A JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY – A LOVE OF FLAVOUR, AND LEARNING TO BE A BUSINESSMAN
Thursday July 7th, 2005
No-one who was going about their business in London that day will ever forget it. More than 50 people were murdered in a series of ruthlessly coordinated terrorist attacks, targeting rush-hour commuters on the public transport network. And Litu Mohiuddin should have been on one of those trains. The fact that he wasn’t is one of many ‘sliding doors’ moments which have defined his astonishing journey, from the fields of rural Bangladesh to the bustling heart of the UK, where he is now channelling the essence of the British Raj into a fresh and innovative dining experience.
“Ah yes, 7/7. That all happened only a few weeks after I had first arrived in the UK,” he recalls. “I was working for a travel agency at the time, and my job was delivering tickets and official documents to customers around London. On that particular day, I decided I’d sneak a couple of extra hours off that morning and make a slightly later start, as I wasn’t feeling particularly well. Otherwise, I’d have been on one of the very trains that was bombed.” More of that in a moment. First, let’s rewind and start from the beginning.
Litu was born in a small village in Khulna, one of the largest cities in Bangladesh. The oldest of two brothers, he was raised in a tight-knit community where his working class family would earn their money farming the land and living their lives without many of the modern-day utilities that we take for granted. His father was a farmer, and his mother became a counsellor, as well as being involved in micro-credit fundraising. “I grew up with a very organic lifestyle,” he says. “We would never really buy anything apart from salt to cook and kerosene to light up the lamp; everything used to come from the field, and often our produce would be used as a form of currency, for bartering.” At the age of six or seven, Litu began going along to a community-based education centre called Pathshala, before graduating to primary school, which was a journey in itself. “During monsoon we would have to wrap our books and everything in polythene bags in one hand, and carry our sandals in the other, walking on muddy roads to get to school. Then, when we arrived, it was a case of cleaning ourselves up before we were ready to sit there for the day, waiting to wrap up again for the return journey.”
A pivotal moment in Litu’s life was at the age of around 13, just as he was starting secondary school, when he sustained a neck injury which left him hospitalised for the best part of three months. “This was very hard for me, because I had to digest the combination of not going to school and missing friends, with the risk of falling behind in my studies. “It was when I got back to school that the epiphany happened, and I realised I needed to start concentrating on my studies. At the same time, I was helping increasingly with family activities, and became very much focused on the fact that I needed to develop business skills.” A career in the food industry, though, was certainly not on the radar at this point, even though Litu had scored an early culinary success at the age of about 10 or 11 when his mother was ill and he had to make a rare foray into the kitchen to put food on the table. “Traditionally it was always the women and girls who spent time in the kitchen, so I never really knew what to do, but my mother was always encouraging. I remember that I cooked up a fish curry with aubergine and potato, which worked out very well. The colour was lovely. I remember concentrating so much and replicating the colours I had seen in my food before – I believe colour makes so much difference. That was the first feedback for me, and I’ve always kept it in mind. I’m very much into the natural colour of a plate of food.” That wasn’t the moment that truly ignited Litu’s desire to be a chef, though. That would come much, much later – in a totally different environment.
Up to the age of around 16, Litu had little time for dabbling in the kitchen. His schedule would involve setting out to school each morning, watering the plants in the field six days a week, a couple of hours of evening studies, dinner, and sleep. “I’m not saying I was the perfect child. In fact, I got beaten up multiple times by my parents – because I was often a naughty boy. Sometimes deliberately, sometimes accidentally!” Litu would also earn his keep in those early teenage years by walking the best part of a mile to the village market with a basket of produce on his head, to sell the family’s wares. Spinach . . . aubergine . . . kohlrabi . . . cauliflower . . . he could have anything up to 10kgs balanced on his head to take to market for sale. Was this unusual for a child of Litu’s age? “Certainly none of my friends were doing this. While I was walking miles to market with a big basket of veg, they were playing football or cricket, because their families were in different financial positions. There would be people selling produce on both sides of the high street sitting there for three or four hours. “I have very vivid memories of feeling sad at the time, seeing my friends come to market, holding their parents’ hands and buying things like chocolates. Now, though, I look back and realise it was a privilege to get the opportunity to learn how to negotiate, and be a businessman, at such a young age.” Litu’s teacher would come and buy from his selection, which would be laid out without any kind of price tag. “It was all about negotiating, which living in that community you had to learn. ‘How much is that?’ a customer would say. ‘Five per kilo,’ I’d reply. ‘I’ll give you four.’ And so it went on. Whatever I did eventually sold for was always slightly higher than the price I’d tell my parents . . . well, I felt I deserved a bit of commission for all my efforts!” Litu’s upbringing gave him an understanding and appreciation of the seasonality, sustainability and local variance of fresh produce – something which has remained a true passion of his ever since. “It’s certainly true to say that the earliest days of our journeys have an influence and impact on what we do for the rest of our lives.” Although it would still be several years until Litu arrived in the UK, a British tradition – the boy scouts – made a big impression on his childhood.
“At school we had no real uniform; the scouts were the only ones that did. I would watch them in the morning when I was out doing my PT training, and ask my teacher if I could join. ‘No’ he replied. ‘They don’t take naughty boys in the scouts’. But I wasn’t going to take no for an answer, kept on badgering him, and eventually they let me join.” I was the only person in Khulna getting lots of advertising in for him – I had a commercial head on my shoulders and was getting a good commission too.” Organisation oral rehydration therapy (ORT) health awareness programme across three local villages. “I was with the scouts for four or five years up to my late teens, and it really changed me. I respect the scouting movement incredibly for that.”
After secondary school, and the eye opening experience with the scouts, it was time for Litu to go to the city to begin his further education. It was around this time that he met Rina, the woman who, many years later, would become his wife. He explains: “Her nephew needed a private tutor, and I went along for an interview. They gave me an opportunity to mentor and prepare him for English medium school. It was a type of education I hadn’t had myself, so I was effectively learning with him. But it worked well, and effectively gave me a second education. “College was all about business studies for me. I have always had a very keen eye for journalism and interest in newspapers. One of my uncles used to bring them on his travels from different cities, and I’d enjoy reading them.” Rina’s family was involved in journalism – her brother was actually killed in action, when he was caught in a bomb blast during his time reporting on social injustice for the BBC and Reuters. Litu started doing some work on the local Bengali newspaper, and became a regular at the local press club. “In 1999, I remember attending a seminar when a journalist came over from Dhaka and taught me how to write editorials, and the principles of constructing a good story. Journalism made a big impact on my life, no doubt about it.” He was also ambitious, and with his then girlfriend Rina, they started hatching a plan to start a new life in the UK. “She wanted to pursue a career in law in the UK, so we decided to give it a try and apply for visas. “Rina was adamant, though, that we could only go to the UK if we could travel together, on the same plane, so we didn’t end up getting separated. My visa application was accepted, but Rina was turned down the first time. Thankfully she had 28 days to re-apply, we worked on rewriting the document together and she got her visa.” True to their wishes, Litu and Rina got on the same plane, and came to the UK in 2005. Once again, though, money was tight. Between them, they only had about £250 in their pockets, and by the time they’d been unwisely pointed towards a black cab driver to take them to a friendly address, that was 20% of it gone. “I always remember being completely transfixed by the cash metre going round as we sat there. It was our first time in London and we should have been taking in the scenery, but I couldn’t look at anything else apart from the numbers.”
From the very earliest days of arriving in the UK, I’d hoped to run my own business, and there was a feeling at this point that things were maybe starting to happen.” Litu left Kitchin N1 in 2012 with many happy memories and precious new skills, and was involved in helping the company to open a new bar in the city which was named by the Daily Telegraph as one of the 10 best of its kind in London. He was also dabbling once again in the media world, doing some part-time work with organisations such as Bangla Mirror. It was here that Litu met a businessman from Cheltenham with a restaurant called Spice Lodge, who invited him to do some consultancy work. “Of course, in a restaurant such as this there is really no such role as a consultant – you become everything from head waiter to manager; you get involved in everything.”
The time in Cheltenham was not without its momentous occasions, though. In 2013 Litu married his long-time partner Rina at the town’s register office. “We had two witnesses – a chef colleague, and a second person who didn’t turn up, so we had to find another man in there who was prepared to step in.” “The owner of Spice Lodge found a premises and offered us a partnership. In the back of our minds, Rina, Rasel and I had been thinking of taking a risk. We came and looked round, and liked what we saw. The question was, did we want to give up everything we had built up, and put it all at risk?
On paper, we had built a beautiful life for ourselves and were well set up, with permanent residency, money coming in, and well-paid jobs. It would have been easy to walk away – but I wanted another challenge.” And that’s certainly what it was. With very little disposable income, and a couple of maxed-out credit cards, the trio worked day and night to create East India Café, which opened in Cheltenham’s Promenade on November 8th, 2014. Litu says: “Right from the start we were clear that we didn’t just want to be another place serving up only curries. I had been harbouring this idea of an experience where diners get to know the story behind everything they eat. Not many people were talking about Anglo-Indian cuisine, an amalgamation of Indian and European cuisine developed during the British Raj era. The story of migration, cuisine and culture . . . that’s what we needed to be talking about.”. Once the brand and vision were established, the challenge was to find a chef who could understand and do justice to the trio’s goals, and research and come up with a suitable menu. They drew a blank. Litu says: “We didn’t have the money to spend on huge salaries, so I decided to use the kitchen as my very own research and development centre to potentially build my chef profile. Leave it to me’, I said, and let’s see what we can do. We wanted to build an experience, not just a plate of food. Sharing your background and knowledge with your audience encourages them to bounce back, and it generates many other ideas. We’re learning from our customers at the same time.”
Rina at Memsahib’s Lounge, taking their philosophy to the next level. Anglo-Indian and modern European infused small bites, teas and herbs-infused house-crafted gin and rum, taking centre stage in sold-out masterclasses. Litu says: “It’s all inspired by European and high caste women during the British Raj, when many Anglo-Indian women known as ‘Memsahibs’ introduced the world to new and exciting tastes and flavours. “And, of course, with gin and tonic – the quintessential choice for the British expat from the days of the Raj – given a fresh twist. Blending history and heritage with innovation and progress.” Having signed contracts on the building in late 2018, they opened Memsahib’s Lounge in 2019 and traded for around a year, before Covid intervened. Not that the small matter of a global pandemic was ever likely to thwart this entrepreneurial trio. Litu says: “Our very philosophy is about considering the future of people, and the planet, and I believe the pandemic has brought the importance of these issues into even sharper focus. Sustainable practices, ethical production and consumption, seasonality in our menus, and a policy towards zero food waste – that’s what we’re all about. “However it is a practice towards a better world. I have dedicated 40 years of my life to finding a suitable career and became a chef out of love and necessity. Now my next dream is to introduce authentic Bangladeshi cuisine in the UK and to encourage, empower and catalyse British Bangladeshi women to become world-renowned chefs.”
