Wine & Dine
Text and Photography by Mallika Chandra.
Kartikeya Ratan, 32 and Rishabh Doshi, 32
Kiki & Pastor
Location: Bandra
Speciality: Mexican
Kartikeya, tell me about your beginnings as a chef and how you co-founded Kiki & Pastor.
Kartikeya Ratan (KR): For the last decade or so, I’ve worked at a number of fine dining restaurants in India and abroad. And I increasingly felt that I wanted to cook more soul food, comfort food — food that actually satiates. When I returned to Mumbai from Delhi in 2019, I felt like the pandemic had taken a big toll on the nightlife of the city. There wasn’t any place where you could just hang out and not have to sit down and dine in. A taqueria was a great way of bringing that vibe in. But given the circumstances of COVID-19, things were very uncertain around 2020-2021, and yet Rishabh and I kept discussing how we could do it on a small…