What the public wants are classics properly done with a modern twist but not in a manner that is confusing. Too much fusion becomes confusion,” says Chef Ramon Alvarez Salto, executive chef at The Leela Ambience Gurgaon Hotel & Residences.
In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find chefs who are great fans of fusion cuisine, if at all.
Even as Indians trot the globe and demand the real thing back home, hotels have responded by flying in more foreign chefs not only for food promotions but also for full-time jobs. This, in spite of the fact they are well over four times as expensive as their Indian counterparts.
Industry sources say an expat chef with eight-ten years of experience and running a specialty restaurant as the chef de cuisine could command about Rs 400,000 compared with about Rs 100,000 that an Indian chef gets in a similar role with similar years of experience.
Renowned or celebrity chefs are, of course, in a league of their own.
While most people agree that a particular cuisine is best served by a chef of the same country and culture, Salto, however, has a different take on the issue. “It helps big time, but it’s not necessary,” he says. “Instead, you should have a passion for understanding the culture, the produce and the techniques of that cuisine,” he adds.
Park Hyatt Chennai executive chef Grzegorz Odolak agrees. “It’s a perception which is not always true because it depends entirely on the individual,” he opines. Odolak’s passion for his job shines through as he reveals the demanding hours that are needed for the role. “It’s not easy to have this balance between your personal life and a job as a chef, but I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t love it,” he adds.
Clearly, the Spaniard Salto, too, is the quintessential large-hearted chef, now working in his 11th country in India and who can “cook anything you want. Obviously, one style of food is what you know at home and that’s basically in your blood. That will always be with you,” he says.
Salto worked in New York for three years with one of the world’s most famous Asian fusion chefs, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, before making his way to India. He has worked with one of the finest Italian chefs in the world, Giorgio Locatelli as well as with French chef Michel del Burgo, holder of eight Michelin stars.
Salto also trained for three months at El Bulli and is likely the only chef in India today (or among a handful, at most) using the Texturas molecular cuisine kit. The kit comprises a range of equipment that can be used to create foods that are as light as air in texture and help with other experimentation. “You can do different types of caviars, eatable papers based on sugar and maybe make a sugar envelope and fill it up with different types of flowers,” says Salto.
Indeed, he says this is what the younger generation of Indians are looking for. “They prefer different kinds of presentation. They love to see molecular elements in the food like different types of foams and froth, liquid spherical raviolis and varied textures in their food. The older generation prefer the classics. We try and satisfy both sets – by doing the classics right – and by creating a wow factor for the younger generation.”
To be sure, the Spaniard has his finger already on the pulse of the market.
In the short span that he has been in India, he has picked up on the prevailing vegan trend and already created history when he launched Skydeck, the first Greek outlet in the Delhi-NCR region, in August last year. A 24-seat outlet located by the poolside in the hotel, Skydeck showcases barbecues and different kinds of Mezzes. “It’s pretty popular because Greek cuisine has a lot of vegetarian dishes,” Salto reveals.
Odolak, on the other hand, “can cook some nice dal” and is fascinated with the wide variety of spices and vegetarian dishes in the country. His forte lies in both western and Mezze cuisines.
In fact, a whole host of world cuisines – not just the ever-popular Italian and Chinese – but Japanese, Thai, Spanish, Greek, Turkish, Mezze and some Latin American – for various reasons, are also all getting increasingly popular.
While Salto is on the lookout to hire chefs specialising in vegetarian food to cater to the huge numbers of his guests, on the anvil is also a new Spanish menu to be introduced at Rubicon, the bar. “In the first menu, we introduced a couple of Spanish dishes and they were very well accepted, so now we are going a bit more Spanish. So, at Rubicon, we will have a nice Tapas menu. There will be specialities like Patatas Bravas, Spanish omelette, Salmorejo (a Spanish tomato soup) and other dishes,” Salto reveals.
Meanwhile, in another bustling metro at the Taj Lands End in Mumbai, chef de cuisine Alesandro Bechini has also been busy gauging the mood of his patrons. Running the only Maritime by San Lorenzo outlet in the country, Bechini reveals he plans to shift focus to a more southern Italian menu from the current pan-Italian offerings. “Our Indian guests like their Italian cuisine a little spicier. And as you go down south in Italy, it has more Mediterranean influences where spices and chillies are very abundantly found and used,” says Bechini.
Passionate about his food, Bechini hails from hilly Tuscany. His personal favourite dish is Trippa alla Fiorentina, a dish made of meat offal cooked with little vegetables and tomato sauce. While such dishes may find it difficult to receive acceptance here and hence, are not offered, Bechini says meat dishes are mostly cooked with a more acceptable substitute such as chicken. Therefore, taking inspiration from a dish like the veal Milanese, the restaurant offers instead, chicken Milanese. “We do not change the character of the dish or the way it is done – we only switch the meat,” reveals Bechini.
He adds, “Italian food is steeped in history and tradition and we want to maintain that. We like to dig into old recipes, into traditional Italian food which has not yet been brought to the fore and extend it to diners in this modern setting.”
However, in spite of the alterations and customisation for the Indian diner, Bechini likes to keep his dishes simple, authentic and traditional. “Italian food is all about ingredients which are by themselves colourful. You don’t want to mask that by putting your own packaging on top. Let the food speak for itself. Simple cooking, retain the colours and don’t mask it – that’s the ethos of Italian food,” he says.
Like other successful expat chefs, Thai chef Suriya Phusirimongkhonchai, JW Marriott Mumbai, has also adapted and knows well the nuances of the Indian palate. That’s the reason he omits using the sweet turnip while preparing Pad Thai noodles. “Although it’s a vegetable, but to some, it tastes a bit like something non-vegetarian,” he says. He adds, “Thai cuisine has gained popularity quietly in India over the years.”
For the papaya salad, very popular back home, Phusirimongkhonchai, however, removes the anchovies and dried shrimps as well as substitutes the fish sauce with light soya sauce for his Indian menu. The Thai maestro specialises in Thai desserts and in food carving and presentation, having studied the subject in Thailand.
So what is it that these expat chefs and their ilk bring to Indian shores, in addition to their knowledge of culinary techniques and the authenticity of the regions they represent?
JW Marriott Mumbai’s executive sous chef Mandar Madav believes it’s their professionalism. “The way they work, their planning and methodical nature are extremely important attributes they bring to our kitchens,” he says. In fact, adds Mandar, “If you have an expat chef, his organisational skills are much better. He takes care of the smallest things like the mise en place, stating that everything on the menu should be there. This is the individual personality he imparts to the kitchen. I’ve seen very few Indian chefs with these skills.”
“It’s a challenge to be working in India,” admits Odolak. “I always like to see a clean kitchen, well-organised and ready for service, because if everything is set up then you can run the show effortlessly. To be honest, it’s quite difficult and hard to do that in India,” he adds.
After 13 years of working with Hyatt Hotels Corporation in Europe, Middle East and Asia, Odolak should know. Oddly enough, though, he credits his strengths to his first job – a privately-run Tex-Mex restaurant in Warsaw – after he completed his studies in his native Poland. He says, “I worked there three years and it was an extremely busy place. That place shaped me. The food was good with Cajun spices and South American food. But apart from the cuisine, I learned a lot about organisation and how to organise and set up the kitchen for service. The dinners were extremely busy. Sometimes, we made even up to 400 cover, so it was a good place to start.”
Madav relates a telling example. “If you have a menu in which it says dried figs somewhere as an accompaniment and that’s not even the main course; it’s just an ingredient in an accompaniment, and if it’s not there in the hotel, expat chefs will mostly tell you two days in advance that there’s just a kilogramme of dried figs left and that they would be needing it soon. That’s how particular they are.” While the best of the kitchen equipment can be purchased, in a sector that relies and prides itself on its service offerings, industry insiders say lapses such as not being on time or even overlooking little details such as the plating of a dish are pretty much inexcusable.
It’s not just their work culture but also cooking techniques as well as their range of equipment used in which expat chefs are way ahead of most of their Indian counterparts. For instance, unlike most Indian chefs, both Salto and Odolak use sous vide cooking regularly.
“If you produce something sous vide, you pasteurise,” says Salto. “It’s a way of preserving the food. You can keep it in the fridge for two-three weeks. It stays fresh. For your mis en place, you can produce well in advance and keep it in the best of conditions. It’s very popular in Europe and in Michelin star
restaurants.”
It’s one of the reasons Odolak advises his juniors here in India to gain international
exposure.
“You guys just finished school. Now, go outside,” he says with something like concern. “Go outside your country because you can always come back. Without this experience, it will not work if you want to be a good chef. I always say the most important thing is the base. So, go and learn on the job.”
Odolak himself has already identified his next stop as South Asia sometime in the future even as he jokingly estimates he could take up to a decade to be able to cook all the various regional Indian cuisines.
Salto is also keen on adding Indian dishes to his already vast repertoire. He says, “All my life, I have been trying to become a well-rounded chef and I hope the day I leave India, I will also master Indian cuisine.”
Travel, they say, broadens the mind. For chefs, it’s an essential ingredient. Young and aspiring chefs have been well-advised.
