping the ante. At the newly opened Club Jolie’s by the Aditya Birla Group in Mumbai, sprawled over 20,000 sq ft at the Birla Centurion, there are eight fluid spaces with distinct F&B offerings, including small plates and brews at Tickle, entertainment and performances over cocktails at The Seen, Mediterranean plates and local gastronomy at Bread & Bacchus and a specialised whisky bar.

Internationally, Nikita, which opened in Mayfair, London, last December is spotlighting champagne, caviar and French patisserie, while 5 Hertford Street in Mayfair itself has three bars and two restaurants. The recently opened Centurion New York (for the American Express Centurion Card members) has menus by the legendary French chef Daniel Boulud at its restaurants.

Clubs and good food have been historically linked. The “reformation cutlet” of the British clubs and smoked hilsa of Kolkata are part of an older club culture. But new clubs have new benchmarks for luxury dining.

At The Chambers New Delhi, relaunched by The Taj in 2021 (globally, there are eight), dinnerware is Bernardaud. Freshest of scallops with cauliflower, caviar tastings, white truffles, New Zealand lamb chops and free flowing Dom Perignon are par for the course. “Younger members who come to relax in the evenings are up for fun cocktails. Members can create their own cocktails at Rick’s and they get a small plaque with its number, so when they come next, they can order their cocktail,” says chef Arun Sundararaj, executive chef, Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi.

At The St Regis Mumbai, The Penthouse is a new club that has a cap of 350 members. It offers panoramic views of the Mumbai skyline, “a drawing room” to unwind, fine dining and other privileges. “People want to come in for exclusive dining, and sometimes without having to make reservations that restaurants require,” says Varun Chibber, general manager. “Here, we can create a space for them at an off-restaurant venue.”

These experiences that go beyond costly ingredients or talented chefs have been key to the success of older luxury restaurants. No one understood it better than Le Cirque patriarch Sirio Maccioni. But these are rarely available now.

In a world coming out of the pandemic and facing a looming recession, private clubs, which have the cushion of annual subscriptions and membership fees are better placed than restaurants to lay out lavishness on the table. Membership fees range from Rs 8 lakh plus taxes for four years at the Penthouse to Rs 25 lakh initiation fee plus Rs 3 lakh annual fee at The Chambers to $200,000 as a one-time fee to join The Aman, the new members-only hotel in New York.

Higher spends on F&B by members translate into enhanced profitability for clubs. “The revenue that comes from fees and F&B spends by members is significant but it is the referral business (where members refer people to the club to host big events) that is substantial,” says Chibber. Gastronomy’s last — and enduring — bastion may well be private members’ clubs.