He walked into a meeting room at Delhi&rsquos ITC Maurya wearing a Gucci jacket patterned with fang-bearing panthers in every possible bright shade. &ldquoFashion isn&rsquot about the brand, but how you carry it. This jacket represents me.&rdquo
He&rsquos flashy, he&rsquos quirky, but more than any of that, he&rsquos Gaggan Anand&mdashthe chef extraordinaire who will soon pull the plug on his two-Michelin-Star restaurant in Bangkok, the eponymous Gaggan, so that he can &ldquostop&rdquo, as he puts it with a flourish, &ldquoprostituting myself.&rdquo
I had him all to myself for 45 minutes on the day he was about to conclude his swansong four-city pop-up, &lsquoThe Last Experience of Gaggan&rsquo, held in collaboration with ITC hotels. What was meant to be a tête-à-tête between journalist and celebrated personality became a no-holds-barred operatic celebration of the latter, filled with his theatrics and quirks that we already admire, but for which I now had front-row tickets.
But I had to remind myself that I had an interview to conduct, even if I felt well at home in that meeting room. After all, Gaggan had offered me his French-press coffee with the warmth of a host, before pouring me a glass of water. A seven-minute discussion on our mutual fondness (love, in his case) for the American rock band, Foo Fighters, ensued, after which we both cribbed about Delhi&rsquos pollution. Well, at least now I knew that beneath the showy, uninhibited Gaggan is a man who is in love with himself but not full of himself. Someone unafraid to stir up controversy, but with his heart always in the right place.
We began by tracing his origin, inspirations, and who had prodded him onwards&mdash&ldquoit was mom. Nobody else would have pushed me in this direction. Then there&rsquos my family, our food, some great Indian chefs like Manjit Singh Gill and Arvind Saraswat. There&rsquos Japan. Oh, and street food. Chefs who have no names.&rdquo
Indeed, Gaggan does not believe in garam masala or use garlic in his food&mdashcooking practices he inherited from his mother. His journey, on the other hand, has been symbiotic with that of his restaurant, which was meant to &ldquopresent Indian food to the world. For instance, I asked myself, &lsquohow do I make ghevar, a non-user-friendly dessert for foreigners, super user-friendly and present it as the most caramelised milk they have ever tasted&rsquo&rdquo
At some point the restaurant began to stretch the limits of the cuisine. A little later, it became a place where his personality took culinary form. He showed me the picture of a dish that resembles Pink Floyd&rsquos The Dark Side of the Moon cover art, while another dish, &lsquolick it up&rsquo, is meant to encourage patrons to lick their plates as well as pay homage to a Kiss track. From the emoji menu to his rock gods, everything is the menu is pretty much Gaggan&mdash&ldquoand a bit of fantasy. It&rsquos not a cuisine, it&rsquos my memory&rdquo, he adds.
But now, at the peak of his journey, he seems to have hit a rather, umm, unique, realisation&mdash&ldquofood is porn and we chefs have become prostitutes. So I wanted to close on a high. As Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters once said, &lsquowe never say that this or this is the last song. We take you to what we think is a high and we leave it there&rsquo, and I do that with my food.&rdquo
So what will he do now Well, as of now, he definitely isn&rsquot headed back to India&mdash&ldquothe only modern Indian restaurant I&rsquom proud of is Avartana [ITC Grand Chola]. But who has innovated even 10 dishes in the past year There isn&rsquot anyone. In India, anything works if it&rsquos got chilli in it and MSG is the new salt.&rdquo For Indian food within India, the chef would rather stick to old institutions and seek nostalgic value. &ldquoThe truth is, food here has been destroyed over the last 12 years. Like, what the f*** is a samosa bun&rdquo
It is well known now that Gaggan will soon launch GohGan with chef Takeshi &lsquoGoh&rsquo Fukuyama in Japan. A Japanese restaurant that will only have 10 seats and remain open for just 15 days a month, Gaggan realises there&rsquos no guarantee that things will pan out perfectly, as he reverts to using music metaphors&mdash&ldquonot every album is a hit. Freddie Mercury, after leaving Queen, made a song in a studio in Barcelona called &lsquoLa Japonaise&rsquo, which he sung in Japanese. No one knows the song, but he did what he wanted to. Every artist, when he reaches the pinnacle of his art, wants to experiment. Some experiments boom, some don&rsquot. I don&rsquot know, I&rsquoll discover it for myself. That&rsquos the challenge I take and that&rsquos why I&rsquom doing what I&rsquom doing.&rdquo
Also, a feeling of escapism does accompany the chef&mdash&ldquoif it&rsquos Star Wars, I want to be a Jedi alone in my island&rdquo&mdashand he&rsquos convinced he&rsquos unwanted even in Bangkok&mdash&ldquoIt&rsquos the curse of being Gaggan in Bangkok&rdquo&mdashwith many being jealous of his success, his charisma, his magnetism. But whatever said and done, what makes Gaggan Anand and his food great is that he&rsquos stuck with his heart he&rsquos stuck to being Gaggan. And if that means he&rsquos no longer cooking for you, so be it. Maybe one day he&rsquoll be back, but no one but Gaggan Anand himself can make him do so. And that&rsquos the way it should be.
