Kolkata Mocambo consequence: Do restaurants have the right to reject guests on silly pretexts?

Kolkata’s Park Street has a legacy. It has a lot of firsts to its credit. Long back author Jaydeep Mazumder had written, India’s first department store- Hall & Anderson, music café, first ice cream parlour- Magnolia, first soda fountain, the first restaurants offering live entertainment – all had one address in India, Park Street.

Who can forget the year-end carnival that has a reputation all over the globe? It’s not just a street. Officially it may have been christened Mother Teresa Sarani, but it’s a happening place for the elitists of the country. It has seen the vintage 70s and 80s. Who would have known the singer performing live at Trincas then would end up being the famous Usha Uthup now? Of Cabarets, jazz clubs and pubs, Park Street’s prominence has invited famed Bengali ‘bhodroloks’ (gentlemen). That sometimes ranged from Soumitra Chatterjee, Barun Chanda, Satyajit Ray, Anjan Dutta to writer Mani Shankar Mukherjee, Amitav Ghosh and musician Nandan Bagchi.

And then this happened. Independent India’s first nightclub, Mocambo at Park Street doesn’t let a marketing professional enter with her driver, where she thought would be the best place to dine on her final evening in the city. She wasn’t just brazenly denied entry with the driver, but a reason as silly as the driver not wearing the proper outfit (read extravagant clothes) and was seen eating jhal muri, was given to justify its actions. At a time when the Chief Minister of the state has decided to call ‘telebhaja’ (fried snacks) an industry in the State and seeking foreign investments to expand the same, denying someone entry to the posh restaurant on this pretext is abominable for a place whose Chicken Sicillienes was quite a favourite with Jawaharlal Nehru.

Mind you, the rage is taking place on social media, a place more powerful than all presidents of the world put together. While the management of the place said they have the right to admission reserved, people rightly pointed out that cannot be based on someone’s appearance.
We got in touch with Vikrant Batra, owner of Cafe Delhi Heights, a leading chain of restaurants in the capital to understand the right properly.
"’Right to admission reserved’ is a very critical term not only for the hospitality industry but also for any public place in general. It is very important to filter your crowd on the basis of the kind of experience you want to give to your customers. It relates to both safety as well as the concept behind your restaurant. Having said that it should not be exercised to discriminate people on the basis of their caste, colour, creed or their economic strata,” Batra told Business Insider.

Same view was expressed by the spokesperson of Radisson Blue MBD,Noida, who said, “Speaking from a purely legal viewpoint any hotel has a right to restrict admission to anyone as long as this is not a discriminatory action i.e. due to race, caste , religion.”

Definitely, for a place like Mocambo that boasts of a dance floor reinforced with Belgian glass, and having flown down an Italian chef to design its menu with a German architect designing the interior, we could have expected some Indian hospitality to add to the feel.

And even if the admission stays reserved, “One cannot rule out the thumb rule of our industry - Customer is the king. All we need to do is make them feel like one,” says Sudhir Ahuja of Bakstage Kolkata, a well-known pub in Sector V, Salt Lake.