I�ve never sat at the cash counters of any of my restaurants, because my father always believed the owner�s place was in the kitchen. The kitchen is the heart of a restaurant. If you learn how to cook, you learn the tricks of the trade, and you can control the kitchen and go on to expand your business. I can cook 95 per cent of the menus of any of my restaurants.�

WHEN you see Vithal Kamat looking unshaved and scruffy, you must know that the enterprising entrepreneur is about to open another restaurant or hotel. That's his habit. For months together while his new project is getting off the ground, he will go about with long hair and beard. Then, when it has been successfully launched, he will go to Tirupathi and come away tonsured and clean shaven. Truly it is said, God looks after those who look after themself!

This is the same man whose mother pawned her jewellery to set up his father in the restaurant business in the 1940s. The first restaurants started by the Kamats were in Bombay: Kamat Vishranti Gruha in Mazagaon and Krishna Bhavan in Null Bazar. None of the restaurants have survived, but, in their place, a brand equity has been established and there are Kamat restaurants and hotels all over the country and in some leading cities of the world today.

Vithal Kamat was an electrical engineer who joined his father in the family business by starting to work in the kitchen of Satkar Restaurant at Churchgate. This was 1970, and Vithal was 18. "I've never sat at the cash counters of any of my restaurants," he says, "because my father always believed the owner's place was in the kitchen. The kitchen is the heart of a restaurant. If you learn how to cook, you learn the tricks of the trade, and you can control the kitchen and go on to expand your business." With 18 hours of work experience a day, Vithal can now cook 95 per cent of the menus of any of his restaurants.

"And you will find my food as tasty as it is in any restaurant," he says modestly. The secret of the success of the Kamat restaurants and hotels, he says, is hard work, honesty, and determination. Not necessarily all his own. "If you have determination, dedication and discipline," he believes, "all of which begin in 'D'... you can make the most important 'D' of all happen. Destiny!"

He has all of the 'Ds' in spades, but is a stickler for naming all his restaurants in 'S'. The Kamat chain in Bombay includes such fine vegetarian (and one non-veg.) South Indian eateries as Satkar, Suvidha, Samrat, Santoor, Suruchi, and Status. "Success is spelt with 'S'," explains Vithal. "And the success of these restaurants is that they serve clean, wholesome food in record time, they're great places for VFM."

The Kamats also have Orchid in Bombay, Asia's first ecotel, that's an environment-friendly five star hotel, and they have the Kamat of India chain of restaurants in Singapore and cities of Japan. He's into consultancy elsewhere in the world, restaurants, hotels, entertainment, in fact, anything that anybody might want to pick his brains for. And he's got the Kamat Catering & Hotel Management School, from which he absorbs students into his own restaurants and hotels.

On the personal front, he's found time despite the 16 and 18 hour working days, to get a black belt in karate. He exercises every day, does yoga, isometrics, is up at 6 a.m. and packs his day up by midnight. He eats anything and everything. But prefers simple dal-rice and his mother's cooking. Sundays, the Kamat family goes out to lunch. Without warning, they turn up at one of the family restaurants. He explains his strategy: "I take calculated risks to set up my businesses. My first aim is survival.

Then, consolidation. The restaurants can only be successful if the staff are responsible and alert. Sometimes, I like to check up on them."

His big high recently was the completion of Orchid. This, he says, he did for his parents. And he was glad that it was completed while they are still alive. His father started out in the restaurant business by doing the lowest job. Vithal was happy to see the pride in his father's face when Orchid received the world's best eco-friendly hotel award in Durban some time ago. What next? He wants to go international in a big way. Take his idli-sambar and masala dosai restaurants all over the United States. "McDonald has come here, so it's time for Kamat to go there," he says.