The food industry is expanding every day and chefs are finally getting the recognition that was long overdue.
Just like how Gordon Ramsey, Rene Redzepi, Nigella Lawson and Jaimie Oliver have become household names, we have some of our home-bred chefs who are successfully representing India on the international platform.
Chef Ritu Dalmia has made a name for herself in kitchens making Italian food and was awarded the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity by the Government of Italy in December 2011. This explains why the Italian embassy’s café is owned by her in Delhi. Her restaurant Diva at Greater Kailash, New Delhi has been around since 2000 and now has a number of food joints in the city.
Chef Madhur Jaffrey rose to fame after she moved to the UK and appeared on her first cooking show for the BBC. She is the pioneer for globalising Indian food owing to her books being deemed worthy of the James Beard Foundation award — presented to individuals who display excellence in cuisine, culinary writing, and culinary education in the US and are often called the ‘Oscar of Food’.
Chef Gaggan Anand has taken Indian food to the orient, and how! This young chef had already cooked for the former President of India APJ Abdul Kalam and US President Bill Clinton by the time he was 22-years of age. In 2013, his restaurant Gaggan in Bangkok was tenth in the list of the top 50 restaurants in Asia and at number 66 in the world’s best list.
The ‘Progressive Indian cuisine’, as chef Anand calls it, consists of traditional Indian food with a twist of molecular gastronomy. His internship at elBulli, the Michelin three-star restaurant in Spain, helped him master the art of cooking. He used this knowledge successfully to suit the needs of Indian traditional cooking and that ensures that his restaurant is packed every night.
Indians were introduced to chef Vikas Khanna when he judged Masterchef India, but he has been feeding the people of Manhattan for quite sometime now. His Michelin Star restaurant Junoon, in New York is frequented by many movie and TV actors and is set to open doors in Dubai. He has also prepared food for President Obama on one occasion. Along with being a well-loved chef, Khanna is a humanitarian and a philanthropist.
He has founded many charities among which is ‘New York Chefs Cooking for Life’ that hosts tasting events by many famous chefs in the city to raise funds for calamities like the tsunami, South Asian earthquake and Haiti. This charity is co-founded by another international star in the field of Indian Cuisine, chef Hari Nayak.
Nayak is a renowned Indian food and culinary consultant, with his own style of cooking that can be seen in his many cookbooks. His first book Modern Indian Cooking became a best seller and was deemed the ‘Best of the Season’ by LA Times.
Chef Sanjay Thumma, called Vah-Chef by his avid fan following, has risen to fame due to his wildly successful food website vahrevah.com. After he moved to Chicago, he opened four restaurants in seven years but sold them eventually as he wanted to cook food and not manage people. He took a hiatus in Hyderabad during which he found his true calling and started making videos of his recipes which he posted online. These videos got more than a hundred million views and thus vahrevah.com was born.
The gruelling job of a chef is gaining popularity and glamour every day with these chefs getting spots in magazine covers and television shows.
These stalwarts of Indian food truly deserve all the fame they have finally started receiving for respecting their roots and taking Indian cuisine to newer heights.