Bonding with Best and Curley: Aussie Super Chefs Spend An Olive Afternoon

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

The team of Vikram Khatri (left) of Olive Bar & Kitchen,
Mehrauli, presented a fulfilling lunch with visiting
Australian chefs Mark Best (centre) and Ian Curley

IAN CURLEY is as passionate about his work among the homeless and young criminals as he has strong views about Gordon Ramsay’s fly in-fly out approach to the restaurant business. He has a deliciously irreverent sense of humour. You’ll see him on the Heaven and Hell Episode (No. 26) of Masterchef Australia Season 5. But that’s not why I am writing about him and Mark Best, the Sydneysider chef who, like the British-born Curley, now also runs a highly successful Melbourne restaurant.

This is the second successive year that Curley, founder-executive chef of the European restaurant opposite Victoria’s Parliament House in Melbourne, is in India to cook and to inspire young aspiring chefs as a part of The Creative Services Support Group (CSSG) Summit 2013: Food + Art Edition. The chef who’s proud to be classical in his approach to his art is all set to make a hamburger with lobster gazpacho and beetroot carpaccio with goat’s curd and walnut at the 12-course dinner being orchestrated by the CSSG’s guardian angel, Anand Kapoor, at The Leela Palace New Delhi, Chanakyapuri, on Tuesday, October 1.

Curley and Best were speaking to the Indian Restaurant Spy after an indulgent lunch hosted by the Australian High Commission at Olive Bar & Kitchen, Mehrauli, where the incredibly talented Vikram Khatri and Sabyasachi ‘Saby’ Gorai’s acolyte, Dhruv Oberoi, a bright young man from Chandigarh, prepared a memorable three-course meal with the two visiting chefs. Of course, it was Best’s coconut sorbet with strips of mango, curry leaves and pepper powder that left us wanting more.

I asked Curley, the more loquacious of the two, what he cooked for his episode of Masterchef Australia Season 5. He said he made steak tartare (“a classical French dish with Victorian produce”) and a Bomb Alaska with pomegranate. The twists are original — very Curley. In Mumbai, where he’ll cook over the weekend, Curley will whip up a kulfi Bomb Alaska, which he’s visibly excited about (as he’s about having a meal with Manish Mehrotra at Indian Accent).

Best’s Melbourne restaurant in the Central Business District is the Pei Modern, which has been getting rave reviews for its modern bistro dining menu, but he earned his spurs with Marque at Surry Hills, Sydney’s hipster suburb teeming with students, quaint bookshops and restaurants serving food of just about every nationality. He said he started out being a practitioner of contemporary French cuisine (he has worked with the likes of Alain Passard, the reigning god of vegetarian cooking, and Raymond Blanc), but he then chose to be “just Australian” infusing the “multitude of cultures and influences that Australia is famous for. This effortless infusion was evident in the coconut sorbet.

Even as they struggled to come to terms with the fact that October 2, when Best will conduct a Master Class for the Delhi Gourmet Club at Le Cirque, The Leela Palace, Chanakyapuri, will be a ‘dry day’, I asked the chefs about the defining trend in the restaurant business in Australia. “Home-grown, farm-grown produce,” Mark said. “We have a grower who just does carrots, for instance,” Curley added and then mentioned the other big trend: “Ethical sourcing.” It reminded me of the old kitchen adage: Your food tastes as good as the ingredients that go into it. Creative chefs such as Curley and Best have understood this home truth well.

Seven Michelin-Starred Chefs to Dish Up Eight Days of Feasting in Delhi & Mumbai

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

Non-profit Creative Services
Support Group founder Anand
Kapoor had orchestrated a
memorable nine-course charity
dinner accompanied by music
at The Oberoi Gurgaon last year

HAVE you fancied having canapés suspended from helium balloons floating at your nose level? If you did nurture such a dream, you can spoil yourself when the French arts group La Cellule unveils its floating buffet on October 1 in one of a series of charity events being organised by Anand Kapoor, the powerhouse behind the non-profit Creative Services Support Group (CSSG), between September 28 and October 5 in Delhi and Mumbai.

Kapoor says he’s “going mental” — well, he’s not exaggerating, for he has a full-time job in New Delhi with a UK-based, BAFTA Award-winning design house and CSSG is the organisation he runs in his spare time to provide skill development opportunities to talented young men and women from economically marginalised families.

Seven Michelin-starred chefs from England, Scotland and Spain and two of Australia’s top ‘hatted’ chefs are participating in this year’s CSSG Summit 2013: Food and Art Edition. The programme includes four dinners and breakfasts curated by the visiting chefs in Delhi and Mumbai; a day of ‘food art installations’ in Delhi to accompany talks by actor Nandita Das and Golf Australia’s brand ambassador and acclaimed chef Ian Curley; two days of master classes at the restaurant Le Cirque; a gala dinner in Delhi featuring a performance by the singers of Glyndebourne, the 600-year-old opera house in Sussex, England; and the release of a book of recipes by the international chefs associated with the CSSG’s initiatives.

Kapoor informs me that the tickets to the gala dinner took just half an hour to sell out! The master classes, too, have been snapped up by the Australian High Commission (September 27) and the Delhi Gourmet Club (October 2). Also engaged in this mega-celebration of food and philanthropy are Delhi’s most talented chefs Manish Mehrotra, Ritu Dalmia, Nira Singh, Sabyasachi ‘Saby’ Gorai, Jatin Mallick, Mickey Boite and Avanti Mathur.

Last year, Kapoor had organised an unprecedented charity dinner where he had seven international celebrity chefs, including UK-based Vineet Bhatia and Anjum Anand, prepare a nine-course meal served to the accompaniment of music presented by B.L.O.T. at The Oberoi Gurgaon. The money he raised from the event was used to support four young men, who spent their childhood growing up homeless in the New Delhi Railway Station, realise their life’s ambition of becoming chefs. These aspiring chefs, whose further career development, up to a stint with Michelin-star restaurants in the U.K., is being supported by the Delhi Gourmet Club, are working with the restaurant Tres, the patisserie chain L’Opera, the French eatery Chez Nini and pastry chef Avanti Mathur’s Sweet Nothings.

The chefs you’ll see in action this year are:

Frances Atkins, The Yorke Arms, Patley Bridge, North Yorkshire (Michelin Starred), who’s one of only six women chefs in Britain to have a Michelin star.

Ian Curley, The European, Melbourne (Hatted), who’s a celebrated chef famous for teaching cooking to the homeless and working for the rehab of alcohol and drug abuse victims.

Mark Best, Marque, Sydney (Hatted), who’s a former electrician, a brilliant exponent of French cuisine and has worked with such global maestros as Alain Passard and Raymond Blanc.

Alyn Williams, Alyn Williams at The Westbury, London (Michelin Starred), who’s been Marcus Wareing’s head chef at The Berkeley and is the youngest in this lot of seasoned hands.

Michael Wignall, The Latymer, Surrey, (Michelin Starred), who’s an extreme sport fanatic when he’s not running his Michelin two-star establishment.

Roger Pizey, Marco’s, Stamford Bridge, London (Michelin Starred), who’s an acolyte of Albert Roux and Marco Pierre White and has reignited the British passion for traditional pastry treats.

Laurie Gear, The Artichoke, Buckinghamshire (Michelin Starred), who’s a largely self-taught chef, having started his career washing dishes, but he’s a fine exponent of European cuisine.

Marcello Tully, Kinloch Lodge, Isle of Skye, Scotland (Michelin Starred), who’s a big promoter of sustainable eating, slow food and British farm products.

Fernando del Cerro, Casa José Aranjuez, Madrid (Michelin Starred), who’s famous for his culinary creations with the produce of Aranjuez’s historical vegetable garden.

A treat awaits Delhi before it goes into the Navaratra mode and steers clear of all that’s good to eat and drink.