Of celebrity restaurateurs ...

.. heck, of Shilpa Shetty to some extent and allied rants for the other.

So Shilpa Shetty is the latest to hop onto the celebrity restaurateur bandwagon following the likes of the Tendulkars and the Zaheer Khans and some of her more illustrious counterparts from LaLa Land. I can already envision a leopard print theme on all fabric in the restaurant and probably a curry house which serves south indian curries as opposed to the good old CTM that Britain loves. Speaking of CTM, I dont know how good they have it up there in Southall and Bradford, but I have yet to come across *good* CTM in any of the towns I've had it in so far in America. And I've lived in the desi-est of places as Chitown and ATL! I cant really tell the difference in taste of one CTM from the other, its like all the restaurants across the nation go with one standard recipe. Come to think of it, its really not like I can't tell the difference, more like there IS no difference;)

Anyways so we'll wait and watch how Ms Shetty's attempts at cashing in on her newfound popularity in Britain turn out. It is no news that her 'popularity' ( y'know I really wouldnt call it popularity, its really more like familiarity - know what I mean?) in Britain stems from all the wrong reasons lately with the hullabaloo caused by Big Brother. The first curry house opens up in London and then she'll open up more branches. I wonder if Ms Shetty would dare open up a branch in Mumbai. Well she's been 'popular' here too .. thanks to Mr Gere. Yep, that was a classic case of hypocrisy and things blown out of proportion and comments interpreted in whatever-the-hell-way one would want and whatever more idiocy one could imagine. Effigy making could probably soon turn into a million dollar industry looking at the rate at which they are being burnt in India over the slightest of chances, y'know first the usual suspects - the cricket team, then Shilpa Shetty and Richard Gere, then someone else; protesters just dont seem to get enough of effigy burning.

Coming back to restaurants, I dont know what gives celebrities the idea to start a restaurant. Maybe they bank on it as an alternate revenue generating machine - if not the cricketing whites/glossy makeup face-cakes, I can always don an apron! Tendulkar started one and apparently eats there quite often. Zaheer Khan started one, now that was a good one - starting a restaurant in Pune is almost always a foolproof plan. The city has enough restaurants already, yet anytime you walk into a restaurant, you cannot easily get a table without considerable wait time. Ofcourse, owning a restaurant in Pune has its own disadvantages and ZK's recently got trashed by some zealots while India was on the losing track. If anyone were to open up a new restaurant in Pune, it'd have to be Italian. Despite having a truckload of restaurants, I dont think Pune has one restaurant which serves authentic Italian worth it's weight in .. err .. pasta.

Anywho, enough with the rants, imma get back to some work. These pretzels are making me thirsty!