Sparkling & Shining Away

20 Years of UpperCrust

Twenty years in a nutshell. Or a cupcake, if you prefer something sweet like we do. It’s been a joy bringing out a magazine as classy as UpperCrust. To be honest, there haven’t been too many changes all these years; we set the standard so high in 2000, there wasn’t much need to. Change for the sake of change is not our style

Text : Farzana Contractor

Twenty years ago when UpperCrust was born, it was for a very personal reason. And it was almost under duress. Behram Contractor, my husband of 15 years gave me a dictat—“I want a new magazine from you. And immediately.”  I toyed with two ideas: sports and food. Sports because it’s in my blood and food because we had the great Busybee in our hive. “Food and Wine,” said the boss, “not because of any other reason except that, though India needs a good sports magazine, it will not be a commercial success. I know these things.”

And so exactly four months later I was ready with UpperCrust, India’s first  and most elegant and sumptuous food, wine and travel magazine.

But it was not easy. There was the question of time and resources. At the time I was too busy running The Afternoon Despatch & Courier, the newspaper Behram and I had started in 1985, within just two months of being married. Conceptualising a new magazine and producing it seemed like an impossible task. But nothing is daunting in the face of adversity and I did it. With no help at all from Behram (for  a reason, which I was to know later). But on the day the magazine hit the stands, Behram gave me a present. A signed copy of UpperCrust!

He had gone to Nalanda Book Store at the Taj Mahal Hotel and BOUGHT one. So like him, to leave behind the thousands of cling-filmed copies, neatly stacked at Afternoon House to go get me one that he wanted to pay for. Well, a year which is four issues later, just one month before he passed away I learnt why he would not help me with any editorial inputs—he said he wanted me to stand on my own two feet. He said I had  proved to him that I could. And then he made me promise that I would always work hard.

What can I say? Yes, I continue to work hard. Our magazine has done good. Our readers are most wonderful, they appreciate all the effort my team and I put in, our copies are available in every corner of the country, elsewhere in the world too, UpperCrust is a favourite, our subscriber base in India and abroad is among the largest, and these are regularly renewed. Our format of food and wine, infused with people and travel has proved to be hugely successful and has remained largely unchanged.

We have grown in number and quality of readership. The UpperCrust Show, a food and wine exhibition we started in 2003 is hugely popular and succesful enough for us to have taken it to different cities of India.

If UpperCrust has been as successful as it has been, it is because it is very content driven. I am very fastidous about every article that goes in there. Over the years, though the format has remained the same, the magazine, it would seem, found a perfect balance all on its own, organically. It  kind of shaped up to what was needed. adjusting to reader expectation. So there is food and recipes, wine and travel. restaurants and people, people and people.

People in the wonderful world of hospitality, like chefs and general managers, f&b executives. sommeliers and vintners, people who are awesome home cooks and la-di-da hostesses and and of course the food connoisseurs, the ones who follow the good life with a zeal and passion.

Twenty years ago, the culinary scene was all very different. Fine dining was available only  within the hallowed precints of five star hotels, stand-alone restaurants were a far cry, with the exception of Rahul Akerkars’s Indigo and AD Singh’s Olive.  Two gentleman who influenced enormously how Indians ate and drank.

So while the trend of restaurants opening up one a week (and shutting shop just as fast), was still a decade and a half away, UpperCrust concentrated heavily on regional cuisines and home cooking. We wanted everyone to know what Indian food was all about. We wanted to put India on the world culinary map. We went travelling to corners near and far, all over India, discovering people, places and recipes with gay abandon. UpperCrust Destination,we called it. We covered towns and cities extensively. Publishing all the wonderful stories in 30, 40 and sometimes even 60 pages.

When the travel bug caught hold of Indians who started travelling overseas with a vengence we expanded our destination to cover International getaways. These pages gained immense popularity and going on jaunts recommended by UpperCrust became de rigeur. If you check out pages 164 to 205, you will understand what I am trying to say.

It also became our norm to put unusual people on our covers. People who would generally shy away from any publicity.  People who have every reason to be called celebrity. I am fortunate I deal with a subject as compelling as food and wine. Even the most reticent ones will wax eloquent on say, truffles,  or where you could sit and drink the best cup of coffee in Paris! 

Good content is always good. But if it is not accompanied by good photographs the result could perhaps be dismal.  Fortunately that is another area we concentrated on. Food has to look good. And we seriously worked on that. And not just food, but people and places. Pictures in UpperCrust are ‘alive’, they speak to our readers. And they are certainly off beat, not the standard kind.

This piece is meant to be in a nutshell or a cupcake, so I shall stop now and let the rest of the magazine speak.

So cheerio, sparkle and shine, shout out loud, ‘the world is mine!’