Friends and family recall their memories of Abdul Haq, the CMD of iconic city restaurant Empire
With 18 outlets across the city, Empire has, quite literally, lived up to its name. A crowd throngs its outlets no matter what time of day it may be, and many a large Sunday lunch and post-movie dinner run has been made in its basic-yet-clean interiors. So patrons were surprised to find that the restaurant was shut on July 1, only to discover that the empire had lost its patriarch, Chairman and Managing Director, Abdul Haq, at the age of 61.
While the restaurant continues to function under the stewardship of Haq’s brothers Kunhi Mohammed (Joint Managing Director) and Abdul Aziz (Vice Chairman), his son Shahid Haq is still grappling with the loss of his father. Haq had become synonymous with the expansion of the restaurant into a chain, from its earliest avatar as a small restaurant in Central Street, Shivaji Nagar in 1966 by his NRI father, Abdul Rahim.
“My father joined the operations in 1980. Initially he did everything from cutting chicken in the kitchen to sitting as a cashier. He had to learn the nitty-gritty of the business because my grandfather would not always be in India,” recalls Shahid. As business improved and he learnt the ropes, in 1998, Haq renovated the place, acquired adjacent shops and bought the property. He set up their first new outpost at Church Street, in 2004, “to attract the younger crowd.”
As the city grew, Empire grew with it, catering to the generation that now brought its children with it. Haq and his brothers introduced some of their signature dishes – from Chicken Kabad to Butter Chicken Gravy, Ghee Rice, Coin Paratha, and Chill Chicken. He understood the importance of modernisation, training staff to better their standard of service, updating the crockery and cutlery and introducing air-conditioning. “But he always wanted to keep the pricing reasonable no matter what,” Shahid recalls. In 1997, they introduced the Non-veg Thali; in 2008 the non-veg buffet. Along with the Dosa Chicken, (“Dosa was a common food but he wanted to make it about our gravy”), it helped cement Empire’s place in the city’s foodscape.
Controversy dogged him when in 2012, he allegedly ran over Selvaraj, a 50-year-old construction labourer from Dharmapuri in Tamil Nadu, who was sleeping on the pavement on Kamaraj Road. Selvaraj’s right leg had to be amputated after the accident.
Although Haq was accused of being inebriated, the claim was rubbished by the then Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic) MA Saleem, and Haq footed the bill for Selvaraj’s treatment.
While Shahid remembers him as a man who was always stressed that he was not doing enough for the brand, crunching numbers in his mind, it seems he need not have worried so much.
Shahid will now have to cultivate his father’s keen sense of smell and taste – that enabled him to find the flaws in his food just by sniffing it.
source: http://www.bangaloremirror.com / Bangalore Mirror / Home> Bangalore> Others / by Khushali P. Madhwani & Sowmya Rajaram , Bangalore Mirror Bureau / July 04th, 2015