Bit late but getting better

I know I promised to have a new posting up each week and I’m a few days late. Sorry. But it’s getting better and I’ll keep trying.

When I was about to sit down and write this, I asked the guys in the restaurant what I should write about this time and everyone had plenty to say.

This year for the first time we got into the Square Meal guide and we felt very honoured by being included. It felt like an achievement. Then we were wondering what to do with the window sticker. We wanted people to know we were in the guide and in the old Babur we used to put everything up in the window. But now in the new Babur with big plate glass and such a beautiful restaurant to see inside, we didn’t want to block the view. So we found a menu stand and put all our awards and certificates from all the restaurant guides on that. It’s in the glass corner where the hat stand with the turban was during our Rajasthani festival.

Now I’d really like us to get in the Michelin Guide – not as a star but in the good value eating section, like Sarkhel’s in Southfields is. In the past I wouldn’t have even said it, but now that our restaurant has been rebuilt and redecorated and our food has got better, I think we’re at that level.

We started our new wine list while the festival was on and it was hard to get used to it at first, harder than the last change was. But we’re getting used to it now. And since Peter McCombie came last for our food and wine matching, some of the guys have got really excited about talking with customers on our wines.

So much so that two guys from Babur, Arjun and Rupom, are going to the Wine and Spirit Education Trust level 1 course on 18 June. The course is so popular this was the first day available. They’re doing the hospitality course – it’s a crash course and at the end of the day they are expected to do a written exam. On the entry level course they’ll do tasting, service, matching of food and wine, grape characteristics. And Rupom and Arjun have been so good talking with the customers about wine, I think it’s well worth the £140 for each of them.


We still have some of the wines that were on the last list. Our suppliers would take them back but the bookkeeping is so complicated I’d rather not do it. After we talked, we decided to sell them at a discount to our customers as bin ends. We reduced the prices so they’d sell fast because we’ve got a storage problem – there are 68 different wines on our list and we still have 20 wines from the old list. So the Negresco had been just over £20 but we reduced it to 18.50 and a table had a couple of bottles of it. We put it on tent cards on every table. We’re also going to open a new bottle of white and red every day to offer small tastings and if our customers like it they can have it by the glass.

Customers appreciate that the waiters can talk on wine and they have better image of Babur. We’ve always tried to offer good value to our customers and wine is an important part of their enjoyment, so I’ve always tried to keep our markup low – the average percentage markup is 65% but the average across the restaurant business is 90% to 150% and some do 220%. We’re trying to get people away from the idea that Indian food only goes with beer – more people now understand that. The guys on the floor have found that talking about wine breaks the ice and makes customers feel a bit easier – someone is talking to us. And it builds the waiters confidence.

Fortunately we get a lot of appreciative comments on service – service and food are running neck and neck, according to ratings on london-eating.co.uk, which is entirely based on real customers own ratings. It gives Babur 9.6 for food (out of 10) and 9.2 for service; atmosphere and value for money gets 9.1 its – hard to find other restaurants that achieve over 9 in all four categories.

That’s it for now – got to get back to the restaurant. I hope to have the next entry up before the end of the week. Thanks for stopping by and take a look next week if you can.