D A L F R Y D A Y, Bangalore, Coffee and Everything else

Kitchen area

• Tandoor ready tiling work , granite topping complete.
• Wall tiling complete
• Concealed wiring complete along with switches and plug points
• Lighting to be fixed by the week
• Painting of walls to commence this week
• Drainage pipe laying in progress.
• Gas bank and charcoal bin fixed
• Gas pipe lining to be completed

Dining Area

• Rafter beam work for false ceiling in progress
• Selected tiles for the toilets
• Table tops ready… to be polished bases to be PU coated.
• Side stations / Dummy waiters being readied.

Kitchen civil work expected to be completed by 1st week of July. Expecting the interiors to be readied by 10th. Kitchen Equipments will be delivered hopefully before 10th. Kitchen exhaust to be fixed simultaneously.

Visited the Express Hotelier’s Expo held at the Kanteerva stadium yesterday. Saw some amazing stuff there…wanted to pick them up but held back due to some budgetary constraints. The Waste disposer was certainly very interesting.

John is visiting the site,will finalise some finer aspects of the kitchen design tomorrow.

Our first teaser banner came up at the restaurant site yesterday.   Size 4′ X 2′.
Will be putting up two more banners of size 7′ X 3′ on the outside tomorrow.

Wall tiling work in the kitchen finishes tomorrow (Tile specs – color offwhite size 12″ X 8″). Hopefully the electrical wiring will also be completed tomorrow. The plubing shall take anothe couple more days after which the area will have to be painted. I may have some carpentry work lined up prior to the painting job.

The table tops are getting readied at site. A sample of the table base is being brought to the site tomorrow. Tomorrow we also take a call on the installation of the audio technicals and finalize the electrical wiring for the dining area. I hope also to see a sample of the chair readied by the week. A busy day tomorrow.

Sampled the crockery and cutlery for the restaurant today. Bone china white and mat finished venus Cutlery. They Look gooood!!

Fixed the tandoor and the rear access door yesterday. I didn’t carry my cam yesterday to the site and hence have no pix to post – which is a shame actually. Many people would be curious on how it is done… well I shall list the sequence on how to fix a tandoor here shortly. I did take a few pix of the tandoor this morning which is posted below.

As for the other civil works we have begun fixing the wall tiles and the plumbing work has also commenced in the kitchen. The interiors for the restaurant also started today. Have also confirmed the hiring of the Genset with Prasad and signed the agreement to this effect today, which should be erected in the next 10 days hopefully. The genset for us has been the best deal so far…yeah, well we have had a few great deals done…but the genset tops them all.

Tandoor: It was Wednesday 31 May that we, The chef and I went to pick the tandoor… Potters town as it is called is located a little distance from cantonment station and Mosque road. You will find many potters displaying their wares here.

We needed two pots for our restaurant and had decided on a large girth and a medium sized one. We had visited potters town on instruction form a colleague / friend of mine who works at the Windsor Manor. Spotted a nondescript house on the large alley showcasing a whole lot of wares…Pots of all shapes and sizes. We did a look about at the shops in the area to have a feel of what they had their tandoor pots priced at. Most shops had the clay ovens priced in the range from Rs 900 – 1500 per pot depending on the size.

We then moved to the shop we had the address for and our eyes fell on some very well displayed pots… we wanted 2 pots of size 2′ 5″ in girth and another for 2′. The color and the shape were of particular importance and we found the ones we were looking for. Those that we picked were burnt to a nice reddish brown tint and it didn’t have and chipped ends or corners.

Negotiated with the owners for a flat fee to transport and install the same at site. Initially we had planned to pick up an extra tandoor just in case one of them gets damaged in transit. By negotiating for a total installation package we saved ourselves the burden of transporting the pots ourselves and then finding someone to install the same.

Tandoor installation requires a level of expertise and the contents used to pack the same while building the oven depends on the clay used to make the pots and the demand / usage.

Our dimensions are
Length – 70 “
Breadth – 36″
Height – 37″

Procedure for fixing

Its a brick and mortar job. Each standard sized mud brick is of the size 3″ X 4″ X 9″.

Steps.

• Lay the base 36″ X 70″ with brick and cement
• Pack the base with cement to form a stable platform with uniform sized bricks.
• Raise the base platform to 2 brick level height.
• Rough plaster the entire area
• Carefully place the tandoor pots on top of the platform
• Leave a gap of at least 8″ ( two brick width from the side) while placing the pot.
• Ensure that there is a slight forward tilt to the tandoor pot. This is for ease of operation while baking breads
• The backs of the pots may be raised using broken tiles or other broken bricks. Make sure you give only a slight tilt to the front.
• The side walls with one brick width are raise uniformly on all the four sides
• The space thus formed between the tandoor pot and the wall should be packed with packing materials
• There would be very little space to the front of the tandoor this is because of the slight tilt to the front. This is ok.
• Corse river sand is poured into the space between and then packed lightly using a thick wooden stump or any suitable material.
• Care to be taken as this can damage the tandoor if done carelessly.
• On top of the sand one layer of broken glass pieces are poured
• Sand is poured again and leveled followed by another layer of broken glass pieces.
• Dried brown mud is then put over this followed by another layer of glass sand and mud
• The top is then rough plastered leaving the mouth of the tandoor exposed.
• The base on the inside of the pot, which is actually open to the ground is plastered with cement. this is to ensure that any glass pieces that may have fallen inside gets covered and plastered by cement.
• The tandoor is then rough plastered on all sides
• This is left for a day or two with proper curing done once or twice every day.
• It is advised that this job is left to specialists to finish.

This is the rear door fixed yesterday and the partially finished tandoor

A pretty neat job I guess.

You will learn more on how to heat the tandoor initially when we do it shortly…

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Civil work at the site began today. Work on the interiors start Monday. Traditionally as is customary work begins with the breaking of a coconut. For us it began with the breaking of a wall for the service access….:)

Spoke to Amit this morning and he had some difficulty in organizing his work force for the Interiors this week. He had informed us that it would start middle of this week. Our first delay…we are almost a week through June…every day from first of June will cost us money – 2000 bucks a day…Hmmm

Will be taking a metal fabricator to work on the fabrication of a metal door for the service access and for the Gas bank and charcoal bin. We plan to house them just below the stairway.

Spoke to P, the person who will install the Genset at our place. It was tough catching up with him. Finally got P to come to Lipton this morning and finalized proceedings. We sign off on the Genset tomorrow and I pay him the necessary advance. He has the Genset ready – a 20 KVA equipment. P says, he has to get the shell for soundproofing readied. I told him I’d pay the advance and he can get this organized. This has been agreed upon. I pay him an advance of 2 months tomorrow. Earlier last week I spoke to another gentleman from Bangalore to provide us with a Genset. He was charging us twice the amount we will be paying P. I have realised…negotiate without disclosing the location of the site for best deals….

Gunakar, my colleague from my previous job is visiting Bangalore next week.

Finalised on the tiles for the wall today. 12 x 8 white / offwhite tiles. we require ~600 sqft. Will pay an advance later tomorrow. Also took the chef and visited Pottery town on Monday last. Picked up two tandoors ( clay ovens) for the restaurant. Finalised the rate at Rs 10000/- for two tandoors. This rate is inclusive of transportation and installation at site. The chef will oversee its installation which in all probability shall happen on Wednesday next.

Placed the order for Kitchen equipments and the exhaust last week. Have to place the order for cutlery and crockery. This will happen on Friday or Saturday when John returns from Pondicherry.

We have worked on a few ideas for the logo. Sidharth, Sudhakars son, would be working on the logos for us. Find below a few of his workings…some Interesting designs…however these have not been chosen. We have decided to keep the logos simple, bold and without any confusion and yet must display an element of class…which is what we are striving to achieve.

Some Logos

1. Too stylish…very common…chocolate wrapping for valentines…no!

 2.The tag line is a definite no no…   

3. Although I liked the font and the structure…

 4.  A font similar to a Dashiell Hammet novel????

5. I liked this but the L and the F got too close for comfort  

6. I liked this too…but…not just there yet     Ok, people talk to me…

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