My move to what became Tuscana & Kryptos began in 2006, when my wife Margaret Lawson Willson (nee Freer) died in Chennai and she was ceremoniously and with great sorrow mourned in passing by myself and so many of our friends and colleagues there. But I stayed on at The Park afterwards and then one year later her death anniversary came up, and what a day it ended up being. I did not know how to acknowledge the day, stay at home in remembrance or do what, – so in the end I went to work. The Hotel had received a scathing mystery shopper and the upper powers were livid, so I went in to protect and be with my F&B team. The report highlighted the room side, with little criticism of the F&B services, but the mud was flying everywhere. At the same time, the South Indian Chef’s Society wanted to honour me with a gold coin in recognition of my impact on the Chennai food scene. Under a lot of pressure to attend, I needed to be at the hotel with my team so I declined to attend that day and the honour was withdrawn. I never had anything to do with the SICA after that, as some accommodation could not be given for my remembrance day or the hotel troubles we were having. From that day on, I always knew I was leaving The Park.

Vipin Sachdev turned up in December with one of the Somerset directors and Indian franchise owners and he made me an offer. Restaurant Bar set up in the Somerset building and then onto other new properties around the country. So in January 2008 after due diligence into the Somerset directors, I joined what I thought was Somerset, but turned out to be another company completely, Burgundy Restaurants! Never mind, the decision was made and we started planning Burgundy’s, The B Bar and a proposed Thai restaurant. Come 2008 and the market crashed, everything stalled as did our projects, so to keep the momentum going, Vipin and I decided to open an Italian Pizzeria. And so Tuscana Pizzeria was born and afterwards, transformed into Tuscana Kryptos.

We found a property in Wallace Gardens, off Nungambakkam High Road, and went induction cooking in the kitchen. We brought a lot of stuff from China, but Spanish refrigerators and British induction and set-up. At this time, I had a lot of Italian friends in Chennai and they all volunteered to taste test, give advice and get us into a proper Italian style. Our two wood-fired pizza ovens were built by hand by Antonio, and between us, we learnt the art of making a wood-fired pizza oven from the ground up. Now Antonio has cornered the pizza oven market in Chennai and all around the country with ready-built ovens, either wood or gas and over the years I have installed about a dozen of them in various places, but the Pizzeria and then Tuscana on Chamiers were both hand-built, with us being the first full wood fired oven in Chennai. There were one or two wood cooking places around before us though, as in The Farm, which gave us valuable insights into their ovens.

We kept it traditional Italian, the risotto was al dente and you waited 25 minutes for it, we used De Cecco pasta and Olitalia olive oils, we were strict with the standards and our tiramisu and panna cotta were the best in the city. I had a great team of guys, Chef Hari, Chef Senthil and others who came across from The Park during the time, Italians Claudia and Rupa advised on the cooking and we made thin-crust wood-fired pizza that I had started at The Park. We opened Tuscana Pizzeria, then opened Kryptos, our Greek Cypriot place and then Tuscan Pizzeria on Chamiers, before finally opening a pizzeria at Akkarai on the ECR.

For the Tuscana name I just joined the English Tuscany and the Italian Toscana to make the Tuscana. For Kryptos by Willi, we were located in a basement and so hidden away a bit, and cryptic is hidden in clues, so I formed the name from that. I had just come back from a trip to Cyprus beforehand, so it helped in this. We made an excellent name for ourselves, always guests lining up and waiting to be seated, great friends being made and so many people remembering their meals with us from those times. I chose Greek Cypriot because we could gather the cuisine dishes from Greece with their fresh seafood, vegetables, cheeses, oils and so on plus also incorporate all the dishes from the Middle East that over the centuries of invasion had made their way into Cypriot cooking. We also had the first chilled salad bar there which is also remembered to this day.

Sadly for Kryptos, Vipin decided to make the restaurant a vegetarian restaurant after many FB “friends” requested it, and we duly changed the menu to this. Another factor was a big pile of building debris with a toilet cistern dumped in our parking area by the Chennai corporation which did nothing to enhance our access or ambience. The third factor was the lack of any sort of restaurant alcohol license available to stand-alone restaurants in Chennai, and even my friends who loved the regular Kryptos, quite often chose hotels for the evening entertainment where they could have a beer or a wine with their meal. And so, vegetarian and lo and behold, all those FB friends who wanted vegetarian so much did not appear! All talk but no footprints inside! And so after a year of this, Kryptos by Willi closed, much to the sorrow of countless guests who remembered us in our glory days!

The Tuscana’s followed a different route where we were making profits, but apparently not enough and with some bad judgements I feel, we started not paying suppliers and started operating with too many menu items being unavailable. Added to this were legal woes encountered by Tuscana Chamiers with some licensing approval problems brought on by a widow next door who hated us being there, and this was the first to close down, it was meant to be temporary but it never reopened. So, with menu supplies dropping and the quality and consistency that the team had built such a wonderful reputation crashing, it was time for me to leave the company. A quite bitter dispute on severance followed, resolved through police meditation and I also found out through my lawyers that my working capital stake of 10% in the company, had been whittled down over the five years to 0.06 per cent, so basically nothing. The things you learn in life, but I had a great time developing the Tuscana’s and Kryptos, we had some great team members working with us and it was well worthwhile doing this for the five years. As a footnote, Burgundy’s and The B Bar finally did open, they ran okay, but we missed the boat from what should have been a high-end licensed restaurant, and the market had moved on by then to more casual dining options. Finally, the Restaurant and the Bar were sold off, the Thai never was set up to open, and the other Somerset properties that came up in Chennai and Bangalore did not have the same F&B arrangements with us as when we started with the Chennai property. The next step was my own consulting company!