You spent years helping build Saffron alongside your family before opening The Kingsway. What leadership lessons did you intentionally carry over into your first solo restaurant? 

The greatest lesson I carried with me was that leadership starts with being willing to do the work yourself. At Saffron, there was never a sense that any job was beneath anyone. My parents led through sacrifice, consistency and presence, and that shaped how I lead today. I also learned that standards have to be demonstrated, not simply discussed. You cannot ask your team to care more than you appear to care. At The Kingsway, I try to be very clear about the standard while also giving people the trust and responsibility to take ownership of it. Leadership is not about controlling every decision. It is about creating an environment where everyone understands what we are trying to accomplish and why it matters. I act like an employee with the hope that the employees act like owners.

The business plan for Saffron began as your MBA thesis. Looking back now, how much of building a successful restaurant comes down to planning versus adapting once guests actually start walking through the door?

A business plan gives you discipline. It forces you to understand your market, your costs, your concept and the reason your restaurant should exist. Without that foundation, you're making emotional decisions with very expensive consequences. No business plan survives exactly as written once the doors open. Your guests tell you what the restaurant should become through what they order, how they respond and what brings them back. Your team also reveals operational realities that you could never fully anticipate on paper.

The important thing is knowing which parts of the plan are fundamental and which parts are flexible. Your identity and values should remain steady, but the way you execute them has to evolve. Planning gets you to opening night. Listening, adapting and staying honest about what's working are what allow you to remain open.

Many second-generation restaurateurs face the challenge of honoring a family legacy while creating an identity of their own. How did you approach that balance with The Kingsway, and when did it start to feel like your own restaurant rather than an extension of Saffron?

I never wanted to separate myself from my family's legacy. It is the foundation that made everything I've done possible. But honoring that legacy didn't mean repeating Saffron. It meant carrying forward the values behind it: hospitality, generosity, hard work, cultural connection and a deep respect for the guest.

With The Kingsway, I gave myself permission to explore another part of my story. I grew up in an Indian household in New Orleans with a father who was a chef. At home, we ate Indian food, but my dad's Chinese cooking was also a meaningful part of our table. As I began studying and training as a chef, that curiosity expanded into a deeper fascination with the cuisines of Asia—especially Singapore, because of its connection to my family and culture.

The Kingsway became a way for me to bring those influences together through my own experiences and perspective, while approaching the cultures and traditions behind them with respect. It was never about distancing myself from Saffron. It was about showing another side of who I am as a chef.

It began to feel like its own restaurant when the team started understanding and communicating its identity without needing me to explain every detail. They developed a shared language around the food, the service and the overall experience. That was the moment it stopped feeling like an idea I was trying to prove and started feeling like a restaurant with a life and identity of its own.

Opening your first independent restaurant changes the way you think about risk. What's one assumption you had before opening The Kingsway that turned out to be completely wrong, and how has it changed the way you operate today?

I assumed that creating the concept and developing the food would be the most difficult part. In reality, the greater challenge was building an entirely new culture and teaching a brand new team how to consistently deliver something that had previously existed only in my head.

At Saffron, the culture had been built over decades. There was shared history, family intuition and an established understanding of how we operated. At The Kingsway, none of that could be assumed. Every standard had to be articulated, taught, reinforced and sometimes reconsidered.

That realization changed how I operate. I spend much more time communicating the reason behind decisions, creating systems and making sure expectations are genuinely understood. A strong concept might attract attention, but culture and consistency are what sustain a restaurant. The risk is not only whether guests will accept your idea. It is whether you can build an organization capable of executing that idea every night.

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