BENGALURU: The documentary Buried Seeds'that tells the tale of how Indian Michelin-star chef Vikas Khanna overcame disability, poverty and discrimination will be screened at the Venice International Film Festival, Lido, on September 6.
The chef told City Express about the special preview screening when he was in the city to judge a cook-off between corporate leaders as part of Smile Foundation's ‘Cook for a smile’ campaign at Phoenix Marketcity
The title is inspired from Vikas' favourite lines from Greek poet Dinos Christianopoulos: “They tried to bury us/ They forgot we were seeds. Even today those words give me goosebumps,” he says, rubbing his forearm.
Vikas recently made it to the list of Top 10 Chefs in the World by Gazette Review. The list that was topped by Gordon Ramsay, had Khanna ranked sixth, ahead of Anthony Bourdain and Alain Ducasse. The documentary traces the immigrant’s journey from Amritsar to New York.
Unlike his on-screen persona, Vikas is quite playful off the camera and speaks in Punjabi-inflected English. Ask him how difficult it was convincing his family to let him be a chef and he responds, “Nobody really worries about the nalayaks and awaraas... Those who score a zero out of 100. They didn’t expect anything from me.”
Produced and directed by Andrei Severny, parts of the biopic have been shot in Manipal, Udupi.
The TV personality confesses that he was an introvert as a child. “New York City changed me. I realised that I can't take a backseat,” he says adding that he wasn’t versatile in English when he came to the US at the age of 29.
“I didn’t even know where New York was. I used to think New York's capital was New York until eight year of living there,” says Vikas whose 27th book My First Kitchen is out now. Vikas says that he found his calling and a voice in the US. "When the chef asks you what the hell are you doing in my kitchen? You are brown. And when you respond to that, people respect you for speaking up. America taught me to stand up and punch back,” adds the 45-year-old.
In 2002, Vikas was working at Salam Bombay, a restaurant right outside the World Trade Centre in downtown Manhattan. “After 9/11, we hardly got any visitors. People would say bada hi manhoos hai. Yeh India se aaya aur America hi khatam hogaya.”
A French chef once came to this restaurant, and after he tasted Vikas’ food, he asked Vikas to meet him at the restaurant. “I showed up and said: Sir, I free”. This was the first time Vikas had seen a kitchen be so organised. “I tasted their fish and told him it was too bland and promised that I will make a sauce the next time I visit him. They would take care of the technique and I would add the Indian twist,” says the judge of Masterchef India, whose TLC cooking show Twist of Taste is all about making desi food contemporary.
Once, Vikas took some curry leaves from his restaurant to the French Michelin-star restaurant. “I was demonstrating cooking with curry leaves at a French restaurant. The chef really liked the idea and said, let’s make curry leaf oil immersion. I had no idea what that meant back then,” he says.
Another time, Vikas introduced the chef to Kerala moilee sauce. What happened later, however, was something that Vikas had never imagined. “The chef said remove the salt and let’s make it into an ice cream. I protested, saying that the sauce only works with fish. That’s when he told me that cooking is about having an open mind,” says Vikas, recalling the beginning of his experiments with Indian ingredients. He says that he would some day like to cook for Philippe Petit, and adds that if he were allowed to pick his last meal, it would be at the Gujarati restaurant Sasumaa in Surat.
Vikas has cooked for world leaders, including former US Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, Queen Elizabeth and religious leader Dalai Lama. So how does he plan on what to cook when asked to make a meal for dignitaries. “I always thought Dalai Lama is vegetarian until I presented a dabba full of vegetarian Indian food in front of him,” he says. “A boy there asked me if I didn’t cook meat on purpose, and I asked him isn’t Dalai Lama a vegetarian? And he said, no,” laughs Vikas. “That’s when I realised that I should always ask what they would like to eat before cooking.”
For Obama, I made a Pakistani goat curry. “Barack then told me he doesn’t like goat and prefers kheema. He loves to cook kheema and Pakistani dal,” says Vikas. And the queen? “She hates garlic,” warns Vikas.