TOP CHEF AWARDS 2014: Delhi Gourmet Club to Honour Bukhara's Executive Chef J.P. Singh with Lifetime Achievement Award

Out of the 17 awards to be given
away today at the Top Chef
Awards 2014, the only one
disclosed so far is the Lifetime
Achievement Award to be
conferred upon Executive Chef
J.P. Singh of the Bukhara.

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

THE DELHI Gourmet Club's Top Chef Awards 2014 kicks off in less than ten hours today (July 22) with just one award, out of the 17 being given away, being disclosed by the founder-members of the Facebook group (in the interests of transparency, I must say I am proud to be one of them). It is the Lifetime Achievement Award, which will be given away by the chief guest, Parvez Dewan, Secretary, Tourism, Government of India, to J.P. Singh, the man at the helm of ITC Maurya's (and indeed, India's) top-grossing Bukhara restaurant.

This is one of the three awards that were decided by the jury, headed by Manjit Gill, Corporate Chef, ITC Hotels, and Founder-President of the Indian Federation of Culinary Associations. The idea to honour Singh and Bukhara, which is celebrating its 35th birthday in the first week of August, came from Varun Tuli, owner of the much-awarded Yum Yum Tree restaurant and now also a very successful A-List caterer. Being an observer at the jury meeting, I was surprised by how the decision was wholeheartedly accepted by all the other members, including Manish Malhotra, who has pioneered a style of cooking that is taking Indian cuisine in a direction that is completely different from that of Bukhara.

The other members of the jury were Chef Bill Marchetti, eminent food critic Marryam Reshii, Chef Girish Krishnan (JW Marriott, New Delhi Aerocity), Chef Mickey Bhoite (Le Cirque, The Leela Palace New Delhi), Neeraj Tyagi (The Claridges) and Magandeep Singh (India's first French-certified wine sommelier). Top Chef Awards Delh-NCR 2014 is being co-presented by Pullman Gurgaon Central Park, powered by Le Cordon Bleu-G.D. Goenka University, and supported by Elle & Vire, Delverde, Torani, Granini and Nestle Professional.

Some months back, the Delhi Gourmet Club,
represented (above, third and extreme right) by
Rocky Mohan and yours truly, honoured Bukhara
for serving the best seekh kebabs in Delhi-NCR.
Bukhara's No. 2 Purshottam Singh and ITC
Maurya's Senior Executive Chef,
Manisha Bhasin, received the award.

A graduate of the famous Dadar Catering College (Institute of Hotel Management, Dadar), J.P. Singh has spent all his life in the hotel chain that was created by ITC's first Indian chairman, Ajit Narain Haksar, primarily as a vehicle to earn hard-to-get foreign exchange during the high noon of the licence-permit raj era. A passionate foodie, Haksar was also responsible for creating Bukhara in the then-uncelebrated Maurya Sheraton in 1978. It was he who poached Madan Lal Jaiswal (J.P. Singh still can't get over his colourful language!) from a now-defunct hotel named President on Asaf Ali Road, at the intersection where New Delhi meets Purani Dilli, which was famous for its tandoori preparations.

Jaiswal was given the task of running Bukhara, which he did with great flourish (he even opened the New York Bukhara), till he died in a car crash. It was under Jaiswal that Chef JP, which is how everybody knows Singh, joined Bukhara in 1991, and like everyone and everything associated with the restaurant, continues to be a part of it -- like the 17 chefs working with him, including Purshottam Singh and Balkishen, who has travelled the world, from New York to Ajman to Hong Kong, with the Bukhara brand. Prem Rajput, the maitre d' who would charm his guests into coming back — again and again, and Jaiswal formed quite a formidable team. Together, they scripted the early success story of the Bukhara.

Interestingly, Jaiswal's 'gurubhai' Todar Mal was the leading light of The Oberoi's Mughal Room, which Haksar almost disabled by poaching a dozen chefs from what was then Delhi's premier Mughlai-Punjabi restaurant in a five-star hotel. Haksar wanted to move the centre of gravity from the contemporary market leader (and not the caricature of the original that it has become today), the colourful Kundal Lal Gujral's Moti Mahal, to Bukhara.

In Bite the Bullet, his autobiography, Haksar devotes some pages to the Bukhara, where he says he got the idea of people eating with their hands and wearing aprons, instead of spreading a serviette on the lap, after seeing a BBC TV drama based on the life of Tudor King Henry VIII. If English royalty could eat with their hands, why couldn't we, he reasoned with himself, and the practice has been in vogue since the day the Bukhara opened its doors. The practice has even survived one of the early (and rare at the Maurya) European manager's attempts to do away with it! Apparently, his argument that international visitors were being put off by the practice found no takers in the higher echelons of the ITC.

According to Haksar, the seating (which I find highly uncomfortable -- conspiracy theorists insist the design is driven by the idea of making people leave as soon as they finish eating!) and decor were inspired by a World War II film set partly in the North-West Frontier. There was a scene in it, Haksar writes, where British officers were seen dining at a rugged local eatery. The image stayed in Haksar's mind when he was planning Bukhara with Rajinder Kumar, the architect who became famous after the Maurya came up. Haksar borrowed the idea of the glass-fronted kitchen (which was a novelty in its time), or so ITC insiders whisper, from Rama International, a hotel that ITC managed for Iqbal Ghei and Pishori Lal Lamba in Aurangabad.

Bukhara started as a 60-seater and its entry, oddly, was through Amrapali, the 'coffee shop' that was subsequently renamed Pavilion. The strange layout had an adverse effect on the image of Amrapali, for there would always be a little crowd of Bukhara diners awaiting their turn hanging about in the 'coffee shop' or ordering starters from their favourite restaurant. Thanks to the 1982 Asian Games, when the hotel underwent a major refurbishment, this layout was changed in favour of what we see now.

Chef JP, who was toying with idea of becoming a doctor before listening to his heart and training to be a chef, joined ITC Welcomgroup in 1981 from the lowest end of the pecking order -- as management trainee at Mumbai's Ambassador Hotel and then, Demi Chef De Partie at the Sea Rock Sheraton, which was bombed in a terrorist attack in 1993. He was a Chef de Partie (CDP) at the Patna Maurya before he joined Bukhara, where he's now the hands-on executive chef -- even as he and his team feed more than 400 people a day, and make more money than any other restaurant in the country (Rs 8 crore a month, one hears from the competition!), his constant exposure to the tandoor has no effect on his even temper.

Like his temper, Bukhara thrives on consistency. The restaurant's mutton supplier has been at it for more than 25 years and so have the vendors respectively supplying the tomato puree for its celebrated Dal Bukhara and the brass vessel in which it is cooked on charcoal fire; its sole fillets unvarying weigh 300gms and its jumbo prawns, sourced from one of the ITC subsidiaries in Visakhapatnam for as long as anyone can remember, uniformly weigh between 80-120gms. Similar weight specifications are followed for capsicums and potatoes, and a mutton leg piece meant for a raan is never used for a burra! The butter and cream content of the Dal Bukhara, moreover, has never been allowed to exceed 6 per cent of the total portion size. Consistency of quality and an even-tempered chef -- you can't get a more winning combination.

Manjit Gill Flags Off Top Chef Awards Voting; Nominees List Out; Good News From Elle & Vire

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

MANJIT GILL, Corporate Chef, ITC Hotels, and President, Federation of Indian Culinary Associations, green-flagged the online voting for the Delhi Gourmet Club's Top Chef Awards 2014 on July 18 with the stirring declarations that chefs are "the custodians of the nation's nutrition".

Chef Manjit Gill (with red turban), flanked by
David Hopcroft, General Manager, Pullman
Gurgaon Central Park (to Gill's right) and yours
truly, with Delhi Gourmet Club founder-members
Rocky Mohan (far left of the picture) and Atul
Sikand at the hospitality trade media briefing
on the Top Chef Awards Delhi-NCR 2014. 

Gill had chaired the nine-member jury that shortlisted the names of the 48 nominees in 14 categories who will vie for the vote of the Delhi Gourmet Club's 5,500-strong Facebook community of food aficionados. "Chefs are no longer responsible for your indigestion," Gill said on a lighter note at the briefing and then added: "They not only safeguard your digestion, but also ensure the absorption of the nutrients in the food they cook. Awards such as these will only make them more committed to their profession and encourage them to deliver their best."

Puneet Sharma, Dean, School of Hospitality,
G.D. Goenka University, which has partnered
Le Cordon Bleu to provide hospitality
education in India, also spoke at the
hospitality trade media briefing on July 18.

DGC's founder-members -- Rocky Mohan, Atul Sikand and yours truly -- released the list of nominees to the hospitality industry media at a briefing held at La Riviera, the much-awarded European restaurant of the Pullman Gurgaon Central Park. Members of the Club will cast their online votes till July 22, 12 midnight, by logging on to www.topchefawards.com.

The invitees and the speakers gather around the
Moltini, the Rolls Royce of show kitchens,
at La Riviera, the award-winning European
restaurant at Pullman Gurgaon Central
Park, which was the venue of the
hospitality trade media briefing,

The results of the vote will be declared at a gala event, expected to be attended by Parvez Dewan, Secretary, Tourism, Government of India, and the leading luminaries of the hospitality industry, at the Pullman Gurgaon Central Park on July 27. DGC will also honour the chefs who have been nominated by the jury (these awards are not up for voting) for the Best Young Chef, Chef Leader of the Year and Lifetime Achievement awards.

On the eve of the announcement, there was good news for the winners of the awards for the Pastry/Bakery Chef of the Year (Five-Star and Independent) from Elle & Vire, the brand of butter and cream preferred by professional chefs across the world. A co-sponsor of the event, Elle & Vire has said it will gift to each of the two winners an all-expenses-paid trip to Bangkok to attend a three-day bakery programme led by the world-renowned Eric Perez at the Macaron Pastry Training Centre on September 18-20.

An illustrious chef from Toulouse, France, Perez has represented the U.S. and won medals at the Pastry World Cup in Lyon, work with the Ritz-Carlton and the upper-crust pastry shop, La Maison, in Shanghai, launched his own chain under the brand name Visage, where he lifted pastry art to a level not seen before, and then opened the Macaron Pastry Training Centre (www.macaronbkk.com) on Soi Sukhumvit 63, Bangkok, to share his vast knowledge with "young and old, professional and enthusiast".

The media briefing was also addressed by David Hopcroft, General Manager, Pullman Gurgaon Central Park, who lauded DGC for "doing the right things" and pledged his hotel's wholehearted support for the first-of-its-kind initiative. Pullman Gurgaon Central Park is the co-presenter of the event. Puneet Sharma, Dean of the School of Hospitality, G.D. Goenka University, which has joined hands with Le Cordon Bleu's famed hospitality management and culinary arts programmes, also spoke at the media briefing. He said the Top Chef Awards Delhi-NCR 2014 was the first industry-focused activity of Le Cordon Bleu-G.D. Goenka University and he expressed the hope that this would be the beginning of many more such collaborations.

Top Chef Awards Delhi-NCR 2014: An Overview

For the first time in the country, the Delhi Gourmet Club is organising an awards evening dedicated exclusively to chefs who have quietly contributed to the success of Delhi-NCR's celebrated restaurants. At the Top Chef Awards Delhi-NCR 2014 on July 27, the Delhi Gourmet Club, in association with the Pullman Gurgaon Central Park, is giving these chefs the limelight they deserve at a gala event where the chief guest will be the Secretary, Tourism, Government of India, Shri Parvez Dewan, and leaders of the hospitality industry will be in attendance.

Giving DGC support for this first-of-its-kind consumer initiative to honour Delhi-NCR's top chefs are some of world's finest brands. The event is being powered by hospitality education leader Le Cordon Bleu and its Indian partner, G.D. Goenka University. Its lead co-sponsors are leading food and beverage brands Elle & Vire (French; dairy products), Delverde (Italian; pasta), Torani (American; juices, mixers and smoothies) and Granini (German; fruit juices). The other co-sponsor is Nestle Professional, a global network of 10,000-plus professionals providing top-drawer culinary and beverage solutions to businesses around the world.

Massive Restaurants Pvt. Ltd., the banner behind the ground-breaking Masala Library, Made in Punjab and Farzi Cafe restaurants; FnS, the brand behind a new generation of cutlery; and Foodhall, the Future Group's premium multi-city food destination, are the award sponsors. Beam Global is the beverage partner, offering Teacher's Single Malt, Teacher's Original, Jim Beam bourbon and Sauza tequila.

And the nominees are...

Award for Excellence in North Indian Cuisine (Five Star)

*Gaurav Tandon, Masala Art (Taj Palace)

*Ghulam Qureishi, Dum Pukht (ITC Maurya)

*Karan Singh, Dhaba (The Claridges)

*Shams Parvez, Made In India (Radisson MBD, Noida)

Award for Excellence in North Indian Cuisine (Standalone)

*Bernard Mondal, Kwality

*Chiquita Gulati, Gulati's Spice Market

*Gurpreet Singh Gehdu, Punjab Grill

*Pradeep Khullar, Chor Bizarre

Award for Excellence in South Indian/Coastal Cuisine (Five Star)

*Ravi Vatsyayan, Amaranta (The Oberoi Gurgaon)

*Velu Murugan, Dakshin (Sheraton New Delhi)

Award for Excellence in South Indian/Coastal Cuisine (Standalone)

*Arun Kumar TR, Zambar

*Pawan Jumbagi, Carnatic Cafe

Jiggs Kalra Award for Excellence in Modern Indian Cuisine

*Anshuman Adhikari, Diya (The Leela Gurgaon)

*Harangad Singh, Varq (The Taj Mahal Hotel)

*Shantanu Mehrotra, Indian Accent

Award for Excellence in Best Regional Cuisine (Standalone)

*Cris Fernandez, Bernardo's

*Bhaskar Dasgupta, Oh Calcutta

*Shekhar Bhujel, Yeti: The Himalayan Kitchen

Award for Excellence in Asian Cuisine (Five Star)

*Nilesh Dey, Wasabi (The Taj Mahal Hotel)

*Yutaka Saito, Megu (The Leela Palace New Delhi)

*Zhang Hongsheng, China Kitchen (Hyatt Regency New Delhi)

Award for Excellence in Asian Cuisine (Standalone)

* Khoo Thiam Huat, Royal China

*Kim Suk Hee, Gung The Palace

*Lok Prasad Subba, Yum Yum Tree

Award for Excellence in European Cuisine (Five Star)

*D.N. Sharma, Orient Express (Taj Palace)

*Federico Pucci, Le Cirque (The Leela Palace New Delhi)

*Rajeev Sinha, Sevilla (The Claridges)

Award for Excellence in European Cuisine (Standalone)

*Jerome Cousins, Rara Avis

*Nira Kehar, Chez Nini

*Shamsul Wahid, Smoke House Deli

*Sujan Sarkar, Olive Bar & Kitchen

*Suman Sharma, Tonino

Pastry/Bakery Chef of the Year (Five Star)

*Devendra Bungla, Hyatt Regency

*Vikas Vibhuti, The Oberoi New Delhi

*Anil Kumar, Pullman Gurgaon Central Park

Pastry/Bakery Chef of the Year (Independent)

*Avanti Mathur

*Jaya Kochhar

*Kishi Arora

Best New Entrant of the Year

*Anahita Dhondy, Soda Bottle Opener Wala

*John Oh and Kurt Michael, Akira Back

*Rahul Dua, Cafe Lota

*Vikram Khatri, Guppy by Ai

*Yenjai Suthiwaja, Neung Roi

Best Restaurant Manager of the Year

*Sarabjeet Singh Bhalla, K3 (JW Marriott, New Delhi Aerocity)

*Deepak Rawat, Megu (The Leela Palace New Delhi)

*Shipra Pradhan, Le Cirque (The Leela Palace New Delhi)

*Malvika Sahay, Wasabi (The Taj Mahal Hotel)

*Deepak Shettigar, threesixtydegrees (The Oberoi New Delhi)

FORTUNE COOKIE: A Bold New Avatar of Indian Cuisine 2,0

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

When it opens on July 20, Farzi Cafe at Cyber
Hub, Gurgaon, promises to give Modern
Indian Cuisine a bold creative thrust with its
new-generation menu and presentation styles

WHEN the Taj veteran, Arvind Saraswat, wrote The Gourmet Indian Cookbook in 2004, I could not stop admiring the beauty of each dish whose recipe was presented in the slim, glossy, hardcover volume.

Saraswat would say that he had been inspired to devote many years working on the recipes because of a barb from the father of French nouvelle cuisine, Paul Bocuse. On a visit to India as a guest of the Taj, Bocuse had said to Saraswat that Indian food tasted great, but it didn't excite the eye and make one want to eat it. Saraswat rose up to the challenge, but his cookbook sank without a trace, just like Michelin-starred Vineet Bhatia's Mushk restaurant, which opened in 2002, where he courted Delhi's palate with novelties such as truffle oil-flavoured naan or his favourite squid ink-infused black chicken tikka.

Both efforts were way ahead of their time. It was five years later that Varq at the Taj Mahal Hotel and the now-famous Indian Accent opened to a tepid response, and another five years had to lapse before Gaggan Anand, Saraswat's former acolyte, dazzled the world from his Bangkok restaurant, ranked 17th in the world, with his brand of Progressive Indian Cuisine.

Himanshu Saini, who's all of 26, has worked hard
to translate Zorawar Kalra's vision on the menu

These thoughts raced through my head as I stepped into Farzi Cafe at Gurgaon's Cyber Hub for a sneak preview a couple of days ago. A project of Zorawar Kalra, who has seen complimentary reviews (the latest in The New York Times) pour on his Masala Library in Mumbai, Farzi Cafe promises to give Delhi-NCR's dining culture a new direction. The young man behind the show is 26-year-old Himanshu Saini, who had his first date with fame when he won Chicago/New York restaurateur Rohini Dey's much-publicised 'chef hunt' last summer by dishing up a sarson da saag quesadilla with butter milk foam.

To a traditionalist, Saini's creations, and the artefacts they arrive in, may seem straight out of Mad Hatter's tea party, but their beauty lies in the way they tantalise the imagination using the tools of molecular gastronomy (notably liquid nitrogen) without deviating from the real flavours of Indian cuisine. That is exactly what Modern Indian Cuisine is all about. Its practitioners don't use, for instance, squid ink because it has no Indian connect.

When at Farzi Cafe you are served a mini raj kachori stuffed with kurkure bhindi surrounded by islands of chutney foam, each element tastes just how it is supposed to. As does the idiappam sushi with prawn pepper fry, or the sarson da saag gilawat kebabs, corn tostadas, chhaas spheres and masala popcorn, which may sound like a gimmicky reinvention of the Punjabi winter staple, sarson da saag-makke di roti, but actually tastes right while looking oomphy. This combination of the right marriage of flavours and the elements of surprise is the leitmotif of the Farzi Cafe menu.

The bhoot jholokia spare ribs not only melt in your mouth, but also make you feel braver after having the world's hottest chilli; the chilli duck samosa with hoisin chutney and the galouti burger with mutton boti will leave you admiring the sheer ingenuity of the medleys of flavours and textures; the pumpkin khao suey, yet another flash of inspiration, will awaken you to the limitless possibilities of the humble kaddu; and you'll smile when the chicken tikka masala with Cornish cruncher cheddar cheese naan arrives in a replica of a public telephone booth you'll see all over London.

The same streak of innovation runs through the desserts (Parle-G cheesecake on a pool of rabri studded with Gems chocolate spheres) and the molecular cocktails (mixologist Aman Dua left me groping for words of praise with his mango spaghetti in gin with a grape infused in a red wine reduction), but the cherry on the icing is the paan gujiya, which is a dehydrated paan inside a candyfloss casing. That, in a sense, defines the Modern Indian experience: quirky but not contradictory.

MISTRAL MENU INTRODUCES DELHI TO THE JOYS DUCK'S EGGS

Renaud Palliere of PVR Cinemas is anything
but your stereotypical finance man

A MEAL with Reynaud Palliere, CEO (International Development), PVR Cinemas, is a lot of fun, for he may be crunching numbers for a living, but he brings a Frenchman's passion for food to the table when he's not running marathons (he has done New York, London, Tokyo and Sydney; Mumbai and Capetown are his next stops).

As Executive Chef, Mayank Tiwari has given
Mistral's menu a new direction -- I recommend
his gazpacho soup and pumpkin risotto 

When we met earlier in the week, at Mistral adjoining PVR Director's Cut at the Ambience Mall, Vasant Kunj, our conversation started with the amazing weekend Palliere had just spent at Tikli Bottom, the Chhattarpur hideaway run by a British couple, Martin and Annie Howard, at the far end of a village named Tikli (it's a pilgrimage for every expat who lives in Delhi). I then got fixated on the fried duck's eggs, which are a part of  the restaurant's all-day breakfast menu, served with a summery salad, hollandaise, toasted bread with parsley butter, and an orange-pineapple relish.

As I looked at the fried eggs, their perfectly semi-circular yolks appearing like twin images of the setting sun, memories of the summer vacations I had spent in Kolkata as a child flashed in my mind's eye. Duck's eggs are a delicacy among Bengalis -- you get them fresh every morning in Kolkata, brought to the city by women from neighbouring villages who pick up what they find by the side of ponds where ducks, a strain of the Muscovy variety known as Chinae Hans (the name indicates the ancestors of these birds came from China), live in good numbers across rural West Bengal.

Mistral gets its duck's eggs from the French Farm in Manesar, which is run by a temperamental yet much sought-after Frenchman named Roger Langbour (and his Muscovy ducks have nobler strains). The restaurant's executive chef, Mayank Tiwari, a graduate of what I call the AD Singh school of hospitality, took nine minutes to get the perfect fried eggs, their uniformly proportioned whites balancing the bright orbs at the centre. There's more to recommend the restaurant for -- the gazpacho, pumpkin risotto and the Persian koobideh (seekh) kebabs are my personal favourites -- but I can keep going back only for the duck's eggs.

HAVING DUCK EGGS THE BENGALI WAY

DUCK EGGS seem to be in vogue, especially because they have thicker shells, which means they stay fresher longer; more albumen, which makes them best for cakes and pastries; and more Omega-3 fatty acids, which are good for the brain and the skin. There's one catch, though. They have double the amount cholesterol in chicken eggs, which is bad news for the heart. They also have very little moisture, which can be a problem if you are trying to whisk a duck's egg, and fried eggs can become rubbery if you aren't a skilled handler of duck's eggs. I just love the way they are cooked in West Bengal -- as a curry (dimer dalna). Duck's eggs, funnily, entered old-fashioned Bengali kitchens much before chicken eggs were allowed!

MANJIT GILL'S QUEST FOR AN INDIAN DATA BANK OF RECIPES

Manjit Gill, Corporate Chef of ITC Hotels and
President, Federation of Indian Culinary
Associations, was inspired by the International
Congress of Culinary Traditions held at
Bucharest, Romania, earlier in the year

WE LIVE in a cornucopia of cuisines, yet the world knows so little about our country's culinary heritage. To bridge this knowledge gap, the Ministry of Tourism has teamed up with the national body of chefs, Federation of Indian Culinary Associations (FICA), to launch a multi-disciplinary effort to create a central databank of recipes (at least ten of them) from each of the country's 640 districts. We owe this idea to FICA President and Corporate Chef, ITC Hotels, Manjit Gill, who was inspired by his visit to Bucharest, Romania, for the International Congress of Culinary Traditions earlier this year. And he found an eager listener, and doer, in Parvez Dewan, Secretary, Tourism.

Gill says his team will have 600 recipes, a tenth of what is intended to be collected, ready for the Modi government's 100 days in power. Imagine the world this exercise will open up. Where else are you going to find the kind of variety we are able to savour even among jalebis! A Gohana jalebi weighing 250 gms apiece (almost like the ones dished up by Chandni Chowk's Old & Famous Jalebiwala) is a story by itself, as is the dark brown Burhanpuri mawa jalebi, which is a Ramzan must-have at J.J. Sweets in Mumbai's Bohri Mohalla. The national databank will make us understand this diversity and treasure it.

This column first appeared in the Mail Today edition dated July 17, 2014.
Copyright: Mail Today Newspapers.

Delhi's Most Sought-After Dhaba Owner Sweety Singh Lays Out A Treat at Five-Star Dhaba

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

ESSENTIAL BITES

WHEN: On till 1 June 2014

WHERE: Dhaba at The Claridges, Aurangzeb Road, New Delhi

TIMINGS: 7:00 TO 11.30 P.M. (Dinner Only)

HOW MUCH: Rs 2,600 (non-veg) and Rs 1,800 (veg) plus taxes per person. Alcohol extra.

For reservations, please contact: +91 11 39555082/5083.
Or email: dhaba.mgr@claridges.com.

HARJINDER SINGH owes his fame to Manjit Gill, the doyen of Indian chefs, and his trade name 'Sweety' to the impish humour of Gautam Anand, one of the leading lights of ITC Hotels, but his distinctive cooking style is the gift of his God-given talent to extract swaad (umami) without smothering preparations with tomato puree, full-fat cream and butter, the standard taste enhancers employed by restaurants claiming to offer "authentic" pre-Partition Punjabi cuisine.

Dhabas work on tight margins, Sweety Singh explained in Punjabi, his bushy beard as animated as his bright eyes, so they cannot afford to use any of the aforementioned enemies of the arteries. We were at Dhaba at The Claridges, where Sweety Singh was serving me a meal I won't forget in a hurry -- what struck me was the simplicity and the freedom from full-fat cream. The hotel's executive chef, Neeraj Tyagi, the man who's singularly responsible for the dramatic turnaround of Sevilla, agreed with me.

Harjinder 'Sweety' Singh of Kake
di Hatti Punjabi Khana has a
God- gifted talent for cooking
no-fuss dhaba food

The food has to be fresh and cooked without fuss, Sweety said, when I asked him about the style he had inherited from his father, Santokh Singh, who started by selling Maa Ki Dal and Mutton Curry (Kadhi and Baigan Bharta on the strictly vegetarian Tuesdays) from the back of a bicycle in 1956. It is this addictive simplicity that had impressed Gill, who's the corporate chef of ITC Hotels, back in 1995. That was when Gill had his first meal at Sweety's Kake Di Hatti Punjabi Khana at Tikona Market on Asaf Ali Road in the shadow of Delite Cinema.

It was Gill who gave Sweety his first break -- a dhaba food festival in 1998 at the Park Sheraton in challenging Chennai. Since then, there's been no looking back. If Harjinder Singh could succeed in Chennai, the rest of the country was his oyster. He became the ambassador of Punjabi street cuisine across the south and was gifted the persona of Sweety Singh by Gautam Anand when he was general manager of the Kakatiya Sheraton (ITC Kakatiya).

Today, Sweety Singh has a thick folder of testimonials from ITC hotels, but his food festivals have many other claimants, not the least of them being The Claridges. And he can savour the day when he shocked his teachers by saying he was dropping out of school to join his father at their family dhaba. "I kept failing in English and I wasn't good in the other subjects as well," he reminisced, as I struggled to decide whether the Nalli Meat Saag De Naal (Rs 1,295) was the stand-out dish, or the Kukkad Dahi Wala (Rs 1,295). I had to agree with Sweety that he took the right decision at the right time.

Among my many favourites are Sweety's juicy
Macchi Di Seekhan, or sole fish seekh kebabs,
which are an entirely welcome way of eating fish

Starting with the Macchi Di Seekhan (juicy sole seekh kebabs; Rs 1,195), the minimalism of the Jeere De Naal Tandoori Kukkad (Rs 995 for a half portion) and the happy marriage of textures and flavours in the Chukandar de Kebab (Rs 745), Sweety kept us asking for more, and more! Apart from the two gravy dishes already salivated upon, he insisted we have his flavourful Amritsari Meat Tari Wala (Rs 1,295), Sarson da Saag, which transforms into something other-worldly with a blob of white butter (Rs 845), and Malai Wale Tinde (Rs 845), which makes even the humble vegetable taste special. Then came the absolutely delectable Chukandar da Halwa (Rs 395), which is my dream dish of the year, and Kesari Kheer (Rs 395) -- words fail me as I try hard to describe my feelings at the end of this gastronomic experience.

Sweety Singh is a sweet man with a gifted hand. He's also a humble man. He credits his cooking skills entirely to his father. "When his eyesight was failing because of health issues," Sweety remembers, "he could tell the cooks how much masala to add just by smelling the vapours coming out of the dishes being prepared." Some talents are heaven-sent. Cooking is one of them.

Olive Culinary Academy Students Rock Food & Nightlife Awards Show

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

LAST NIGHT, the first batch of the Olive Culinary Academy (OCA) stunned the packed-to-capacity gathering at Food & Nightlife’s Delhi’s Most Delicious 2013 Awards at Pullman Gurgaon Central Park by producing a three-course meal in 14 minutes and 45 seconds — their allotted time was 15 minutes. Food and travel writer Rupali Dean tasted the smoked gazpacho and could only speak in superlatives, and Food & Nightlife Editor Sumit Goyal just couldn’t stop having the tiramisu.

What we were seeing on the stage — the audience consisted of the doyens of the food and hospitality industry, starting with K.B. Kachru, Anil Bhandari, Alok Shivpuri, Arvind Saraswat, Manjit Gill, Davinder Kumar, Sudhir Sibal, Arun Chopra and Shaju Zachariah, so it was indeed a moment of revelation — was the birth of a new generation of chefs: sassy, savvy, good at their work, and just loving it. Their backgrounds were as diverse as India, which made the group just the kind of melting pot that would produce the country’s first genuinely international cuisine experience. It is the generation that can talk about dining at Eleven Madison Park (the New York Flatiron district restaurant ranked No. 5 in San Pellegrino’s World Best 50 Restaurants in 2013) with the same ease as they can comment on their mother’s rajma-chawal.

The brainchild of Olive Bar & Kitchen’s founder AD Singh and his star chef, Sabyasachi ‘Saby’ Gorai, OCA is a brilliant initiative to nurture batches of young chefs who are, to quote HR jargon, ‘industry ready’ and little powerhouses of talent. After the show, I took AD to one corner and told him he should be prepared to lose his entire first batch to an industry famished for talent. He did seem worried at the thought, but he was excited by the idea of producing a new generation of chefs whom any company in the world (especially his own!) would love to employ. And as was to be expected of him, he was already planning how to retain these talented people by reinventing the role of the chef. What about making them brand ambassadors, for instance?

I could think of Eesha Singh, whose repartee left the normally loquacious ‘sadhak chhaap chef’ and TV presenter Saransh Goila, easily fitting into the role. When she was explaining the dishes being prepared by her fellow students, Eesha combined knowledge, good humour and a radiant smile. Yet, she has the most un-cheflike background — an English Literature graduate from Gargi College, Delhi University, she went to study contemporary dance at the Broadway Dance Center and the Pushing Progress Company, New York, learnt bartending while there and then worked with Ashley Lobo’s Danceworx Academy for three years before becoming a student all over again.

Sabyasachi 'Saby' Gorai (third from left) and the young faculty of the OCA

The other stories are equally inspiring. Padmaja Kumari Jadeja, whose father is the cook of the family, decided to become a chef after studying English Literature at Indraprastha College for Women and Fashion Marketing at the Pearl Academy of Fashion. Arshhia Chawla, who notched up 85 per cent in Humanities from Apeejay School, Saket, and then studied the Law for a year, chose to be a chef and not a lawyer. Sahil Arora from Faridabad went against the wishes of his elders, gave up his Business Administration studies midway and abandoned the safety net of his family business to become a chef. Mansi Chauhan, a Maths whiz, is pursuing a B.Com. along with her dream of becoming a head chef, in five years, of a successful fine-dining restaurant. Ritu Saigal is already preparing to open her own London restaurant in 2014. Divija Singh from Mayo has a law degree and a Master’s in Social Welfare from Jamia Millia Islamia. How many industry veterans you know come with such qualifications?

In this inspiring young group, Sofia Leyzarova is a name that stands out. Originally from Minsk, Belarus, Sofia grew up in a small town in New Jersey dominated by Italian and Puerto Rican immigrants, studied accounting and psychology at Rutgers, visited Delhi as an exchange students at St Stephen’s College in 2009, and was working for three years in New York City till she decided to join the OCA in the hope of eventually opening a Russian restaurant in Delhi. With so much diversity, I can see the kitchens of tomorrow taking on a completely new look. Each time I meet Saby’s protégés Dhruv Oberoi and Megha Kohli (a product of The Oberoi’s STEP programme, she has joined OCA after a stint at Olive Beach), I can’t stop wondering about the cultural shift that is taking place in our stand-alone restaurants. India’s culinary future is in very safe hands.