This column first appeared in the Mail Today edition dated December 19, 2013. Copyright: Mail Today Newspapers. If you wish to see the original page, please click on the link given here and then go to Page 17.
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By Sourish Bhattacharyya
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| Masaharu Morimoto strikes a pose with his sashimi knives at Wasabi, his signature restaurant at the Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi. |
A COUPLE of months back, Ankur Chawla, ex-Taj staffer and
author of 14 Hours, a gripping
first-person account of the 26/11 terror attacks, was remembering Masaharu
Morimoto from the pre-opening days of Wasabi, the Japanese-American chef's signature
restaurant at the Taj Mahal Hotel in New Delhi. Chawla said he was taken by
surprise to see an internationally renowned chef with a ponytail moving around anonymously
in a T-shirt, shorts and sneakers.
So, you can imagine my surprise when I sat down to interview
Morimoto, looking just the way Chawla had described him, shielded by a neat
pile of tempting petit fours on the
layered dish that hoteliers call a 'charlie'. I started by asking him if he
remembered his 'acolyte' Akira Back, the Korean-American who has just opened
his eponymous restaurant at the J.W. Marriott in the Aerocity, and that was
enough to draw the normally reserved chef into an animated conversation.
He
said he had not seen Akira Back till he went to dine at his restaurant Yellowtail
in Las Vegas and that the chef-restaurateur who insists he's Morimoto's protege
is not the inventor of the tuna pizza. Of course, he said with an impish smile,
he did not mind being flattered by imitators. "I am not a celebrity, but the media has made me into
one," Morimoto declared, adding that now it seemed all he had to do was
"just talk, talk, talk".
Well, he shouldn't be complaining about
being a celebrity, for he owes his worldwide fame to the Fuji TV reality show, Iron Chef, and its U.S. spinoff, Iron Chef America. A shoulder injury had made Morimoto opt out of Major League
baseball and start training as a sushi and kaiseki
(Japanese haute cuisine) chef, before he got to own a restaurant in Hiroshima.
He first wanted to go to America, to cash in on what he now calls the "sushi
boom", during the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984. He had to postpone his
plan by a year because he took that long to find a buyer for his restaurant.
When he finally left for the U.S. in 1985, he had with him "the
cheapest" round-trip ticket and his flight from Hiroshima to New York had
three stopovers -- Osaka, Seoul and Anchorage. He had booked a round-trip
ticket because he was certain he would have to go back home, but he never got
to use it for the return flight.
After working at different restaurants in his adopted city,
the as-yet-unknown chef took charge of the Japanese kitchen at the Sony Club,
which was the private dining room of top directors of the Sony Corporation, and
was hired by Nobu Matsuhisa, the man who's synonymous with modern Japanese
cuisine, to open the first Nobu in New York as executive chef in 1994.
Having worked and trained under the master, Morimoto launched
his own restaurant in Philadelphia in 2001. It became as famous for its
Japanese cuisine with western touches as for its exuberant decor. "Food is
only 30 per cent," Morimoto said to me, underlining the salience of
"design, decor, music, atmosphere," and then quickly added the
caveat: "But it is my 100 per cent. I can't control your mood, but I can
make the taste of my food change it."
I asked him about his invention, tuna pizza, or why he calls sashimi,
carpaccio on the menu, and he said, "I have made the entrance wider for
people who were not aware of Japanese food. I want to bring the customer to my
cuisine." Morimoto is a gifted chef with a sharp eye on business and the talent
to manage talent, which, I guess, is the only way you can run multiple
restaurants. "I am like a conductor of a symphony," Morimoto said,
making gestures to show a conductor wielding his baton. "I manage
different skills and talents."
He said that before a chef joins a Morimoto restaurant, he or
she has to spend three weeks at either Philadelphia or New York. Before opening
any restaurant, he trains the chefs personally for a month and only after he's
satisfied with their work, he allows the ribbon-cutting. "I have good
chefs in each restaurant," he said in reply to my question on being able
to maintain consistency across his many establishments.
Since 2001, awards, accolades and new restaurant openings
have been Morimoto's constant companions. Morimoto opened Wasabi at the Taj
Mahal Palace & Tower in Mumbai when it was still early days for his
restaurant empire, which now stretches from Philly to Hawaii, via Napa Valley and
Tokyo, but the move worked.
The challenge was to maintain a consistent supply line for
ingredients. "The important thing was how and from where to source fresh
fish for the Indian market," Morimoto said, adding that he has managed the
issue with his suppliers in Japan. The other departure for him was a menu that
is 50 per cent vegetarian, but a creative chef finds his way around every
speed-breaker. Morimoto created the corn tempura, for instance, as an
alternative to his best-selling rock shrimp tempura. He has mastered the art of
catering to the local palate. All he insists is that his ten signatures must be
on the menu of each of the Morimoto restaurants. I asked him in what ways is Mumbai
is different from Delhi. In Mumbai, Morimoto said, people have money, so they
spend on good food; in Delhi, people travel, so they seek out the food they had
on their last vacation.
Morimoto is a great believer in the TPO (Time Place Occasion)
theory. You've got to be at the right time, at the right place, with the right
product. There's more, though, to the success of Morimoto, and who can say it
better than he? "If we have been successful, it is not because we are
lucky," he said. "The timing of our entry may have been right, but we
also have done a good job." People who've dined at Wasabi, although the
meal may have set them back substantially, would agree with the Iron Chef.
COOKBOOK FROM THE CHEF
TO WORLD LEADERS
HEMANT OBEROI can justifiably claim
to have logged more frequent flyer miles than any other Indian chef. His
celebrity status dates back to the late 1990s, when he first attracted media
notice with his Californian Indian (Cal-Indian) cuisine topped by the famous 'naanzza'
(naan baked like a pizza with butter chicken sauce, mozzarella and tandoori
chicken).
Fame comes at a price -- in Oberoi's
case, it has meant he lives out of airports, hotels and suitcases on most days
of the year as he goes around the world serving heads of state and showcasing
Indian food at international festivals. In return, the Ferozepur-born corporate
chef of Taj Hotels has had the privilege of getting Bill Clinton to eat dahi vada at the Ambani residence and of
inspiring the former Conservative prime minister of Great Britain, John Major,
to depart from state banquet protocol and asking for a second helping.
With so many anecdotes to share (many
of which he'll have to carry with him to his afterlife), and so much to offer to
cookery enthusiasts, I had always wondered why Oberoi hadn't put his recipes,
including those of his modernist interpretations of traditional Indian dishes,
together in one book. Arvind Saraswat, another Taj veteran, did it before him,
but his work, The Gourmet Indian Cookbook,
where he floated the idea of fruit-based sauces, did not find many takers.
Oberoi has finally taken the plunge and he unveiled The Masala Art: Indian Haute Cuisine (Roli Books) last week at the
Taj Palace restaurant after which the book is named.
My first take-away from the book was
Oberoi's long working day. How does a man manage to look so happy and not seem
to age when he reports for work at 9 a.m. and calls it a day at 11:30 p.m.,
which is the time he reaches home and
goes to bed after having his customary cup of tea. What I like about the
recipes is that though they come with a twist (Beetroot Lassi, Lemongrass
Rasam, Crab Samosas and Masala Chai Kulfi, for instance), and the dishes look
like works of art, they are easy to follow by hobby cooks who wish to add a
dash of zing to their family meals or wow their guests at a family meal.
COINTREAU'S GENERATION 6
IT IS a privilege to be born with a
surname revered in 165 countries and a fixture in the recipes of more than 300
cocktails. Alfred Cointreau represents the sixth generation of a drink that was
born when Edouard Cointreau (not to be confused with the man who founded the
Gourmand World Cookbook Awards) perfected the recipe for it in 1875.
Unsurprisingly, Alfred, 26, who believes in travelling out of his home city,
Angers in the Loire Valley, after every two weeks, is passionate about his
official role: Cointreau Heritage Manager. He showed it on his recent visit to
New Delhi, where he was a star at the popular speakeasy, PCO at Vasant Vihar.
"At the beginning you have an
orange peel and at the end the 'heart'," Alfred said, describing the
production process of Cointreau. The orange liqueur, or triple sec, depends
entirely on what Alfred calls the "perfect balance" of the four
ingredients -- sweet and bitter peels sourced from Brazil, Ghana, Haiti and
Spain, and selected by the master distiller, Bernadette Langleis; alcohol
derived from beetroots; and sugar. Peels of three oranges go into each bottle
of Cointreau (and 15 million of them are produced every year) and these are
macerated in alcohol and water for six months before sugar is added during the
distillation process. It's amazing how the world's best things have the
simplest origins.
TULLY NATION
MY personal dial-an-encyclopaedia for
the pleasures of life that come in liquid form, Vikram Achanta of Tulleeho.com,
astounded me the other day by pointing out Great Britain drinks three times
more beer than India. The poms deserve the suffix 'Great'! Imagine a nation of
63 million people outperforming one with a population of 1.25 billion by three
to one!
Now that I have entertained you with
useless information, do follow Achanta's lead and order a 'In the Rocks'
at The Aviary, the highly acclaimed Chicago cocktail lounge and restaurant of the
famous Grant Achatz (of Alinea fame) and Nick Kokonas. This cocktail is not
served on the rocks; instead, it comes in a sphere made with ice. Ice is so
important on The Aviary's menu that it has an ice chef, entrusted with the job
of devising newer ways to use ice in unheard-of ways!
