CHENNAI: As the 42-year-old chef Vijaya Kumar starts talking about his memories of school recess, he revisits a bucolic setting -- a small house girdled by verdant green paddy fields, his grandparents’ place in Arukkampatti. He describes those days as “glorious times” of his life. The picturesque images of this village with no electricity or buses, and people trudging miles to reach this off-grid place run through Vijaya’s mind even now. It’s not just the serenity of the place that he misses, but also the experiences of going out with his grandparents for fishing, catching snails, hunting rabbits, picking mangoes, and the most significant memory of his grandma cooking snail stir fry. He says, “She packs up all the spices that are needed, she cooks for us on the farm, and we eat it on banana leaves.” The taste still leaves him in awe. He adds, “The concept of sustainability is a new one. In those times, we used to cook and eat what was available to us, what we grew in our fields, and maybe it was sustainable.”
Reliving childhood memories by replicating the cooking styles of his grandmother, and recreating the farm-cooking approach, aloof from the grandeur of urban suaveness, from a town named Natham in Dindigul, Vijaya restores the regional culinary tradition of Tamil Nadu. As the executive chef of the restaurant Semma in Greenwich Village, New York, Vijaya has been unapologetically cooking authentic dishes, always carrying a piece of his homeland in his heart.
“The whole menu is inspired by my childhood,” he says. With these food memories as the cornerstone, Vjaya’s Semma restaurant is now featured as No.7, among the top restaurants in New York by New York Times. Vijaya who also has been a Michelin star says, “I feel that with this accomplishment, I don’t feel pressure, but more responsibility towards my customers. There must be around 35,000 restaurants in New York, and being ranked seventh among these brilliant eateries is a dream come true for me. I could not believe it when I read in the news about this achievement.”
Relying on his roots
Earlier, he worked as chef de cuisine at Rasa, where he experimented with South Indian food imbued with tints of contemporary cooking style. Rasa, too, earned the Michelin recognition. But as the pandemic hit, the bleak future and uncertainty had stifled him too with the anxiety of joblessness and financial crisis. Vijaya, about the vicissitudes of life, says, “I was clueless then and I even thought of applying for cleaning jobs.”
The partnership with Unapologetic Foods was a turning point in his life. Restaurateurs Roni Mazumdar and Chintan Pandya encouraged him to include his childhood delicacy like Nathai Pirattal (snail stir fry) to the menu. “Till then I never thought of including this dish, which I was embarrassed to present to the world,” he adds.
There have been many factors that have nudged him not to budge from trying something different from unconventional cuisine. He says that Indian food has become an equivalent to paneer butter masala, paneer tikka, etc., but it isn’t. He adds, “Regional food needs proper representations too.” What is cooked in our kitchens and what we eat is often not discussed openly by many, especially in India, where the food politics is so dire. Vijaya takes a deviation from mainstream food and presents the regional food to the world. “If other restaurants, say a French restaurant, can write the menu in French and serve their original food, why do we Indians have to underestimate and underrepresent the food?” he asks. Feeling gratified with his busy schedule, Vijaya plans to add some local toddy-based cocktails in the future, expanding the options.
A piece of India
Despite having lived in San Francisco and New York for many years, he has never compromised with the originality of the tastes — be the chutneys, the spices, the herbs, and the flavours — in a bid to impress anyone or appeal the taste buds of the foreign customers there.
He also shares his daily experiences of joy in his restaurant. He recalls a woman who teared up after eating the food. He says, “After the manager turned up and enquired the reason, we realised that those were the tears of happiness and contentment of experiencing the exact food made in their native.”
The wafting aroma of freshly ground spices in mortar and pestle without losing one bit of its flavour, which otherwise would be subdued when crushed in a grinder, suffused with the warm ambience of the restaurant with paintings of Kathakali, banana plants, plantains, interspersed on the placid white walls reflects the familiarity of Tamil Nadu in particular and south India in general. The menu that transcends the borders of Tamil Nadu stands as a byword for South Indian cuisine with Gunpowder Dosa, Paniyaaram, Valiya Chemmeen Moilee, Mangalore Huukosu, and so on. When asked about his favourite food from the restaurant, he responds, “I see all these dishes as my babies. I cook them with my heart. How do I choose among them?”
While he celebrates his recent accomplishment and says, “I consider this as sheer blessing,”; he feels obliged to convey the message to youngsters that his battles during the initial phases were real too, and he has also felt diffident at certain stages of his life. The transitions from being in an ordinary Tamil medium school to a reputed culinary school and to the top-notch Taj Connemara, had left him with the sense of not feeling enough and depressed. However, he emphasises that inhibitions and struggles don’t translate into failures.
As a kid, Vijaya would help his mother in the kitchen with little things which led to this profound zeal for cooking. His culinary classes at the State Institute of Hotel Management also gave him a space to explore and experiment, hone his skills, and feel more confident about himself. He says, “I have always wanted to do the best in whatever I do.” This conviction has helped him and continues to help him overcome challenges in his culinary career.
