Sky Has Never Been The Limit For Chef Vineet Bhatia

A teenager, on way to school and back from his home near the Bombay (now Mumbai) aerodrome, silently admired the aircraft that flew over his head. He loved the sound of the machines – the Cessnas and the Pipers! One afternoon while returning from school, the boy stopped by the hangar with the excuse of drinking cold water. “To be honest, I wanted to have a closer look at the helicopters parked there,” recalls the young boy whose desire to be always near the airplanes strengthened with each passing year. So much so that he decided to enrol at the Air Force School. 

But destiny had charted another course for this youngster who recollects getting inspired by the first Indian, Sq Ld Rakesh Sharma, in space. Though he couldn’t make it to the Air Force School and ended up in a hotel school, his dream of reaching the skies got fulfilled when he became the first Indian chef to be awarded a Michelin star.

Meet Vineet Bhatia who not only dons the hat of a chef but is also a restaurateur and an author. Both his restaurants, Rasoi as he christened them, in London and Switzerland, received Michelin stars in less than two years of operation. Bhatia recalls being 17 when he entered the industry. “When I entered the kitchen for the first time in 1985, I fell in love with it,” he says. The chef gives credit to the rigorous training he underwent where he worked day in, day out for becoming what he is today. “During that period, I don’t remember taking any off days. In fact, I did almost two months of double duty as I wanted to learn as much as I could. I was hungry for knowledge and that led me to get into the Oberoi School of Hotel Management now The Oberoi Centre of Learning and Development (OCLD).”

In 1988, Bhatia got recruited as a trainee at the Oberoi School of Hotel Management, now OCLD, and after completing the training in 1990, he became the Chef de Cuisine at The Oberoi for the next three years. Reminiscing an incident from those days, Bhatia says, “I requested to be placed in the Lancers Bar and when I went there to meet the manager, he asked me if I knew who Lancers were. When I replied with a ‘no’, he told me that one needed to be six feet or taller to be one. ‘You will barely reach the bar counter as you are too short so I think the best option will be to put you in the kitchen because nobody will get to see you then’.” Ironic that people the world over now want to see the man who introduced authentic Indian cuisine to the global audience on various TV and chat shows as well as cookery programmes. Of the 14 trainees at OCLD from all over India, only Bhatia completed the course.

More than three decades later, he fondly remembers the methodical approach followed at The Oberois as also the regimental discipline in their kitchens. “That was the time when I told myself – ‘I want to learn to cook. I want to become a cook’,” shares Bhatia, adding it was emphasised at OCLD clearly there that one needed to have a strong foundation which would help them conquer the world in future.

Beginning 1993, Bhatia started receiving job offers from Dubai, Bangkok, Tokyo and London. The reason Bhatia says he chose London was because “I wanted to see the Heathrow Airport and the aeroplanes there,” he says. Not this alone, it was his love for rains and cold weather too that saw him migrate to London. But Bhatia was shocked to discover the cold treatment Indian food received in the country. “The dining out scenario of Indian restaurants was dismal, and unauthentic. In fact, when I went to the kitchen, I thought to myself: ‘How does a restaurant even cook food like this? It has nothing to do with Indian cuisine’,” he recalls. This was at the National Star of India where he had joined as a chef. 

According to Chef Bhatia, the restaurant back then was run by people who were neither trained in Indian cuisine nor were they Indian chefs by origin. “My first question to myself was – how do I start changing the setup of this five decade Indian old restaurant and make them understand its need. Interestingly, I was the only Indian at the restaurant,” says Chef Bhatia. He shares that in those days, chefs didn’t even have a uniform and worked in an undershirt, shorts and chappals, smoking at will in the kitchen. “This wasn’t the place I wanted to work!” he told himself. So, he shut the restaurant for a day to deep clean the kitchen, get uniforms and chef hats. On observing these changes, almost half the staff left for good. “As a  replacement, I got a few teenagers who wanted to learn cooking and trained them. Two of them work with me even now,” he says.

Getting Londoners to relish what he cooked was another challenge Chef Bhatia encountered. “We started serving classic dishes but it resulted in a backlash as these hadn’t been served before. In fact, a number of guests walked out of the restaurant, fuming that this Indian food is not authentic. In London, you need to cook and serve what Londoners like else get rejected,” he shares, adding that he also found about the concept of one-pot cooking. “They made one curry sauce and everything was its derivative,” he recalls.

As guests had preconceived notions about the names of the dishes and how they were served, Chef Bhatia started putting narratives on the menu. “I knew I couldn’t call a Rogan Josh or a Butter Chicken by their true names else there would be comparisons so our butter chicken became a morsel of chicken tikka in fenugreek scented buttery tomato sauce Rogan Josh became slow cooked shank of lamb with Kashmiri spices. That is how we started working on the menu, by not giving them authentic names,” explains Chef Bhatia, adding that he started plating them uniquely too.

Terming London his adopted home, Chef Bhatia shares, “We opened our own first restaurant, Rasoi, in 2004 which turned out to be the biggest gamechanger in many ways. One, it was a huge transformation for the Indian cuisine globally and two, when we went solo in 2004, it gave us a lot of freedom to do things we believed in.” 

Quality, for Chef Bhatia, always comes before quantity. “We don’t want to sell our soul to too many and dilute our product. We strongly believe that do a few but nicely because each restaurant has your name – it is your endorsement, your flagship and you need to do full total justice to it,” he shares, adding they turn down almost one offer every three-four weeks requesting partnership or association. “We only do projects which please us or where we can deliver what we believe in. Cooking is not a sprint but a marathon. We believe in giving a good product, maintaining it and keeping the food as authentic in terms of flavours as we can,” he says.

On the rising inclination towards organic food, Chef Bhatia says, “People talk about organic food, super grains and superfoods without realising that they been having haldi doodh (turmeric milk) since their childhood days. Long before quinoa happened to us, we were eating rotis made from jwar and bajra at home. But then trends come and go.” 

Bhatia is not just a world-renowned chef. He is avid adventurer too and does a lot of charity work. Remembering an interesting incident on one such trip where the two were connected, Bhatia says, “While trekking from Tengboche to Debuche on way to the Everest base camp for a charity, we met a monk who wore a nice and fancy cowboy kind of a hat. And I love hats. I complimented him by saying that his hat looked great. When he replied with an American accent, I got a shock. I soon found that he was Nepalese who had been living in America for years and had retired. He now lived in the mountains as a monk and worked for a monastery. When we told him that we were for a charity and appreciated us. He told us to slow down as a monk was coming on the same route. This nonagenarian monk, he told us, travelled one day of the year and would be great if we got his blessings. An hour later, his palki came with an entourage of 10-12 people. When I asked the monk if it was okay if I touched his feet and took his blessings, he replied in affirmative. He touched my head when I touched his feet and said something in Nepalese. He also gave me a shawl along with a 1000 Nepalese rupee and said in Hindi, ‘Aapki charity ke liye (This is for your charity)’. This is something I can never forget in my life.”

Chef Bhatia credits his wife for all the success he has achieved. “Rashima is my backbone, my rock. I’m where I’m due of her unending support. It’s only when she came into my life that we could grow as professionals or travel such a long distance. While I look after the kitchen and related stuff, she handles all the operations and logistics,” he shares.

How can one keep a chef away from the kitchen if he is home and the same goes with Chef Bhatia. “I don’t let anybody cook if I’m home,” he says with a chuckle. Bhatia donned the chef’s hat during lockdown, only this time when he was in the kitchen to make a crunchy sandwich filled with cheese and chicken for himself, he made a video and posted it on Instagram. “In no time, the video had close to 80,000 hits. My sons were watching all this and suggested I did more of these videos as my followers loved me in this new avatar. I found it interesting because you’re home, cooking for yourself and your family and the world loves you for it,” he shares.

Over the last 15 months plus, the Bhatia family has uploaded many such videos on their YouTube and Instagram channels. One of my sons shoots the videos and the other edits it along with incorporating some music and then we post it. The idea is to educate people that they too can create wonders in their kitchens like making peanut butter or hummus or even simple plating techniques. We have only gone for basic stuff to try and have made sure people will get a hang of it,” he concludes.