Return of the maverick: How chef Vineet Bhatia redefined Indian cuisine

GROWING UP IN A middle-class Punjabi household in Mumbai (then called Bombay) in the 1970s, all Vineet Bhatia wanted to do when he grew up was to join the Indian Air Force and fly planes. That was probably a natural thing to aspire to, with his dad in the defence services. Unfortunately, he was turned down as a pilot in the Air Force because of his height. Moving on, he joined Dadar’s Institute of Hotel Management (IHM) in Mumbai in 1985. “I wanted to be a barman because I was quite intrigued by the colours and the blending of stuff,” says Bhatia. But his height became a hurdle again. “You are too short to stand near a bar counter… they won’t even see you,” he recalls his trainer telling him. In fact, the trainer said the only place he could work in a hotel “is where nobody sees you, and that is the kitchen”, Bhatia recalls. It was demeaning, but then he thought that he could possibly train in the kitchen for 10 days or so and then wiggle out to become a waiter. Then he walked into the kitchen at The Oberoi in Mumbai. “I was absolutely amazed. Their kitchen was so immaculately run, with such discipline and regimen. And I said, ‘I’m working for the Army, the Navy and the Air Force. And this is what I want to do’,” Bhatia tells Fortune India. “For somebody who had no interest in cooking…I wanted to learn now. I wanted to learn to cook. That is why to this day I say I am a cook at heart. I’m not a chef.” And so, in that meticulously run Oberoi kitchen, a culinary star began to emerge. Decades later, Bhatia would become the first Indian origin chef to win a Michelin Star. “I still cook. I don’t have an office. I don’t have a visiting card. My office, my kitchen. And although we have 11 restaurants around the world… [when] I travel, I never go and sit in an office,” Bhatia, who has won three Michelin Stars in his 42 years in the profession, says. In 1988, he went to The Oberoi in New Delhi to do an advanced course at the Oberoi School of Hotel Management (now called the Oberoi Centre of Learning and Development), which used to handpick around 12 to 40 people from all over India and train them. After Bhatia finished culinary school, he worked with the Oberoi Group, being posted back to Mumbai in 1990, to the kitchen he was fascinated with. But he was disheartened. “Then, young Indian chefs or those who wanted to do Indian cuisine were not allowed to make much progress,” he says, adding that he would end up cooking typical hotel-style food. “So [it would be] a kadhai gosht or butter chicken or tandoor chicken or chicken tikka or samosa,” says chef Bhatia. “In those days, we had to work under a lot of European executive chefs or pastry chefs, and you would see them trying to innovate and create dishes for their local culinary produce. But when I wanted to do the same with Indian food, with our local produce, I was told off.” He was frustrated that he wasn’t allowed to try and showcase Indian food differently, to try and elevate it and make it beautiful. “And that is when I realised that I was too small and young to be accepted while doing something different.” He started looking out and landed four offers — in Tokyo, Bangkok, Dubai, and London. “I chose London, not because I knew anything about London in those days. All I knew was it had Heathrow Airport, it was a hub for aviation, and I wanted to see planes… and it rained a lot in London, and I loved rainy weather.” In May 1993, he landed in London, not knowing that move would change his life. “The biggest joy in my life [then] was to watch the Concorde fly in and out every day.” Flavours from the past “One of my earliest memories of food is that every Sunday, my mum used to cook mutton curry with potatoes,” says Bhatia, adding that the Sunday ritual involved having the curry with parathas, khatta pyaaz on the side, and a glass of lassi. His mum was a very good cook who made simple, good food. And she was adventurous as well, trying various means to ensure that her children had the necessary greens, such as vegetables. “Once she made gobi ka kheer,” he fondly recalls. The flavours have stayed with him, as have the memories — and both continue to find their way into his creative process. London, by contrast, offered a rather different culinary experience. When Bhatia arrived, its culinary landscape was, by his account, a far cry from the vibrant food scene the city boasts today. “It was backward. So the food they [the restaurants] served was a typical curry house kind of a menu, which was in tune with what the Brits were used to eating in those days,” he says, adding that he was the only Indian in the Indian restaurant, which employed Bangladeshis, “who were not even professionally trained chefs”. Bhatia wanted London to get a taste of authentic Indian cuisine, and so started with the classics: butter chicken, biryanis, shammi kebab, etc. “And I was laughed at. I was told off by guests. Guests would leave the restaurant and go away. Staff in the kitchen left because they said this is hotel food; it doesn’t work in London. Guests said this [the food] has got nothing to do with India.” The first three months were tough. Bhatia realised that he had to try something different. The maverick in him, as Bhatia describes himself, started presenting Indian food differently, “trying to make it look attractive”, and not sound like a classic dish. “What I saw in London was the quality of produce, the proteins you got there, the vegetables you got there… It was very unlike what we got in India. The quality was quite high, especially the proteins and meats and the fish… The cuts are a lot more interesting to use. So it becomes quite fun in a way to experiment and play around. And when you infuse your Indian flavours, it works extremely well. And that’s exactly what I did.” This, he says, was accepted by the local press. “I had some great reviews, and that’s when things started changing,” Bhatia says. “That is how we started, but it was a slow burner,” he says, adding that he was the only person in London doing it in those days. “I think the biggest break came when we opened up Zaika [restaurant] in London [in 1999], and we got a Michelin Star in 2001.” Along the way, his style of cooking snowballed into a kind of modern progressive cuisine. “That was not the idea. The idea was purely to survive and to make a living for myself,” says the man who also wears the hat of a restaurateur and an author. Coming home, the long way around According to Bhatia, what the Michelin Star did was bring respectability to Indian cuisine. Now, Indian chefs can specialise in Indian cuisine, which was “unheard of during our times”. Culinary institutes have curricula on Indian cuisine, including regional cuisine, he says. “Indian chefs and cooks are looking at their own backyard for inspiration, not in France or Italy or Japan… That’s what gives me real happiness.” And thanks to the internet and a connected world, consumers, too, are well aware and open to trying new stuff — not just in the big cities, but also in smaller towns, he says. In addition, cookery shows have become immensely popular and have made foodies aware worldwide. Indian chefs who want to experiment with local cuisine now wouldn’t need to leave India, like Bhatia had to in the 1990s. In fact, life has come full circle for Bhatia. In 2010, he was asked to come back to Mumbai to open a restaurant called Ziya at The Oberoi. But a meeting between two “mavericks” preceded it. “Mr Biki Oberoi (Prithvi Raj Singh Oberoi) asked me, ‘Why should I hire you?’ I said there are a thousand people in your hotel… who will make a better Indian dish than I can. [But] I can make a makhni sauce into an ice-cream. I can do a chicken black in colour with something else, and you will still have the Indian flavours,” recalls Bhatia. He told the veteran hotelier that he thinks outside the box. “I said, ‘If you really want to have classic Indian cuisine… I am not your fit.’ He smiled back and said, ‘I have always been a maverick and a pioneer... I see that in you with food. You will run my restaurant.’ That’s how in 2010 we opened Ziya in Mumbai in the very same kitchen where I started in 1985-86. So for me, it was a homecoming after 25 years.” The hotel was being reopened to the public after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, and Bhatia remembers something the late Biki Oberoi told him that day. “I was on the stage with him, and he said, ‘The prodigal son returns,’ straight from his heart. And therefore, for me, it was like coming back to the same kitchen where I learnt to cook.” Bhatia thought he’d maybe work two years as a consultant, but now he has been with them for 15 years, partnering for four restaurants. Looking back, Bhatia says it is in his kitchen and with his team where all the magic happens. He has been on his feet for more than 40 years but has never felt tired. “I enjoy every single day of my life. It is pure joy to create and to serve,” he says. He credits 99% of his success to his wife and business partner, Rashima Bhatia, who lets him just concentrate on cooking, while she handles the rest. And he is happy. “The biggest joy is when you see a person going away happy from the restaurant,” he says. And that is the height ambition can reach when passion meets determination.

Return of the maverick: How chef Vineet Bhatia redefined Indian cuisine

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