As Indian consumers are becoming more and more demanding, Oven Fresh has raised its own bar to serve the best of the world’s bakery and patisserie items. A review by Manoj Kumar
Ronak Mehta, the suave proprietor of Oven Fresh, does not visit other bakeries and pastry shops in the country. It’s a quiet unnatural trait for a bakery owner who must keep abreast with the offerings and strategies of competitions in order to survive in the dog-eat-dog world of the booming bakery industry.
But Mehta’s Oven Fresh has not just survived but has emerged as the most sought-after bakery and pastry shop in Mumbai.
That is because the son of chartered accountant Jagat Mehta, who founded the outlet two decades ago, would benchmark the quality of his products only with that of the Belgian and Parisian patisseries that have served generations of their loyal customers for 300 years or more. Ronak, a pastry chef himself, makes it a point to visit Paris every year to gain an insight into the world trends. During his visit to the best of the world’s pastry shops, he observes the subtlest variations in the texture and taste of their products. The result is the top-class menu at Oven Fresh that combines the best of Continental, Mediterranean and English items.
Yet, Ronak credits all this to his six dexterous chefs and an 80 plus team that supports him. He is truly a people’s man. “We have the best of the talents in this industry. Our chefs are trained in leading hotels abroad,” says Ronak.Staffs undergo periodic training sessions to hone their skills further. “I was working for a leading five-star hotel before joining Oven Fresh. Unlike in a typical hotel, here I get the widest possible opportunity to experiment with creativity. We are able to minutely monitor the quality here. That makes us one of the finest bakery and patisserie shops in the country,” says chef Prabhakar Pagadala.
“Team work is key to our work culture. When creating the menu, the opinion of everyone matters,” says chef Shantaram Shetti, who worked in Australia for ten years before joining Oven Fresh. “None gives as much importance to the quality of ingredients as we do,” informs Shetti.
The products at Oven Freshare made of high quality ingredients. “Now that the other aspects of running the business is firmly in place, I have turned my attention chiefly to ingredients,” says Ronak. Some of the ingredients are imported from countries where they are produced in its pristine form. “We have around 200 imported ingredients, including rock salt, grain mustard,” adds Ronak. All ingredients are subjected to stingiest quality test. The final products are also tested for its quality and nutrient content, for which Oven Fresh has tied up with a leading laboratory.
Only pure chocolate is used for making all chocolate cakes—whether Indian, Belgian or French. The cakes and ganaches at Oven Fresh do not have any artificial chocolate or compounds. All cheese used are pure origin cheese and not alternatives like any hung curd. All almond, pista or hazelnut sponges only have nuts or their paste and no artificial flavour.
Oven Fresh sells some of the most-cherished bakery items in town. Blueberry cheese cakes are sold elsewhere too but at Oven Fresh the filling has 70 per cent blueberry. The cheese cake mixture is made out of French cream cheese and the biscuit base has a taste of maple syrup and honey, brown sugar and unsalted butter. This cake has about 20 per cent of fruit content and 20 per cent of cheese.
Opera is a signature cake from the Oven Fresh stable. Four original layers of almond sponge, two layers each of Italian espresso butter cream and Belgian chocolate ganache—that sums up Opera. It has very less sugar syrup, and the almond sponge makes it a little heavy but rich in taste and texture. That is why this delicacy must be cut into smaller than usual pieces and eaten. The cake must be allowed to thaw for three to five minutes after being taken out from refrigerator.
Almond Biscotti is another flagship delicacy of Oven Fresh. These are twice-baked oblong-shaped almond biscuits, made dry and crunchy through cutting the loaf of dough while still hot and fresh from baking. One will never miss the magnificent biscotti. Every loaf of biscotti is hand-shaped and hand cut. The result is a biscotti that is not uniform in size and shape, but one that is unique, natural and true to the methods that bakers have used for hundreds of years.
Ronak’s brother Deepak is the in-house taster. Sophistry in taste is ensured for every item on the menu of Oven Fresh. Feedback from customers are diligently taken and factored in while preparing the items. Despite having overgrown its own size, Oven Fresh does not want to open branches. “We can as well start a number of outlets and even franchises in different parts of the country. But that is not our strategy. We want to consolidate further and further. We are not looking at volume. We are looking rather at class. We are focussed on customers,” says Ronak. The whole concept of expansion at Oven Fresh is different. It entails coming out with new researches aimed at constantly enhancing quality and providing innovative products to the customers.
“Here in India an average baker must spend at least 10-15 minutes every day into research because we have not reached the European level. The beauty of this industry is that it would only go forward, because bread has become an important source of diet,” Ronak puts things in perspective. Operating from a locality like Dadar in Central Mumbai, where even McDonald’s has not daunted to enter due to its traditional diet habits of mainly native population, Oven Fresh has exotic Mediterranean items on its menu. And all of them are selling like hot cake. The outlet has 82 covers, mostly fully occupied in peak hours. The multitude at the takeaway counter is always beaming.
Oven Fresh is able to rationalise prices because it has cut fringe costs. It does not offer credit card payment facility. There is neither home delivery nor valet parking. The outlet prefers to be the way it exists, except in terms of quality where a constant strive to excel is the norm.
