I don't want to be a flash in the pan: Chef Atul Kochhar about his Indian venture

Given the infamy ascribed to chefs — for their apparent short-tempered nature, foul mouth and brusque mannerism — it is odd to learn that Atul Kochhar was ragged by "60-70 wolves" on his first day at hotel management school in Chennai.

None would've foreseen, back in the late 1980s, that this soft-spoken chef would be the first Indian to receive the Michelin star for London's Tamarind restaurant in 2001. After all, his own family had warned him that he'd end up "peeling potatoes all his life" when he first announced that he wanted to pursue a hotel management degree. Kochhar didn't allow that to come in his way. If anything, he always took criticism "on the chin", learning from it and getting better. He is candid enough to admit that the reason Tamarind's success eluded him at his own venture, Benares, in the initial years was "because we had a few elements wrong". To set things right, Kochhar "never left the stove". In 2007, three years after he had opened Benares in London's upmarket Mayfair, the restaurant debuted with 1 star in that year's Michelin guide.

"There's been no looking back since," says Kochhar, referring to that elusive, and oft fleeting, acclaim of the culinary world, for which the toughest and meanest boys have said to have cried. Not one to "rest on laurels", Kochhar knows that to retain the Michelin stars requires pushing the boundaries constantly. "The aloo-jeera recipe is a thousand years old. But how can we make it better? Can we source better potatoes? Can we source better cumin? What's wrong with the turmeric that turns too yellow? Are we using the core of the turmeric or the skin of it or are we using a mixture of the two? ...You have to question the norm," gushes the 46-year-old, father of two.

And it is this curiosity that has taken him on journeys around the world — from the corner of Japan to the islands of the Caribbean. And it is on these jaunts, that he discovered what he calls "diaspora food" — food that working class Indians took with them decades and centuries ago to nations far and near, which then adapted according to the local spices, flavours and substitutes. Think Malay curries, east African jeera chicken, crab kofta with gunpowder and so on. It is this food that Kochhar will dish out from his very first restaurant in India, the 3,000sqft, 80-seater, aptly-titled NRI (Not Really Indian) at Mumbai's Bandra-Kurla Complex. Edited excerpts from an interview:

What are your earliest memories about food?
My earliest memories are of waking up from siestas on hot afternoons to sit and eat watermelons and mangoes that either my grandad or my dad had immersed in ice-cold water or in a well in our apartment block in Jamshedpur. The whole family would sit down ceremoniously on a bedsheet spread on the floor, cut open the melons or mangoes, add chaat masala or lemon juice on it and binge. Those are some of my fondest memories.

Do you have a philosophy or an approach to ingredients? When do you know that a combination is right?
My father, who ran a small catering business in Jamshedpur, taught me an important lesson. He told me that you don't have to try too hard to make a good combination... that I just need to observe mother nature and follow that course. Let's take south Indian food for instance, you will notice that curry leaves grow easily wherever there are mustard seed plantations. And where there are curry leaves, shallots grow very easily. And there will be some other ingredient that will work incredibly well with shallots in the same patch. So we just need to work with that —you pick that up, cook with that and the food will be amazing. I've been constantly doing that. I've always been an ingredients person.

The other thing that I always say is that let's not discount the taste of water — water makes up 90 per cent of what we eat and the rest is 10 per cent. I can bring the best piece of cod from London to Bombay and use the exact same recipe to cook it here that I use in London, but the cod will taste very different here because the water here tastes different. The minerals in the water are different in different places and that's what changes the flavour. And all of us just close our eyes to this.

You were the first Indian to have received a Michelin star as head chef of Tamarind in 2001. What was your reaction when you first learnt the news?
I remember that day – It was 11am and we were to open in an hour and we had three sacks of onions to peel to get the kanda masala going. I got a call from John (a journalist at the Evening Standard with whom we'd drink sometime) who said to me, 'Hey Atul, you've got a Michelin star'. I told him, 'John, get lost. There's a lot to do, don't bother me' and I hung up. So he called me back again. This time he said, 'Hey, am trying to tell you that you've got a Michelin star'. And I said to him, 'If I'd get a Michelin star, I'd be the King of England!' So John told me to consider myself King of England because the guide had just come out and he was seeing our name in there. He told me he's sending over a photographer to get a picture. I couldn't believe it... I just stood there for five minutes and when I turned and told everyone in the kitchen — which was these few Indian boys, who had no idea what the Michelin star was — they were like, Oh nice, now let's get back to the onions. I told the manager, who of course knew that it was a big deal — we were both ecstatic. By evening, it all sank in — what it meant for us, for Indian cuisine — and the grin lasted on my face for a very long time after that. It was a massive moment, one of the most cherished moments of my life.

So what spurred you to start Benares two years later?
I had been at Tamarind for a good eight years. And like any other job, it had its frustrations. Not that business is better, but at the time, I thought business would be better. I'd decided that it was time I did something on my own.

We didn't have a Michelin star in the first three years of Benares because we had a few elements wrong — the design was not right and the way the team was working was not right. I was grappling with things but I never left the stove. And finally in 2007, the star came through. And that was it, we've never looked back, never worried about it. It's been 10 years... I did become the first Indian chef to get a Michelin star and even among them, the first to retain it for 10 years — which is huge. I was really worried this year that I might lose it (the Michelin star), but we didn't (phew).

What was it like to get the star again in 2007?
It was another big moment! This time, it felt like it was for my baby. My baby Benares too had got an accolade. As time has passed, I now feel more fatherly towards me team... I feel good for them. Without them, this wouldn't have been possible. They believe in me... the way I drive them, the way I make them work, the way I train them... they pretty much leave their careers in my hand.

At the same time, the Michelin stars mean you cannot afford to slack and you cannot rest on your laurels. You have to constantly push the boundaries. In the movie 100-foot journey, when the protagonist gets a 3-Michelin star, the restaurant director tells him to innovate, innovate, innovate. That's my approach to food too. I know the aloo-jeera recipe is a thousand years old, but how can I make it better? Can we source better potatoes? Can we source better cumin? What's wrong with the turmeric that turns too yellow? Are we using the core of it or the skin of it? Or are we using a mixture of the two? So you have to question the norm. The moment you stop questioning the norm, you are another donkey. That's my approach to food.

You are returning to India more than two decades after leaving. Why now? And what made you choose Mumbai over Delhi or Bangalore for NRI?
Because even the Italian food in Gurgaon tastes Punjabi with its butter and paneer (laughs). Jokes aside, everyone has two mothers — matrabhoomi and karma bhoomi. My matrabhoomi is India and karma bhoomi is London. It's my calling. I had to come back and be a part of the food scene here, which has changed drastically. When the opportunity to open a restaurant came along about two years ago, I just felt that we are getting better with ingredients in India and the location in Bombay is amazing. Also, Bombay is a lot more mature and the going out scene is better here than in Gurgaon or Delhi. And as my business partner pointed out, and I observed too, the houses in Bombay are much smaller, so people don't entertain at home... they go out with friends and family, which is perfect for my business.

Why bring diaspora food here?
With every migration, there were some classic recipes that went out with people. And this food took on a new shape and a new form in its adapted land. This is food that looks and tastes Indian, but is not Indian. I've been intrigued by it and have gone back to their countries of origin to learnt more about it there. It's a new kind of Indian cuisine that I think should be recognised.

How has setting up shop here been different from doing the same elsewhere in the world?
My business partner tells me that setting up the restaurant itself has been tricky ...I've heard all the stories about the painful procedures to procure the permission and licenses. It's very different in London, where you just fill a form and make the payment online, following which there is an inspection, two weeks after which you have the permission to roll. Among the challenges that I'm facing here is finding the right people. I'd thought that hiring in a country with 1.2 billion people would be easy, but I'm only just waking up to the reality. Poaching is rife and we need to be more responsible. We are not taking people from other restaurants. We are asking everyone if we can call their employers to cross-check references — some are saying yes, most are saying no. We are not taking those people.

Can you tell us about the menu at NRI.
The one thing that we have to show is that we are strong on vegetarian cuisine. Sitting in London, I don't have to worry about vegetarian food. If I put five vegetarian dishes on the main course and sell even one for the night, I'd be lucky. Here, if you don't have a 50-60 per cent of the menu vegetarian, you might as well shut shop. So every dish that we have here, has a vegetarian version. If there's a Malay chicken curry, there's also a Malay veg korma.
My menus are always a work in progress. We have a huge repertoire to choose from, with dishes from Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Africa, south and west Africa, the Caribbean, Europe and the UK. I usually don't work with more than 30 total dishes on the menu. But I've been a little luxurious here, allowing my chef (Rohit Nair) to add six more. I was surprised to learn that other restaurants here do 100 dishes from a 4X4 kitchen. I question that.

Business-wise, I would like to know how do you do it because it means you can seat more people and take more money. But how do you maintain the quality? I want to be a restaurant that will be here for a very long time. I don't want to be a flash in the pan.

How would you like to see NRI grow in the next five years?
I consider Mahesh Lunch Home and Trishna stalwarts of Mumbai's cuisine. I would consider myself lucky if we were to achieve something like that. Swati is another place that I absolutely adore. I take one step at a time and prefer to perfect my work before moving on to something else. It's a testimony that I did 12 years of Benares before I moved on to my next business. For someone else, they would've done three times the business in the same time and had six restaurants. I want to stick to my guns and make sure we do the right thing.

Which three Indian ingredients do you have a soft spot for?
I love my spices. Ginger, lime and chillies. You can create so many flavours with these.

And your three international favourites?
Rosemary, chocolate and black pepper

What is Chef Kochhar's advice to salvage a recipe?
You don't. You start afresh.

Who cooks at home?
My wife Deepti does. During the weekends, its my job to cook one meal with our kids. There's a massive mess after we cook. Thankfully, Deepti takes care of the cleaning.

A perennial item in your refrigerator?
Salad leaves — Cos, Romaine and Rocket. And seasonal leaves.

What is your comfort food?
Red kidney beans. Rajma-chawal. I have it at least once a week. We will serve this at NRI too — it'll be the chef's special.