Marking his name among the maestros of cooking, Chef Gaggan Anand is back to Taj from where he started his journey. He takes a break with Mansi Bhansali before beginning a new chapter in Japan
Well, he is back to where he began. After exploring and making new flavours in the metros of Chennai, Mumbai and Bengaluru, Gaggan Anand, the owner-cum-chef of the eponymous chain, ended his research in Delhi. He began with the Taj and it is here that he is relearning secrets from his known Indian kitchen to zero in on flavours for his new restaurant in Japan.
For those who came in late, the superchef is shutting down his branded chain and is collaborating with Japanese chefs to create an Oriental fusion restaurant that guarantees the highest level of foodgasm. It will have ten seats and be open on alternate months. So for six months, Gaggan and his team will be putting together a new menu and surprise you with gastronomic possibilities for the remaining six.
“At Taj I was made the server in 2000 because the executive chef at that time told me to be one. After 10 years, this is homecoming for me,” he told us, casual and confident about looking back at life, warts and all. His decision to close down Gaggan had come in as a shock but he told us it was a well-thought out decision. “Going to Bangkok in 2007 was a decision I took during my mid-life crisis. I’ve learnt from the past three years of experience that one needs to control fame. It is like a volume, which needs to be managed according to your comfort level. This is the reason I’m closing my restaurant. It is not a PR event or mid-life crisis,” he said.
Punjabi by birth and Bengali by heart, Gaggan, wearing black shirt and lowers that contrasted with his white coat, surprised everyone with his slippers. But home-grown comfort is the essence of Gaggan’s spread at the hotel for his Indian fans. He shared, “Bangkok was a completely different experience, I can’t recreate it here. I’ll be presenting a menu with dishes made from the ingredients which are not easily available in Bangkok. I’ve used hing (asafoetida), khoya (curdled milk) and kesar (saffron) to Indianise the table. I’m including Prawn kolawadi in place of Prawn Amritsari by using more Indian spices.”
Known for using emojis in his menu card, Gaggan is cookie-cutting sharp when it comes to his business. He restricted his partnership for his chain to 10 years. In that time, he continued to be its sole representative. Too much of a good thing could swell up the ego and Gaggan would like to keep that in check. He thinks the fame he has got till now can become his own enemy, which is dangerous for him. “I’m not opening any chain of Gaggan in India as I’ve learnt the lesson that people want to make money out of you. The most important thing is I don’t want my name to be put up at various spots and have my diners compare their homogeneity or the lack of it. I want to try something different,” he said.
The superchef, then, is one who loves a good dare. He challenges his comfort zone and hopes to present out-of-the-box dishes. This ability made him decide to run a 10 to 15 seater restaurant in Japan by 2021. He believes it would be the most difficult table in the world to book. Often, he uses science and technology while cooking traditional Indian dishes to give it a westernised touch. “Science of food means playing with the physical and chemical elements of the food and enhancing the eating experience. For instance, we make so many items with flour, like puri, halwa and ladoo. Yet each is so different in taste and looks. For me, this represents the science of cooking. Similarly, when I decide to present ghewar, I make sure it should not be the same as what we eat in Rajasthan though the core grammar would have to be sacred. Science enables you to exploit the boundary of cooking,” he told us.
And Gaggan has mastered technology. Which is why he is unaffected by talk of the perils of liquid nitrogen and its use in the modern kitchen. “I use liquid nitrogen every day but none of the dishes come in a smoking form. It is not meant to.”
In the same breath, Gaggan clarified that fusion is confusion and that he believes in innovation. “There is a very thin line between both the terms. Fusion is cooking tacos with Indian kebabs, while confusion is mixing pan with chocolate and raspberry,” he said. The chef even shared his confrontation with fusion. “Once I ate orange, chilli and chocolates together. This gave me the idea of developing a chocolate paanipuri. I played with taste buds. The Mexican guests loved it. I also made paanipuri ice cream with nitrogen oxide.”
Gaggan, in fact, seemed disappointed with the exploitation and dilution of our cuisine. “The three most important ingredients — salt, black pepper and sugar — which feature in every kitchen around the world, were produced by India. The problem is our technique is domesticated but we don’t know how to market it. Also, we Indians have this habit of aping techniques from the West. My job was to ensure that the best restaurant should come from India. But it was not possible in India because of the ‘Do you know who I’m’ attitude. That’s the journey I’ve covered in Bangkok.”
Gaggan is mostly known for his signature Charcoal Prawn Amritsari and Yogurt explosion. He said, “When I went to Bangkok, I found that Indian cuisine was looked down upon. The chicken I ate there left my hand all red. It was like going back to 1973. From then, we have evolved significantly. At that moment, I decided that rather than spending money to open new restaurants, I should invest in talent. So, by the time I close Gaggan, I can see new restaurants with the same attitude coming up.”
The chef explained the importance and beauty of Indian food and wished we created something new out of our own vegetables like making parvals (striped gourd) scrumptious rather than adding zucchini in a curry. “Can we compare macaroons with ghewarIJ No,” he emphasised.
Unlike other celebrity chefs, who judge cooking reality shows on TV, Gaggan is a student of good food. Said he, “I don’t want to be a chef who’s on TV. I want to change the history of food instead. Rather I would like to pass a law to protect Indian cuisine. We’ve indoctrinated our cuisines while countries like Japan have kept their food origins alive. Where is our heritage and gloryIJ Except Bengali and Gujarati, no other cuisine has been able to retain its originality. How many of us know of Kerala Muslim cuisine, Coorgi surprises, Kashmiri Pandit platters or Himachali rajmaIJ India has the largest cooking homes in the entire world but we are becoming fascist.”
The irony of knowing and not knowing things is leading him to Japan. He doesn’t know what he is going to make there but it is a combination of Beatles and Ravi Shankar.