Riding the storm: Meet Riyaaz Amlani, CEO, Impresario Handmade Restaurants

A voice of the restaurant industry, Amlani tells Pavan Lall that while the pandemic has been hard, it has also helped separate the wheat from the chaff

Riyaaz Amlani looks straight ahead at me as he walks into his restaurant, the Salt Water Café in Bandra, Mumbai, oblivious to the flurry of attention from managers, waitstaff and curious guests. (We are meeting weeks before the disruption caused by the third Covid wave.) The music is loud on the first floor, so we proceed to grab a table on the quieter upper section.

Impresario Handmade Restaurants, the firm he founded in 2001 with Mocha — Coffees & Conversations, today has a network of 60-odd restaurants across 16 cities and brands such as Social, antiSOCIAL, Smoke House Deli, Goodness