Mowgli Street Food

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Nisha Katona: Culinary Impresario 

In the ever-evolving British dining landscape, one restaurateur stands out for her creative ideas and culinary excellence. Nisha Katona, Founder and CEO, Mowgli Street Food restaurants, has captivated diners with delightful cuisines and commitment to quality.

British restaurateur Nisha Katona has expanded the Mowgli footprint across the UK,  making it a popular haunt of food lovers. She made a huge career change a decade ago, which transformed a successful barrister into a celebrated restaurateur. The daughter of two Indian doctors, her dream was to serve the kind of food Indians eat at home and on the street. 

Change of Profession 

Why did Nisha quit a successful barrister profession? After working as a barrister for close to two decades, she wished to pursue her passion for food. When her interest in law was on the wane and showed signs of greater interest in culinary arts, her friends and family thought she was having some difficulty coping with life. It wasn't an easy transformation to a restaurateur, since she well knew the risks associated with such a move, as she would be giving up a well-paid job and had a mortgage to pay. But she had cherished a dream of becoming a professional chef. While she was still working full-time as a family and child law barrister she decided to take the plunge, and set up the first Mowgli Street Food restaurant in Liverpool, UK, in 2014.

Indian Roots

Nisha’s parents came to the UK in the 1960s to work in Skelmersdale, West Lancashire. Her father was one of the only Asian general medical practitioners in the area, and her mother also worked as a doctor. Although it was in a way groundbreaking, it came with its own challenges, and one of them was growing up in the 1970s discriminative society.  

Nisha is married to Zoltan Katona (of the famed Katona twins), a musician from Budapest, Hungary. The couple lives in Wirral, Liverpool, and  has two daughters. One of them is studying to be a barrister while the other is working in the marketing department of her mother’s business. Besides Hungarian and English, Nisha and her daughters speak Bengali.

Nisha, who was brought up in Ormskirk, studied at Scarisbrick Hall School, and she then went to study at Liverpool John Moores University. Although she initially studied psychology in Liverpool University, after a year she chose to study law. She qualified as a barrister at the Inns of Court School of Law in 1996 and has been a member of Lincoln's Inn. 

The power of food was clearly a factor that influenced Nisha’s life long before becoming a successful restaurateur.  She worked full-time as a barrister in Chavasse Court Chambers in Liverpool. In 2008, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport appointed her as a trustee of National Museums Liverpool. In 2009, the Cabinet Office appointed her Ambassador for Diversity in Public Appointments. She worked full-time as a child protection barrister for 20 years on the Northern Circuit. Thereafter, she switched to teaching about Indian cuisine. In the mid-2010s she founded Mowgli Street Food restaurants, besides founding the Mowgli Trust, which donates over £500,000 to local and world charities every year. 

Passion For Culinary Arts

According to Nisha, it's not that she didn't like law but became obsessed with the idea of the culinary art of preparation and serving of food, which she calls the food of her ancestors. And she wished to turn that idea into reality. Before Nisha planned her first Mowgli restaurant, she was engaged in teaching Indian cookery and writing cookbooks while she maintained her full-time job as a barrister. She wished to preserve the traditional Indian recipes and food culture she grew up with as a secon-generation Indian immigrant in the UK. What gave the impetus to her objective is that the people who attended her cookery classes loved the food. However, she noticed that such food was not available on the high street, which fuelled her entrepreneurial spirit.

Today, Nisha employs over 700 staff across more than 20 restaurants. The restaurant chain Mowgli reported an increase in sales in 2023, which is attributed to the opening of two new restaurants during the year, as well as growth at its existing venues, But Mowgli's growth has slightly been impeded lately, due to higher energy costs that led to a rise in overheads in 2023. As per company sources, these have since been reduced through entering a new fixed contract from October 2023. However, the outlook remains volatile for energy costs and is being closely monitored by management. Energy reduction schemes are in place across the company to mitigate future increases. 

Books, Social Media And TV 

Nisha is a food writer and featured in a number of publications, such as the Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Times, and The Independent. Her YouTube cooking channel has an international following. As per an estimate, her daily tweeted recipes have over 30,000 followers. She regularly appears on television and radio as a food,  business and restaurant expert, including Radio 4's Kitchen Cabinet. In 2015, she published her first book "Pimp My Rice," which was followed by "The Spice Tree" in 2017. And the "Mowgli Cook Book" was published in 2018.

Charity

The charity arm of the restaurant chain Mowgli Street Food has partnered with global children’s charity Plan International UK to transform and renovate two girls’ schools in Varanasi, India, the city being Nisha's ancestral hometown. Since she opened her restaurant in 2014, she has raised over £1.8 million for both local and international charities. As per the company management, it is Mowgli’s aim to send up to 40 team members per year to their international projects across the globe. Also, Nisha received an MBE, the third-highest ranking by the British government, in the 2019 New Year Honours List for services in the Food Industry.

Mowgli epitomizes Nisha’s dedication and commitment to sharing her love of food. Her passion for the business is underpinned with integrity and a great community spirit. The workplace, according to her, should be a place of solace. Her credo is to build a business that exists to enrich the lives of people and to make that of employees extraordinary.

(Photos: Courtesy Mowgli site)

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