Anyone can open a restaurant. But can you keep it running for 15 years?

SAME parents. Very different children. The Table is the sophisticated older sibling. Mag St. is your comfort person. Kaspers is currently playing hard to get. Somehow, they're all related.

Put The Table, Mag St. and Kaspers next to each other and they don't immediately look like they come from the same woman’s stable. The Table is 15 years old and still the place you trust with a good dinner. Mag St. is familiar, the kind of place where you already know what you're ordering before you sit down. And Kaspers? Right now, half of Mumbai seems to be trying to get a table. And maybe that's what makes Gauri Devidayal's restaurant world so interesting. In a city that gets distracted by a new opening approximately every five minutes, she has not built one successful formula and repeated it. They’ve built restaurants with completely different personalities, for completely different moods.

Mumbai opens a new restaurant almost every other week. What makes one become the city’s landmark rather than just three-month hype?

I don't have a formula for this. But I think what we've always followed is creating something that we felt was missing in the city, and not just copying something that already existed. The second thing is sustaining quality, because that's one thing that sometimes tends to drop off after the honeymoon period. I think what has held us in good stead is staying true to our own DNA and making sure that we stick to that vision and standard that we've set for ourselves.

When you're creating a restaurant, what comes first: the food, the room, the personality, or the person you imagine sitting there?

The location dictates a lot of what can be done in a space. It's a combination of the location, the space you have to work with, what else is around and what's missing. With Kaspers, we didn't really hit upon what we wanted to do until a bit later. We just left the space lying vacant, which was a very expensive proposition. But I think it's important to get it right rather than rush into doing something that doesn't really suit the space.

The Table is now 15 years old and still desirable. What's the secret sauce in  keeping a restaurant feeling fresh without changing what people already love about it?

I think what's worked for us is keeping the menu fresh. There's a difference between a chef-driven restaurant like The Table or Kaspers and a more familiar comfort menu like Mag St., where you go back for the same thing that you crave and it's just familiar favourites. With a chef-driven concept, you go because you get to try something new. A very integral part of why we are still around and doing well even in our 16th year is because we've had team members who've been with us pretty much since opening. There's a sense of familiarity and feeling at home, even though it is an elevated experience. There's freshness yet stability, if that makes sense.

You say you are very instinct-led. What's a decision you made that looked questionable on paper but turned out to be the correct one?

So many. When we were building The Table, four months after the project started, we changed our architect. Everyone thought that was crazy because we'd spent a lot of money, the rent had kicked in, and it made no sense to restart the whole process that late in the day. But we did it, and I think it was one of the best decisions we made, even though it made no commercial sense whatsoever.

A lot of the things we did were literally following our gut because we didn't have a hospitality background. Neither Jay (Yousef, husband and partner) nor I had any previous experience in restaurants or hospitality or even any academic background in this. Everything we've done has been very intuitive. I'm the risk-averse accountant, so I'm definitely not the one to make crazy decisions like that. I give Jay credit for that because he's definitely the bigger entrepreneur.

Mumbai is constantly moving from one obsession to another. What are we obsessed with right now that you don't think will age particularly well?

I'm not a fan of trends. I don't follow them because just by definition they're fleeting. Matcha bars and whatnot, coffee raves and all those kinds of things. I'm maybe a little old school. None of the concepts are trend-driven because people don't know what your DNA is if it's changing every few years or with whatever direction the wind blows. One thing that is probably here to stay, and it's not a trend but more a lifestyle choice, is that people are definitely more health-conscious. I've seen that shift in recent times and it's something that you can't ignore.

Do you think restaurants today are being built for Instagram?

Instagram is a necessary tool in our lives, so it's inevitable. But I think it's a mistake to build for Instagram because tomorrow social media could go and be replaced by something else. Instagram can bring people in the door once, but it's the actual meal, the quality and the flavours and the experience that's going to bring people back. And that's what you need to sustain this business. Your product has to kick ass.

Finally, complete the sentence: A restaurant has officially made it in Mumbai when ___?

"It is still open after 10 years."