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.

An Afternoon With Chateau Margaux: Marriage of Kebabs & Fine Wines Isn't Fated to be Doomed

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

VILLA MEDICI, the rooftop banqueting space of The Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi, came alive on Saturday afternoon with one of the world's finest wines, the warmth and conversations that only such pleasures can inspire, and the re-ignition of an old debate in food and wine pairing. Can Indian food, which can be as complex, textured and flavourful as a full-bodied Bordeaux red, and fine wine make for a good marriage? This was the question at the core of the discussion that was conducted with aplomb by Dhruv Sawhney, CMD, Triveni Engineering, who is without doubt Delhi's wine encyclopaedia and a connoisseur in the true sense of the word (and not in the way it is loosely interpreted today).

CHEERING THE PLEASURES OF WINE AND
FOOD: (From left) Mumbai-based wine importer
Sanjay Menon, Chateau Margaux's managing
director Paul Pontallier, Alexandra
Petit-Mentzelopoulos and Thibault Pontallier
at the wine-and-kebab pairing at Villa Medici,
The Taj Mahal Hotel, Mansingh Road

Before I go on to describe the day's proceedings, where we experienced an extraordinary duet between Executive Chef Amit Chowdhury's kebabs and three wines from Chauteau Margaux, I must say I found the answer I have always been seeking in the concluding observation by Paul Pontallier, Chateau Margaux's managing director and chief architect of its return to glory along with its owner, Corrine Mentzelopoulos.

"A good pairing between food and wine is like a successful marriage," he said. "For a marriage to be successful, one of the partners has to tone down his or her personality. Similarly, for a pairing to work, the food and the wine cannot both have strong personalities." He also had another gem to offer: a happy pairing is all about "matching the pleasure of food with the pleasure of wine". Only a Frenchman could make the experience sound so magical -- and it was indeed so, for we were able to see for ourselves the fallacy of the blanket statement that Indian food and fine wines don't match.

We tasted for ourselves the truth of Pontallier's pronouncement. The miniature galouti kebabs served on baby sheermal, a challenge to match with any wine in the best of times because of the diverse spices (32 in all) these are spiked with, clearly prevailed over the Chateau Margaux 2001, a deliciously well-developed wine whose aromatic finesse and tender tannins may have agreed better with a Dal Makhni.

As you can see, we didn't leave a drop behind!

By itself, the 2001 was a treat for the senses, but once we had the galouti, made without tweaking the spices, the wine disappeared off the palate and the spices, especially the clove, lingered. But the galouti made with mushroom was just right -- maybe because its recipe wasn't an exact copy of the lamb galouti, it had a mellow personality that agreed with the wine, so we were able to savour the kebabs without being denied the pleasure of the wine.

The galouti experience, after two rounds of perfect matches, underlined the challenges of pairing Indian food with the fine wines (or grand vin) of Bordeaux. We were five of us -- acclaimed restaurant critic Marryam Reshii, celebrated sommelier Magandeep Singh, Indian Wine Academy's founder-president Subhash Arora, blogger Karina Aggarwal and Ajay Khullar of India Today Travel Plus -- and our hosts, apart from Pontallier, Sawhney and Chowdhury, were the Taj General Manager Satyajeet Krishnan, Alexandra Petit-Mentzelopoulos, Corrine's younger daughter and head of the India market, Thibault Pontallier, Paul's son and the very well-spoken brand ambassador of Chateau Margaux for Asia based in Hong Kong, and wine importer Sanjay Menon from Mumbai.

We all agreed on three points: the Pavillon Rouge 2003, the estate's second wine, was the clear winner and most Indian food-friendly; you cannot pair spice-heavy food and fine wines whose tannins haven't yet mellowed, so you have to hold back on the spice attack and choose a wine that had opened up; and the best pairing of the day was the one between the Pavillon Rouge 2003 and the zarkhanda kebabs, which had slivers of roasted lamb, prunes and pickled onion co-existing in happy togetherness. Alexandra, who can break into raptures over the paranthas (including one with a chocolate filling) she last had in Mumbai on one of her many private visits to India, assured us that she has only red wines with the Indian food that she cooks very often. "Don't be under the impression that I only drink Chateau Margaux," she said.

I asked Chef Chowdhury what 'zarkhanda' meant. He said he had no idea because chefs most often give names that don't mean anything! Chowdhury, incidentally, was recently included as one of the world's 50 great chefs by the New York-based photographer Melanie Dunea in her well-received book, The Last Supper, where she recorded the food fantasies of her well-known and much-celebrated subjects by asking them what would their last meal on earth be.

The Pavillon 2003, which has a four-centuries-old history, got Thibault talking. He reminded us that France experienced its hottest summer after 1893 in 2003, which isn't good news for any wine, yet it floored us with what his father described as "its combination of strength and gentle sweetness". Thibault pointed out that it was an example of a great terroir prevailing over a bad vintage. He then shared with us a thought to ponder over.

Unlike the grand signature wines of Bordeaux's celebrity estates, the seconds are not only substantially cheaper, but also "you need to wait less to drink it". The Pavillon 2003 was a testimonial to the joys of drinking a second wine of an estate whose signature wine, especially in our restaurants (a point Arora raised in his inimitable no-nonsense way), is miles beyond the means of most mere mortals. "It is a very good introduction to Chateau Margaux," Thibault said, and he wasn't exaggerating.

Before Andre Mentzelopoulos, Alexandra's grandfather, took over Chateau Margaux, Pavillon consumed 70 per cent of the estate's wine grapes and the best 30 per cent was earmarked for the signature wine; today, the wine grapes are divided into three parts -- one third for Chateau Margaux, another third for Pavillon, and the rest is used to make bulk wines. The same selectiveness goes into making the Pavillon Blanc (we tasted the 2009, which stood out because of its amazing perfume and long caress), Margaux's white wine made 100 per cent with Sauvignon Blanc. It was one of the finest expressions of Sauvignon Blanc I have tasted in many years and it paired like magic with the murgh makhmali seekh and the roasted spinach and corn kebabs on sugarcane skewers.

Unsurprisingly, not more than 60 per cent of the estate's Sauvignon Blanc production, from the 11 hectares reserved for the grape variety, goes into the wine, which translates to 1,000 bottles per hectare; the remaining grapes are sold off cheap to bulk wine producers. As Pontallier Senior emphasised, "It is our business to be the best."

Another point made by Thibault was that 2001 wasn't one of the most famous or the most expensive vintages of Bordeaux, yet we couldn't stop admiring the wine. "You must know how to choose a vintage," Thibault's father said, citing the 2004 for the "unbelievable value" it offered. "Don't only go for the huge vintages," Paul Pontallier, Bordeaux's elder statesman, declared. Those words, for me, summed up the philosophy of buying Bordeaux's fine wines. Don't be a snob and invest all your money only on best-selling wines. Also pick up the less-celebrated vintages because they, like the second wines, are cheaper and open up faster and have the depth to surprise you.

Kunal Kapur Launches His Must-Have Cookbook For 'A Chef in Every Home' At Diya

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

WHEN Kunal Kapur was a kitchen trainee under the redoubtable Chef Arvind Saraswat at the Taj Palace, New Delhi, he had the most unnerving experience on the day each member of his batch was to present a three-course meal for evaluation by their guru. An eager-beaver, who made a mark on his first day at IHM-Chandigarh by being the only student to be able to identify the spices that are common to every kitchen, Kunal was the first to present his three-course meal, starting with a dahi ka shorba, to Chef Saraswat. He was expecting to earn brownie points for being the first, but he, for reasons that he could not fathom, only managed to send the master chef into paroxysms of anger.

The MasterChef India co-host and Executive Sous
Chef of The Leela Gurgaon, Kunal Kapur, with his
identically dressed son, Ranbir, at the launch of
his book, A Cook in Every Home (Random
House India). Image by Marryam Reshii

Chef Saraswat cried out in rage and flung the bowl of soup at Kunal. "It barely missed my head," Kunal recalled with his characteristic shy smile, and then he revealed why he had incurred the chef's wrath. He had served soup without a spoon! With the industry's expectations from chefs changing over the years, and with chefs no longer expected to be faceless masters of the back-end, it was important for one who aspired for a place in the kitchens of Taj hotels to get his basics right. Chef Saraswat was conveying this message to Kunal -- albeit in a way that unnerved the rookie to the point of making him want to cry.

Now famous as the co-host of MasterChef India and executive sous chef of The Leela Gurgaon, Kunal shared this blast from his past, even as he cooked the most aromatic prawn moilee, at the launch of his truly family cookbook, A Chef in Every Home (Random House India), at Diya, the Progressive Indian restaurant at his hotel. The choice of venue was appropriate, for Kunal earned his spurs at Diya, as the famous restaurant critic and Editor of the Times Food Guide, Marryam Reshii, reminded us. Kunal joined the restaurant after a stint at Made in India, Radisson Blu Hotel Noida, where he met his other mentor -- Arun Tyagi, who was then executive chef. Tyagi brought out the best in Kunal -- unlike Saraswat, he focused on his acolyte's strengths, not his weaknesses.

"He has a way with the imagination," Marryam said in her introductory remarks. She was right on target. Kunal's debut cookbook, which took him more than a year to complete (and which I have reviewed earlier), makes it abundantly clear that he not only has imagination, but also the ability to feel his audience's pulse. Unlike Chef Saraswat, who propagated lighter but difficult fruit-based sauces in The Gourmet Indian Cookbook, without paying the least attention to the lifestyles and needs of his audience, Kunal shares recipes that can easily be replicated by the home cook, especially a working mother, and her weekend 'chef'-husband.

At the launch, Kunal made bruschetta, prawn moilee and baked yoghurt, even as we talked about the state of hospitality education in the country, and Kunal's son Ranbir (his wife's called Ekta, which makes them quite a Bollywood Kapur khandaan!), sitting on an inverted pot like his father on the cover of the cookbook, kept ordering him to not stop stirring the moilee. Kunal's boss, The Leela Gurgaon's General Manager Michel Koopman, said he had been to a dozen hotel management colleges across the country and was shocked to find that their textbooks were at least 20 years behind the times. Reshii, at this point, remarked how the hotel management students were still being taught how to make cona coffee.

Koopman said F&B was becoming a key distinguishing factor in hotels, so culinary education should be in sync with the changing times. "A room is a room, is a room, is a room -- and is a room," he said to emphasise his point. Well, Koopman should know -- The Leela Gurgaon's earnings from F&B have touched Rs 88 crore, with Rs 46 crore coming from banquets. With the hotel notching up a revenue of Rs 220 crore, F&B accounts for a healthy 40 per cent of the pie. Of course, Koopman couldn't help saying how wherever he goes, people ask him whether he's from Kunal Kapur's hotel! Being as F&B proud as he is, Koopman just loves it.

A journalist asked Kunal whether the stardom that chefs seem to enjoy today has made any real difference to the attitude of people towards the hospitality industry. Not much has changed, Kunal admitted, and he was supported by the other panelist, the scriptwriter of the Vidya Balan-starrer Kahaani, novelist and OCLD graduate, Advaita Kala. Kunal recalled how the doctor parents of a young man, who were fans of MasterChef India, came to him with the request to dissuade their son from joining a hotel management institute. He refused to accede to their wish. "I couldn't be expected to dissuade someone from joining my own profession," Kunal said proudly, but he admitted that popular attitudes are still stacked up against the profession. Star chefs, by becoming role model for the young and ambitious, should be able to change all that. I hope and pray they succeed!

Chez Nini's Nira Singh to Lay Out a Dinner at America's Culinary Capital, James Beard House

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

CHEF-RESTAURATEUR Nira Singh of Chez Nini fame is all set to be the first Indian to prepare a James Beard House dinner. The brownstone townhouse in the heart of Greenwich Village, New York City, where the man who transformed the American table lived and cooked for the TV shows that established his reputation as a tireless educator, typically hosts 200 dinners in a year by accomplished chefs from around the world.

Nira Singh with her favourite wines at Chez Nini,
Mehar Chand Market, Lodi Colony.
Picture by Subhash Arora

The dinners are priced at $130 per head for James Beard Foundation members and $170 for others, and to understand their far-reaching impact, you have only to order a tuna pizza at Korean-American chef Akira Back's signature restaurant at the JW Marriott, New Delhi Aerocity. Back owes his fame, as a brilliant purveyor of Japanese food with a Korean touch, to the big-eye tuna pizza that he had served at the James Beard House in 2008. He has since done dinners in 2010, 2011 and 2012, and is scheduled to lay out another on 8 February 2014, where the tuna pizza will make yet another appearance topped up with micro-shiso and truffles.

Getting to do a meal at James Beard House is not easy. A chef has to clear six tests before making the cut, which is to be expected when the calendar is studded with super chefs such as David Bouley and Marcus Samuelsson (in January) and in February, it has the likes of New York's white-hot new star, Bryce Shuman, and Peter Chang, the elusive genius who became famous after The New Yorker's Calvin Trillin discovered him. A computer engineer born and raised in Montreal, who survived a debilitating accident and relocated to Delhi to become the extraordinary chef whom everyone has an opinion on (increasingly positive!), Nira oozes perfection and passion; even her description of how she makes her Pork Belly Cubes taste like heaven has a sensual tingle to it. And now, she is in exalted  company.

Nira was to do her James Beard House gig in February, but she has postponed it to May because of her India Art Fair catering commitments. At a dinner with a group of friends (food critic par excellence Marryam Reshii, one of Delhi Gourmet Club's most aware members, Lavina Kharkwal, and Indian Food Freak's Pawan Soni), brought together by the encyclopaedic Subhash Arora, President, Delhi Wine Club, I ask Nira what she intended to do at James Beard House, she said she was planning to showcase her Indian adventure on the tables of her hallowed venue.

A firm believer in Indian ingredients (the only exception she makes is for chocolate), Nira surprised me by serving my double espresso (I needed it after that gastronomical tour de force) in a cutting chai glass! I am sure she'll have New York City eating out of her hand. Backing her is Susan Ungaro, the James Beard Foundation president who rescued the organisation from doom after her predecessor was indicted by the US Attorney General's office for fraud. "She has not only been encouraging, but also infused me with the courage to get adventurous," Nira said. Will Nira be able to cook up a storm in the core of the Big Apple? I am confident she will.