Meera Twoseater 1949
Pandit Ravi Shankar and George Harrison at Gaylord | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
It all began with ice cream. The British had a settlement in whats now Palika Bazaar and Iqbal Singh Ghai and Purshottam Lal Lamba started making hand churned Ice Cream, sold at the Regal building in Delhi. This was in Circa 1939 . In 1942 an American dropped in and tipped them to keep their business open after the late night show at Regal. This changed their fortune and friendship grew into family and Lamba married Ghai's sister and then what, they got into the restaurant business and started Gaylord. The "G" from Ghai and "L" from Lord. Thank goodness they did not call it Lordgay. But, those were innocent times and gay in the 40's in Delhi was an unknown word (in the current context). Though some historians feel Lord Krishna was termed as Gaylord in the indian context in an innocent way gay meaning happy.
PL Lamba started the Kwality resturant (misspelt as a marketing gimmick that Absolut vodka would follow 4o years later). I think Lamba meant Quality in the Punjabi way. Then came the partition of India and Pakistan and lots of family came and settled in various parts of India, there was a Kwality every where started in Bombay, Calcutta and at my last count there was or had been a Kwality in Mumbai, Kolkatta, Bangalore, Amritsar, Chennai, Nagpur, Chennai, Chandigarh, Patiala,Jamshedpur,Kanpur, Pune, Dehradun, Nagpur, Baroda,Goa, Agra, Mysore, Lucknow, Udaipur, Dalhousie , Vizag and some others I could not trace. All had some family linkage, brother, uncle cousin, son in law, old employee and so on. To the extent my friend and senior blogger Sandip Ghose tells me (he was in HUL, then HLL) that they had to buy the Kwality brand many times over as there was so many other claimants after the deal was done.
h family for families to dine in.When Sunil Lamba came to handle the helm of affairs, his big ticket was at the Asiad Village in 1982. He opened a series of restaurants in the complex, Angeethi (frontier cuisine), Ankur (Indian Cuisine), Chopsticks (chinese cuisine), Tonic the bar amd another American fastfood restaurant, the name I forget. Which has been taken up further by his son Dhruv Lamba starting , Kwality express and Chopsticks express in Malls and Hospitals and Breads and More all over. Kwality also caters at the Delhi Gymkhana Club.
A walk down from Marine Drive to Flora Fountain will take you across a few of the iconic locations in Mumbai - Brabourne Stadium, K Rustom’s Ice Cream and Azad Maidan, to name a few. Over the years we’ve lost many of these landmark spots, and earlier today, hearts broke yet again across the city when the news came of another impending loss. Gaylord - the bakery whose aroma has been attracting kids, parents and grandparents alike since 1956 has been ordered to shut down within two weeks.
On Wednesday, the Bombay High Court directed the management of the iconic South Bombay restaurant Gaylord to demolish their cake shop housed right outside the restaurant, the open- air seating along the shop and the outside enclosure.
According to the report by Hindustan Times, the order was passed following a BMC directive that Gaylord’s cake shop, along with its outside modifications, were ‘illegal’ and a safety hazard that would obstruct the path of fire trucks for the entire building.
However, a bench comprising of two judges has permitted Gaylord’s management to apply to the BMC again to regularise or reinstall a regularise or reinstall a temporary or retractable awning, or to make other modifications to the open space within the restaurant compound. The bench has given the civic body four weeks to consider the restaurant management’s application.
The argument made by the management held that all due payments and licensing was up to date and that the structure has remained for the last 61 years since the inception of the establishment - why is there a problem now?
The Civic officials told Hindustan Times that even if the restaurant had “rightly or wrongly been granted permission for such structures in the past, the restaurant, in its current form, violated the BMC’s compulsory open space rules.”
It’s a sad day, to say the least, as we prepare to bid adieu to yet another icon of Mumbai’s cultural history, following Rhythm House, Merwani & Co. and the Parle G Factory - you will all be missed.
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