Tony Marsden,
Nomad, Operations

In August 2013, I was a happy management consultant. Or as happy as someone can be when they work in management consultancy but don’t deeply care about making big corporations spend more to spend a bit less. I was getting regular promotions, good roles on projects, nice hotel stays, and a good wage packet.

But that month I went on an internet-conspired date with a fascinating, charming, but ultimately not-right-for-me girl. She runs a social enterprise restaurant in London celebrating the ethnic diversity of the city, one of the world’s great immigrant cities. I took her to a small unassuming Ecuadorean restaurant in north London and to know why I love it so much, you can read the review here.

Amidst all the wide-ranging first date topics, one thing we both agreed on: it’s nearly impossible in London, even with all its restaurant websites and going-out guides, to find the underdog. It’s a city full of them, teeming with restaurants where the cook makes a fricassee the way his mum showed him how to in Quito and will charge you barely £6 for it. This food has travelled continents and generations to be here with you. The least you can do is find a way to discover it.

And then a couple of weeks later, on August 19th, I got this:

I looked up Zomato. I searched for pol sambal like a pretentious young go-getter who’d just been on holiday to Sri Lanka, and found six restaurants in London that had it on the menu. One was near me in Finsbury Park. It was amazing. I still go.

So, happyish as I was in my career, I decided to meet up with this Pankaj chap. Let’s skim over the fact that my August Bank Holiday house party had gone very wrong the night before the meeting, and I was sleep-bankrupted when we met at St. Pancras station. But that — a 5 am HR interview over Skype — and then a final conversation in the office with Prao sold me on the whole thing.

One very small doubt remained. Was this a serious enough move for me? The company was tiny here, just starting out, and was openly learning by doing. Their frankness was refreshing, and I had all the fuck-it-just-do-it spirit to come on board, but was this a sensible diversion from an otherwise serene ascent through the ranks of corporate fulfillment?

These thoughts swirling around my head on my post-interview stroll to Aldgate station, I eventually reached the platform. And there it was, on the opposite wall, in letters three feet high:

18,000 restaurants out there. Still eating at the same five?

And bottom-right, six white letters in a red square: Zomato

Six pints later, in Covent Garden, one of my friends had to ask me politely to stop banging on about this company I’d interviewed with and just beg them to hire me. Friends just know, don’t they? When it all falls together like that, what choice did I have?