Anywhere in the world, there is royal food, and there is commoner food. Essentially, eat at the restaurant or eat on the street. But Indian food evolved in three spaces. Home kitchens were a big space for food evolution, and we have never given them enough credit.
Ranveer Brar
I grew up in Lucknow, which is famous for its street food and kebabs. It was the street food and Lucknowi kebabs that inspired me. The culture of the varieties of food that I tasted as a child inspired me to be a cook.
Being a Punjabi, it is very hard to say this, but Punjabi food is very overrated.
Cooking is an expression that crosses boundaries.
With fame comes the responsibility of what you say. If the country is watching you, there ought to be substance, something worthwhile to speak about.
I believe that 'Food is a giver.' It gives you nutrition, health, and at times can give you recognition, like it did in my case, and you got to treat it with that kind of respect.
My learning from my travels is that taste is objective. If a thing is tasty, it's universally tasty. Or, just not.
If you're a happy person around food, you can be a professional chef. It's fueled by passion.
You have to respect the culture you are cooking in, yes, but you have to respect the palate you are cooking for, too, and you have to adjust to that palate.
I am not very convinced with having a signature dish. The whole point of being a chef is going to a new place, adapting and curating a new menu as per the culture and community.
I found most of my learning has taken place after culinary college, when I travelled and met chefs and non-chefs.
Essentially, for me, the whole point of being a chef is to have your own restaurant.
Men are more mechanical when we cook. Women are more attached. They cook it with feelings. From personal experience. The feeling a female chef puts in the food places her way ahead of men chefs.
I won't say there's disrespect for the Indian home cook, but I was never exposed to that. Even in a semi-urban Indian family, you will find a maid. And once you meet these people, you realise they cook purely out of passion or love for the family.
Food should flirt with the palette. If the food doesn't flirt with your palette, then it's not fun enough.
The food and culture of any place go hand in hand.
My life lesson is just to be patient and everything will fall in place. Most of what's happened in my life is not to do with me but good people and the way things happened. So I feel it's no use stressing over anything. Let things simply happen.
There are few relationships that give as unconditionally as food. I have opened and shut down restaurants and slept on the streets, but I have always bounced back because my belief in the relationship has been strong.
Restrictiveness is not synonymous with food.
I don't believe I dislike any ingredient.
Apparently, in the olden days, nawabs would get bored with their cooks very quickly and throw them out. All of them set up shop in a place called Bawarchi Tola. That's how royal food came to the streets. I started hanging around there. That's when I realised food is a lot more than just cooking on Sundays.
When I was growing up, Chef Charlie Trotter inspired me a lot.
We are reaching a stage where the source of food has become markets and supermarkets. On a sub-conscious level, we are becoming unaware of the original source, which is land.
If not a chef, I would have been a painter maybe. I have interest in painting, and I do it well.
The thing about innovation is, where do you stop? There are movements across the world where people are asking restaurateurs to bring back the regular plate. So, yes, we are fed up of drinking out of shoes and eating out of hats.
I've never chased a dream. I believe in living in the present, so I see myself happy and cooking. That's all.
I think we shouldn't buckle up our creativity. You've got to experiment!
My recipes aren't classic recipes; they're all fusion recipes inspired by all the places I've been to.
As chefs, a lot of the times we lose sight of the fact that we are in the food business and that it needs to make money to survive.
Like a musician expresses himself through music and a writer's expression is in his writings, cooking is my mode of expression.
