Sid Sahrawat remembers trying to subvert the panipuri.
At his restaurant Cassia, he filled the crisp, puffed shell with smoked yoghurt and tomato consomme and waited.
“I was like ‘it’s going to change people’s lives’. It did not. It had to come off the menu pretty quickly.”
Kitchens are
an exercise in trial and error. But what if you’re an Indian-born chef who has opened an Indian restaurant – and you’ve never really cooked Indian food?
Sid’s comfort zone was European fine dining. In Auckland, he’d made a name for himself at The Grove and, in 2009, opened the eponymous Sidart in Ponsonby. (Wife Chand remembers he’d bring home the confit duck and add it to her makhani sauce.)
“The way it works in India, is that because my dad was in the army, and my mum was a working mum, we always had cooks,” says Sid. “They would cook everything and it was all delicious. I got to travel a lot within India, with dad’s different postings and I loved the food, but it was not my forte.”
This may come as a surprise to anybody who has ever eaten a Cassia lamb chop.
Auckland’s first contemporary Indian restaurant opened in 2014 in a Fort Lane basement. It changed diners’ perceptions of Indian cuisine and paved the way for the likes of 1947, GOAT, VT Station and, most recently, Aarth – but it nearly didn’t happen.
“I freaked out,” Sid says. “I just got cold feet, big time. When you have one baby and you spend all your time with that baby, you don’t want to share that love . . .”
At Sidart, his name was on the door and its sterling reputation had been hard-won. The business grew slowly. Diners were reeling from the Global Financial Crisis; Sid remembers making sure he was at the restaurant before 8am to make sure he didn’t miss a single phone booking.
Chand: “We did menu drops around Ponsonby. We used to judge people’s houses because, you know, the menu cost money. This house, maybe skip it? That house looks fancy, put it in the letterbox.”
Sid: “The restaurant was in such a dingy location. Upstairs at the back of a mall. People were like, ‘what’s wrong with these guys … there’s not even a toilet in the restaurant’.”
Sidart is long sold (and since closed) and the Sahrawats are now an Auckland hospitality institution. They’ve been and gone from Ponsonby’s Kol, but still own The French Cafe and, on September 2, will reopen Cassia in its most ambitious iteration yet.
Chand Sahrawat and her chef husband Sid on the upper level of their new Albert St iteration of Cassia restaurant. Photo / Babiche Martens
The couple meet Viva on the ground floor of Voco hotel, on the corner of Wyndham St and Albert St. Through the wall, power tools are going full tilt. Builders are finishing what Chand is fondly referring to as “Cassia 3.0” following previous incarnations in Fort Lane, SkyCity, and the recent, short (“2.5”) pop-up at Grey Lynn’s Ozone.
The new Cassia features floor-to-ceiling windows across two levels. The main dining room holds up to 80, and there’s upstairs seating and private spaces for another 45 upstairs. The design, by Mille’s Gerrick Numan, includes a brick tile reference to the restaurant’s subterranean past, and an open kitchen (“straight away, you smell the food,” Chand says). The couple have also kept their original signage.
Today, on the cusp of Cassia’s teenage years, they’re reflecting on its growing pains.
“Cassia was born in our heads even before Sidart,” Chand says. “But the market wasn’t ready and Sid was more known for fine dining. It was a considered decision to not do Indian … The definition of ‘Indian’ back then was four pieces of chicken in a sweet orange sauce with naan – $12.99 for the lunch special.”
Then they watched the likes of Blue Breeze Inn, with its “modern Chinese” descriptor, take off in Ponsonby Central.
Vada Pav reimagined for the menu at Cassia, Sid and Chand Sahrawat’s modern Indian restaurant, reopening on Auckland’s Albert St. Photo / Sahil Patel
“People thought Asian food should be cheap dumplings on Dominion Rd. Here was a group elevating that. Believing in that. You’re like ‘okay, someone’s paved the way – now we can do this with Indian food. People’s mindsets are getting used to seeing cheaper cuisines being elevated’,” Chand says.
When Fort Lane’s Mandarin Dumpling closed, the Sahrawats jumped at the moody basement space. A fortnight from opening, Sid experienced chest pains. A GP ordered blood tests – and then ordered the chef to hospital in an ambulance.
Ultimately, he was diagnosed with myopericarditis, caused by influenza. Cassia’s first menu was devised in a hospital room; doctors only allowed his discharge when he agreed not to lift a pot for three to six months.
Chand: “I had to go and hire a tandoor chef in Papatoetoe. How had my life become this? I’m sitting with my dad at 10pm in a takeaway place going, ‘I’m going to hire you, because somebody recommended you . . .’”
Sid: “It sounds so easy. ‘Let’s just go open a modern Indian restaurant’ . . . no one’s worked together and there’s so much pressure. We had just won Restaurant of the Year for Sidart, so there were a lot of eyes on us.”
Day two: “We were putting this coconut oil on this lamb rump, South Indian-style. We had a food critic come in and say ‘that tastes revolting’. And I was like, ‘oh, does it?’ I tried it. Yeah, actually, it was not very pleasant. We learned a lot of things quite quickly.”
Cassia’s first incarnation in a Fort Lane basement. The restaurant’s new home is across two levels and features floor-to-ceiling windows. Photo / Chris Gorman
Cassia’s Mughlai lamb chops are now part of Auckland’s dining DNA. Sid would still be serving them in that beloved brick basement space if it hadn’t rained. And rained. And rained.
The first flood resulted in a five-week shutdown in March 2022. Eight months later, the Auckland Anniversary Weekend floods hit.
Sid had planned to work at the French Cafe that day. At the last minute, coming off the harbour bridge from his North Shore home, he swung a left. Cassia had around 150 bookings, lunch service was going to be busy. The first thing he noticed was that the “A” had fallen off the restaurant sign.
It was a very wet Friday. A few leaks had sprung and Chand was dispatched to find a water vacuum; she set out only to discover bad weather had already closed multiple hardware stores. Around 5.30pm, Sid remembers water was building up on downtown streets – but diners kept coming.
At least 40 customers were eating when water started gushing “at very, very high speed” into the downstairs prep kitchen, with the walk-in fridge-freezer and electricity switchboard.
Diners didn’t want to leave and the main kitchen was mid-cook – but there were now fears the floodwater could be carrying an electric current. They evacuated the restaurant, even as one customer arrived at the door, struggling with his umbrella, ready for his dinner booking.
It was five days before they could get back inside. It smelled, says Chand, “like somebody died”. Cassia as they knew it was over.
The Sahrawats were exhausted. They know not every customer enjoyed Cassia’s tenure as part of SkyCity’s Federal St offering, but Chand describes the shift as “parking the car in a safe, undercover garage”.
Now? “Now’s the time to pull the car out of the garage. And maybe upgrade the car. Time for a Ferrari now.”
A selection of dishes from the menu at Cassia, including burrata (rear) and xacuti (right). The modern Indian restaurant is reopening on Albert St, Auckland. Photo / Sahil Patel
The new restaurant is a 400sq m vote of confidence in the central city. Matthew Aitchison, who helped open the original Cassia and just picked up New Zealand’s inaugural Michelin Guide sommelier award, is on board as manager. The menu will feature old classics and new dishes honed at the recent suburban pop-up – a lamb sausage roll, and maybe a play on vada pav with a tart shell instead of bread, from head chef, Ketan Joshi. (Chand says it’s too spicy for her; Sid says he loves it).
Chand says when the couple opened Sidart they had no children and “we were so young we didn’t know there was a recession. None of us read the news back then!”
Now, their daughter is 15 and their son is 10. Once again, the economic climate is tough. Once again, the Sahrawats hope to prevail.
“People have to be brave and put their money where their mouth is,” says Chand. “We’re doing it, we hope customers do it . . . It’s time for the tide to turn. We believe in this city.”
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Kim Knight joined the New Zealand Herald in 2016. She is a senior reporter on the New Zealand Herald’s lifestyle desk and has a Masters in Gastronomy from AUT.
Dining and Cooking