Harneet Baweja - How I Built Five Restaurant Brands Without a Master Plan & Why I Would Never Open In New York!

This week we’re joined by Harneet Baweja: restaurateur, operator, and the man behind some of London’s most-loved restaurants. Over the last decade he’s built an absurdly good line-up: Gunpowder, Empire Empire, Moi et Toi, Fortune Fried Chicken, and the recently opened Master Jackie back in his hometown of Kolkata.

It’s a 10-year anniversary conversation with proper bite. Harneet talks about celebrating Gunpowder’s first decade by doing something borderline outrageous: rolling back the menu to 2015 prices, with some dishes down around 70%. It’s not a stunt. It’s a clear-eyed look at what restaurants are up against right now, and what it takes to pull off something generous without collapsing, from suppliers pitching in to the team simply trying to keep the wheels turning.

You also get the origin story that explains everything: the tiny Spitalfields site, the chaos of opening, doing everything yourself, and the scrappy early days that shaped how he runs a business now. Harneet unpacks what it was like trying to convince London that Indian food could sit outside the old stereotypes, and how a community of regulars, critics, and champions helped put Gunpowder on the map. He’s funny, blunt, and refreshingly unpolished about the luck, the grind, and the moments that could have gone either way.

Harneet also runs through his actual go-to orders and favourite spots, the drinks he really wants (whiskey, barely any water), his love for Old Monk rum, and the ultimate nibbles he’d put out for friends, from the rasam bomb to those famous lamb chops. There’s Kolkata food intel, Chinatown history, late-night favourites, nightmare service stories, and a whole lot of heart underneath the swagger.

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