By Sourish Bhattacharyya
ONE OF the biggest mistakes The
Oberoi group made was not to hire Hemant
Oberoi. He was asked to tweak his surname because there could be only one
Oberoi in the group. The young man destined to become the country's most
accomplished chef of his generation refused to relent. Instead, he joined the Taj,
and the rest, as they say, is history.
 |
| Hemant Oberoi, Corporate Chef, Taj Hotels, unwinds at Masala Art, the restaurant he created 12 years ago at the Taj Palace in New Delhi. This picture has been taken by Hoihnu Hauzel, journalist and food writer. |
I met the Corporate Chef of the Taj Hotels
at Masala Art, where he was
celebrating the launch of his debut book, The
Masala Art: Indian Haute Cuisine (Roli Books), 12 years after the
restaurant, one of his three famous babies, opened at the Taj Palace in New
Delhi and revolutionised the way people looked at our country's gastronomic
heritage. It made good old-fashioned ganne
ka ras (sugarcane juice) sexy. It gave a new spin to the everyday phulka by getting it made a la minute on a trolley by the table. It
introduced the fashion of cooking in olive oil and pairing kebabs and curries
with wine. Its menu carried art by Paresh
Maity and Prabhakar Kolte, and
on its walls hung the works of Jitish
Kallat -- that was when nobody knew him. It did away with live ghazals in favour of contemporary piped
music.
In other words, it did what no Indian
restaurant had dared to do before. Since Masala Art, as Oberoi said with his characteristic
blunt wit, there have been many CCPs (cut, copy and paste restaurants), but the
original has stood its ground and spread to Mumbai -- Masala Kraft at the Taj
Mahal Palace & Tower and the more seafood-driven Masala Bay at Taj Land's End
-- as well as Bangalore in the avatar of Masala
Klub.
Oberoi subsequently developed two stellar
new concepts -- Blue Ginger, the
country's first Vietnamese restaurant (first in Bangalore and then in Delhi),
and thereafter Varq at the Taj Mahal
Hotel, New Delhi, which introduced the city to Oberoi's Indian take on haute
cuisine -- but Masala Art remains his most definitive contribution. It is only
appropriate therefore that he has chosen to name his first book after the
restaurant.
"What next?" I asked the
grand master. "Wait till next year," he replied. "I am
presenting a concept that I have been working on for seven years. The restaurant
will be the first of its kind in India." Oberoi did not elaborate, but he
did rev up my imagination.
The first thing that struck me as I
leafed through the lavishly illustrated book is the work schedule he still
follows. He may have served presidents and prime ministers (in fact, if he
writes a book on the dignitaries he has fed, it will be a runaway best-seller),
but his working day still stretches from 9 in the morning to 11:30 at night,
when he returns home to a cup of tea. It reminded me of the early days of
Masala Art.
In the course of an interview, I
asked him whether he ever gets family time. He narrated a very funny story. He
said that people he knew described their growing children in terms of their
height, but he could only talk about his two sons in terms of their length,
because he always saw them sleeping. It's surprising that the two boys have
followed in their father's footsteps, but they must have been fired by the awards
and accolades he has earned in his crowded life.
That was also the time when the then
prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee,
insisted on taking Oberoi around the world so that he could showcase the best
of Indian cuisine in official banquets. I asked Oberoi how it was to live out
of travel bags, hotel rooms and airport lounges. He said he works on restaurant
concepts on flights because he gets uncluttered time only when he's flying!
Unsurprisingly, he doesn't let his mind rest even after he launches a new
restaurant.
At Masala Art, for instance, he has
launched a new menu, which is more national in character. It has beauties such
as the broccoli and kaffir lime shorba,
crab masaledar (or peppered edamame
for the vegetarians) in filo, balchao
seabass, bhatti ke asparagus, haleemi gilawati (a refreshing departure
from the standard gilawati kebab), ghee roast chicken (Oberoi has retrieved
an original recipe of this favourite dish of Aishwarya Rai's community, the Bunts of Kundapura in Karnataka's famed
Udupi district, dating back to the 19th century), bharwan guchchi with malai ki
sabzi (stuffed king-size morels with a curry made with cream), and an
amazing gajar ka halwa filo cigar
with rabdi, fresh strawberry elaneer payasam and malt kulfi, which must rank as one of the
chef's most striking innovations.
His proverbial rabbits from the
magician's hat, though, were the see-through glass mini-handis for the dum ki biryani,
which the renowned German glassware makers, Schott Zwiesel, took two years to develop. Oberoi's brief to them
was that they should produce a glass handi
so that each portion of biryani is cooked
individually in the oven and the chefs are able to see it rise. It takes a
grand master to visualise a product that turns a meal into a gastronomic
journey.
No comments:
Post a Comment