Inside FoodService

Sporting Spirits

Alan D’Mello - Mumbai

Sports N Spirits or S2 as they would like to be known, is Porus Thapar’s third and latest hospitality venture. As the name plainly suggests, S2 is all about the enjoyment of sport with spirits thrown in to complement the experience.

Excellently situated in South Mumbai between three very popular cinemas, Sterling, New Excelsior and and New Empire, S2 is a two-floor restaurant which comprises the first floor and a terrace. To its strategic advantage, it is above a Barista Coffee outlet at the same venue of the erstwhile city hotspot, Fashion Bistro. In addition, there are a number of offices of large banks in the immediate vicinity, a consciously chosen target market given the spending power of their employees.

Says Harvard-educated Thapar, who chucked a career in his family’s construction company to follow his hospitality ambitions, “It took us a good three years to get this property. There were many around, but I wanted to stay in South Mumbai, in a location like this.” Thapar’s first two hospitality ventures were also sport-oriented.It is a simple theme at S2. The first floor restaurant which took three months to set up, has simple designs with sport memorabilia placed on walls as decorative items. It has a low ceiling, a structural hindrance left over from earlier plans. Given its size, the seating arrangement for 60 covers looks well in place. Two structures dominate the first floor – the wall-to-wall wood-lined dugout bar and the pool table placed at an angle right in the centre of the restaurant.

Creatively optimising available space, S2 offers a top covered, open-sided terrace with more pool tables and seating along the border. The area is popular with guests who like the view and open space the terrace offers.

Thapar and manager Praful Table are optimistic of their month-old venture becoming a success primarily because of their location and theme which fills a void and caters to a market with high disposable income. Feels Thapar, “There is a lot of entertainment in this region, but none which provides a sports theme and drinks at very economical rates. We already have regular guests.”

And building up on that anticipation, Thapar and Table are anxious to get another S2 underway, though they prefer to wait for atleast six months until the first outlet settles down.