Along with brother Pravesh, A.K.A. Bubbles, Rahul Randev owns The R Group. Oregano at The Eagle Lodge, Rasoi and Garvie and Co are all R Group restaurants. Two new ventures, The Grove and The Larder, will be revealed shortly.
The 5pm Dining blog chatted with Rahul about ostrich, the changing face of the restaurant scene and his love of East Dunbartonshire.
5pm: How would you describe the food at Garvie and Co?
RR: The tagline that we have underneath Garvie & Co is that it is a ‘restaurant, a bar and a bakery’. There’s a relaxed bar area which is perfect for after work drinks or a catch up with friends plus a whisky bar upstairs. In the bakery, we have our own pastry chef who makes the most amazing fresh cakes and scones every day.
The restaurant food is traditional but with a modern twist; it evokes all the comfort of home cooking but with flair and style.
We want customers to feel comfortable with the menu and we pride ourselves on using the best ingredients and serving the best dishes that we can. We invested in a Josper oven for Garvie & Co and, I believe, we were one the first places in Scotland to get one after Gleneagles. It’s an amazing piece of equipment and great for cooking steaks and meat in general. Our customers regularly comment on the taste it gives to the meat.
5pm: How did you get the idea of making a bakery part of it?
RR: Over the years that my brother and I have been doing this, we’ve seen the trade evolve dramatically. There is an ever growing coffee culture with people enjoying leisurely days taking Gran out for cake and a pot of tea or having a quick business meeting over a good quality cup of coffee.
Traditionally restaurants are busy at lunch and busy at dinner. However, in the morning and mid-afternoon, we still trade but to fewer customers. The idea of the bakery was to give customers another reason to come in at those quieter times. It has proven to be very successful. People come in from nine in the morning, so there’s a real buzz around the place all day which is nice.
The smell of the bakery is really like nothing else. The first thing we do in the morning is open the windows and make sure the baking smell goes out into the precinct.
5pm: Can you tell me a bit more about the transition from bars to restaurants. Do you think people are drinking less or are more interested in food?
RR: It is a bit of both. When I got into the pub game with my brother, our first pub was over on Paisley Road West, it was Jim Baxter’s (the former Scottish footballer) pub.
It was mainly men coming in for drinks. Back then you would have the Monday Club – people who’d been out all weekend and wouldn’t make their work on Monday. You’d open the doors on Monday morning to maybe about twenty or thirty men, generally from the building trade, who just didn’t go to work that morning. That culture has changed dramatically.
Society has evolved in terms of what is considered as acceptable drinking. One of my friends said recently, ‘It’s no longer acceptable for a man to finish work and go to the pub and have five or six pints of lager’.
Everyone is working. Men and women are working together and sharing the responsibility of looking after their children. So that kind of old school drinking culture no longer exists; especially among the younger generations.
Whether people are actually drinking less or not now, I don’t know. People didn’t use to drink at home as much as they do now; perhaps as a result of the change in driving laws. However the biggest development I’ve seen is in people coming out for food mid-week, not just for special occasions. Families and friends enjoy that concept of hassle-free dining in a relaxed environment and we aim to provide this service to our local customers.
People also know a lot more about food. Like everyone else, I love watching the celebrity chef programs. This means everybody is a critic and has an opinion on the best way to cook a dish. This is not a bad thing, it just means that we have to be on our toes and continually improve.
5pm: None of your different outlets are in the city centre. Why?
RR: We own other businesses in the city centre of Glasgow but they are out on lease to other people. The ones which we run are all in East Dunbartonshire. Our passion is this area.
I was born in Bishopbriggs and my family and I moved to Bearsden when I was thirteen. I’ve been living in Bearsden for the best part of thirty years now. We understand the market and the people here. We want to give the locals that city centre offering in East Dunbartonshire.
Our first bar restaurant was called Carriages and it was in Lenzie. We are currently refurbishing it. After we started Carriages, we continued to buy more places around East Dunbartonshire.
I have a real affiliation with this area. I live here and I feel that if our business is in the local area, we are putting something back into the local community. I think that’s why we continually try to reinvest in the local area it means a lot to my brother and I.
5pm: Is being part of the community an essential character of your businesses?
RR: I always say, ‘Use your local business’ and I don’t just mean my restaurant. I mean any local business. In the towns, butcher shops, fishmongers and so on are closing down and it’s because they don’t get used. We use local suppliers as far as we can and we employ local people.
I say to people, ‘When your kids are looking for jobs, you want them to get a job locally whether it be in the newsagent or the café. You don’t want them travelling away into town and then travelling back at night. You want them to be safe. But these jobs will only be available if you and the community use your local places’.
5pm: You’ve got Oregano at the Eagle Lodge, Rasoi, Garvie and Co. and you’re about to open…
The Grove in Lenzie. That used to be Carriages. It was our first place in East Dunbartonshire and it’s very close to our heart. So, we’ve done a major refurbishment and its going to be similar to Garvie and Co and have that bakery element to it.
We are also opening a new venue in Bearsden called The Larder. That will offer a take on small plates, not tapas, but starter size portions of main courses. People can come in and order a few plates. We have a very good chef on board so we are looking forward to launching in the coming months.
5pm: Tell me a little bit about your food experience.
RR: I’m no chef but I understand cooking. Back in our earliest days, I would watch the chefs and the best ones were always the most organised. It is one thing to be able to cook the most exquisite meal for four people but it’s a different skill to be able to cook for 60 people in a pressurised kitchen.
I think where my brother and I have been pretty good is giving customers what they want. We are constantly asking for feedback and that’s the golden rule listen to your customers. I’m never egotistical about it, we want to learn and evolve.
5pm: Tell me about your most memorable meal?
RR: My brother and I go down to London several times a year to see what’s happening and what trends are evolving. We went to a restaurant on St Martin’s Lane and I ordered ostrich as I had never seen it on a menu before.
I didn’t know what to expect but the ostrich came and it was very, very rare and bloody. I sent it back and it came out again looking even bloodier. I remember looking over at my brother and he had ordered lamb which looked really nice. He was laughing and tucking in and he said, ‘you ordered it so you can eat it!’
5pm: Is there any food you hated as a kid that you love now?
RR: I hated Parmesan as a boy. The smell of it used to remind me of dirty old socks but now, I absolutely love it. But it is fresh good quality Parmesan that I love. I don’t like the powdered stuff which is probably what I had as a kid. My favourite cuisine is definitely Italian.
5pm: If you could get anyone in the world to cook you a meal, dead or alive, who would it be?
RR: Years ago, my brother had an Indian restaurant in Ayrshire. They had a Nepalese chef who they had brought up from London. He was way ahead of this time, the best chef I’ve ever seen, even to this day.
His cooking would have been perfect for a Knightsbridge restaurant. Deepest Ayrshire, thirty years ago, was not the right market.
If I could get someone to cook for me it would be him. I hope he’s still around. He was a great chef.
He was paid a fortune and would wear these lovely tailored suits and beautiful shoes. He looked like James Bond. I blame him for my habit of buying really expensive shoes.
5pm: Tell us your daftest customer complaint?
RR: We did have a customer complain that her food was too warm. We always warn people if the plates are hot but I didn’t think we had to warn people that the food might be too hot… it was fresh as can be and straight out of the pan.
We also had a chef who was dead against using any food colouring. Of course, a lot of our customers had grown up in the 90s with curries that were made with food colouring and that’s what they expected.
We had one lady who ordered a chasni and sent it back saying ‘that is not a chasni. I eat in Indian restaurants all the time it should be bright pink!’
I explained that the pink came from food colouring but the customer wouldn’t accept it. So, I went into the kitchen and put a tiny drop of food colouring on the end of a spoon and stirred it into her curry in front of her. It instantly went pink and she was perfectly happy. Give your customers what they want.
