The first word that comes to mind when you step into Nature’s Basket Artisan Pantry in Alipore is ‘wow’. Bright and happy, it is a food and cooking enthusiast’s paradise with a plethora of options, ranging across cuisines, grocery items and experiences, full of unique and novel. Trial and buying is a highlight at the second outlet of Nature’s Basket Artisan Pantry in India, the first one being located in Mumbai’s Phoenix Palladium mall. Glocal in appeal, the destination store offers a complete package, a tour of which will take you at least a few hours. Shashwat Goenka, chairman, Spencers Retail, showed us around.
What is the concept of Nature’s Basket Artisan Pantry?
This is a new concept for Nature’s Basket and we are calling it Artisan Pantry. Nature’s Basket is premium. This is luxury. The look and feel are very different and the merchandise is also very different. We have picked things and gone deep into them. We started planning this concept about a year ago. The team worked very hard to research across the world what’s best.
The Good Food Café will serve up goodies galore
This is a store where you are expected to come and shop by yourself and the range is extensive and there are a lot of elements of discovery in the store. We have gone through sections that people in the luxury food space now are looking for. Everything you get at a Michelin restaurant, the ingredients for that are available at the store. It is a combination of Indian artisanal brands, mainstream brands and a lot of international brands.
As you enter the store, there is an entire section organised according to cuisine. Normally, we would just have Oriental as one cuisine. This time we have actually broken it up into Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Thai... so that you get the full depth of everything.
What was the idea behind this concept?
In keeping with the trend of all things Korean, you will find a wide range in this section
With Nature’s Basket (that launched in 2019) in the last four-five years we learnt that it has a positioning which is premium to gourmet and we realised that people have now upgraded and want some level of luxury when it comes to food and groceries. They are getting more adventurous and aware. For Calcuttans in general, food is very important and every Calcuttan is a connoisseur of food. It is very hard to cater to an audience that is so well-travelled, exposed and aware. That is why we have taken over a year to curate the whole assortment and that is why we believe Artisan Pantry, as a concept, would do very well in this city. They have a willingness to try, purchase and spend as well when it comes to this category of consumption. We’ll be opening one more in Bombay next month.
What are the various components at the store?
There is an entire section called The Farmer’s Market where we have got a whole range of fruits and vegetables the city has never seen before. We have taken things that people like to eat and we have gone very extensive on getting a wide range of products. We have all these unique types of mushrooms like portobello mushrooms from abroad and we have the Indian variant too. We have fresh oyster mushrooms, pink oyster mushrooms, cremini mushrooms and Chanterelle mushrooms as well. We have got fresh truffle, both black and white. We’ve got a full truffle bar; truffle is a huge trend in luxury and gourmet food.
There are unique salts to pick from at this corner
Then we have fresh shiitake, king oyster, dried gucchi and morel mushrooms, which come from Kashmir. There is a huge demand for mushrooms in Calcutta. We’ve got at least 21-ish varieties of mushrooms, between fresh and dry. We have black fungus too, which is something unique.
When it comes to root vegetables, we worked on this range of potatoes and sweet potatoes. You’ve got celery root, colourful potatoes, orange sweet potatoes and blue sweet potatoes and parsnip as well, which is rarely found in India. We have got blue and white carrots. We’ve got horseradish, which has a bit of a pungent-mustard-y kind of flavour and we’ve also got fresh wasabi sticks. We have a wide range of organically grown tomatoes. The Zebra brown tomatoes have come all the way from the Netherlands. We have put the country where the food is from as well so that people know what they are buying.
If you look at fruits, there are a lot of unique new fruits. We’ve got these white peaches, which is otherwise not available. We have got unique things like the snake fruit for example, passion fruit, which is purple in colour. Korean pears are extremely sweet, as if you are tasting sugar. We have written about the health benefits of the fruit, because health and wellness are a general trend, so we have tried to incorporate that in the store as well.
Take a break and enjoy your coffee
In dairy, we have this entire range that is dairy-free dairy. From a health perspective, people are now moving away from dairy to things like almond milk and nut milk. Oat milk is the next big thing. So, we’ve got freshly squeezed oat milk. Then, we have also worked on sugar alternatives and honey because people are moving away from consuming sugar per se. We have a wide range of honey, including white honey, which spreads like jam or butter. We have also introduced Manuka honey with UMF for the first time in Calcutta. They come from New Zealand and the higher the UMF, the higher the medicinal property.
We also have flavoured varieties of honey like tulsi, jamun, ajwain and lychee honey and more. We also have a whole range of jaggery. We have coffee from a brand called Cohoma who we partner with across Artisan Pantry. We are selling coffee accessories as well.
People are really moving into this Korean space. We have worked on a wide range of ramen, right from flavour profiles, to the type of noodles, to fried vs non-fried.
The Boulangerie is our bakery. There are 60 varieties of breads. We have our in-house brand Fiorenza. Suchali’s has got some of the best sourdough in the country. We have our own sourdough, which is also fabulous. We have worked on gourmet bread. There is a range of gluten-free breads too. Bread is a big consumption item in India, in general.
The trend is moving from plain sandwich and white bread to other kinds like sourdough and rye bread.
You also have a full section of everything that is required for baking.In the Spice’s Souk and Nut Bar, we have over 150 varieties of nuts, spices and chillies, including unique flavours. We have worked on the quality to be great. We have Spanish and Iranian saffron and turmeric with high curcumin content. You get the whole spices ground here or we can blend spices too. They can also make nut milk, flour and butter for you instantly. There are 20 varieties of chillies. At The Salt Bar, you get salt slabs on which you can serve food and warm them up and cook as well. We have an entire range of salts including 15 varieties, like Black Forest Smoked Salt and Dessert Salt….
There is the Tea Room by TGL Co. We have partnered with them. We have a live counter from Minus Thirty with gelatos and vegan ice creams. We have got to Calcutta for the first time Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in tubs and Movenpick. Baklava is a big trend. We have our own brand called Nibb’s for gourmet chocolates and we have interesting truffles as well. You can get your chocolate custom-made. We also have a large variety of cheese, about 85 varieties, with about 22 different kinds of cheddar, and more.
For the first time at the store, we have included vegetarian caviar and they come in about seven or eight flavours like passion fruit pearls, date pearls, chilli pearls….We’ll be serving all types of wines, champagne and all the hard liquor as well, a premium range and fish, meat and cold cuts too. There will be produce from the Northeast, which will be unique to the store.
The Truffle Bar is a highlight
The Good Food Café has an extensive menu and you either opt for takeaway or can sit outdoors and enjoy your meal. We are also introducing a general merchandise range, things that will work with the food we are offering.
What are your expectations?
I sincerely hope it delights the people of Calcutta! We want this to be a destination for families to come and shop from, we’ve got these smaller trolleys for kids, so that they can do their shopping too!
What: Nature’s Basket Artisan Pantry
Where: 5B, Judges Court Road, Alipore
Timings: 8am-10pm