Over the years as an hotelier I have harbored a belief that our biggest strength lies in our ability to transform basic raw material into delicious and unique Indian food, both in terms of appearances, taste and keeping all the nutritional values preserved. The wizardry of our chefs of yester years has been of unmatched levels; the food they made can safely be termed as ‘Ambrosia’, coming even near to which the best of the chefs can only dream today.
Those were the days when flavors were influenced by the location, spices. What they produced both veg/non veg, changed every 100 miles. Our cooks were influenced by the temple food, appeasement food for the kings and Nawabs and even poverty became a good reason for creativity and improvisation. But unfortunately, since last 10 or 15 years our chefs have stopped evolving.
Back in sixties the first breed of Indian chefs started emerging with the growth of Indian restaurants in major cities. New breed of chefs may not have been excellent, but the quality of food they produced in those times was truly authentic, delicious and standardized.
Those amazing chefs with no degrees or diplomas gave us Gushtaba / Rishta, a soufflé of meat from Kashmir, Tandoori Chicken, Butter Chicken from Delhi, Kakori & Galouti Kababs from Avadh, Temple food from Orissa, amazing selection of sweet from Bengal, Gujrati Farsans, Maharashtrian spicy cuisine to relish, South Indian wonder food of Idly and Dosa, Appam and Avial, plus a huge variety of Veg and Non Veg dishes from traditional Chettinad cuisine of Tamil Naidu, Malabar Parantha with Kerala Beef curry and best of Hyderabadi Biryanis to die for, in the process, this pursuit of excellence established our food identity.
Then we saw the emergence of a new era of professionally qualified chefs during 1970/80, and then what happened?
I distinctly recall the entry of chefs qualified from catering college joining the Industry. Hungry for knowledge, they worked hard to learn, but very few concentrated on Indian cuisine. Eighties and Nineties saw this new breed of chefs establishing themselves as continental chefs. But very few tried to venture into Indian food. We were still dependent on traditional chefs who were in short supply, as most of the good ones were going out of the country. All of a sudden there was extreme shortage, and so all hotel chains took a decision to increase the salaries of chefs and cooks practicing Indian cuisine by nearly 60/70% to charm them to stay back in India. Although this didn’t stop the migration but to full fill the demand a large number of hotel graduates started joining Indian kitchen. We the senior managers were very happy with the changing trends. We felt that finally the good quality Indian food is about to make a comeback. What really happened was simply unbelievable.
On the 1st of January 1990 I was transferred back to Delhi from Centaur Srinagar as Area GM for Centaur in Delhi. Centaur Delhi was the real hotspot of trouble with unions dictating the management. It took couple months of hard work and man management to brings the affaires under control. Business started booming, restaurants took off. We had this Indian restaurant called Rasoi, which was under Sous Chef Rattan Singh Mehta and Chef Munir. The Rasoi was an outstanding concept and was considered only second to famous the Bukhara. Rasoi was selected by Air India to present the Rasoi Food on all important international flights. Team of chefs were sent to Mumbai ChefAir for preparation of Indian Food. Air India also wanted educated senior chef to travel as Ambassador of this famous Restaurant and explain to VIP passengers on board, about the food. Due to work load we couldn’t send Sr. chefs from Delhi, I requested my MD to send some one from Centaur Juhu and he deputed one young chef with some knowledge of Indian Food as he was good in presenting and talking. This ability of his made ideal choice for one passenger, TV Producer traveling on one of the flight and chef was selected to first cooking TV show, rest was the history. Today he is one of the richest Chef and Restaurateur, and a famous TV celebrity but rather a mediocre chef.
The reason why I mentioned this story, is to put on record how and why the deterioration of Indian food started. After the success of this below average show, every chef wanted to be a celebrity TV chef, for they felt if he can succeed regardless of intricate knowledge and delicate accents of Indian food so can we or anybody. Next few years we saw over two dozen chefs becoming TV chefs, and most of them bastardizing the ‘Good Indian food’ in the name of fusion/new era food – simply because of the absence of their inadequate knowledge of authentic Indian recipes’
Thanks to social media platforms, that has grabbed the attention of one and all alike, and has trivialized humans and their professional skills to divert the focus on the glitz and glamour of the medium. The chefs have succumbed to the lures of instant fame and loads of money that comes with it. Their avarice has altered their mind and priorities, the professional excellence have been compromised. Amidst this paradigm shift the connoisseurs have been deprived of good quality Indian food. We have over fifty Moti Mahals’ but except for one or two, they can’t produce the same food which made them famous. Earlier nearly all Hotels maintained a second restaurant as pure Indian Restaurant. Now all that is changing because Indian cuisine is not doing well any more. In Delhi we can count good Indian Restaurants in Hotel on our fingertips - Bukhara, DumPukht in ITC, Varq in Taj Mansingh and Dhaba in Claridge’s in over 70 Hotels in NCR. Similarly, the number of good free standing restaurants has also come down substantially - Like Indian Accent, Chor Bizarre, Lazeez Affaire, Gulati and only one Moti Mahal at Greater Kailash. The sprinklings of the other restaurants here and there are not worth a mention in terms of quality, authenticity and presentation. Most of the new restaurants are serving Indian food that is heavily compromised in terms of skill, ingredients and processes but are very high on spices, chilies and excessive oil. All this has resulted in the fact that a large number of guest end up with food poisoning primarily due to stale curries.
Today world renowned dishes have been meddled, fiddled and tinkered to a point that the authentic versions lie buried in the pages of history forever. Few examples are ‘Ma ki dal’ a staple that has lost its original flavor and taste- what you get to taste is more of cream, butter and tomatoes to enhance the taste – whereas for ‘Authentic Ma Ki Dal, you will have travel to Amritsar’s famous Kaiser Da Dhaba. Butter Chicken is prepared with onions and spices, whereas authentic recipe had only tomatoes, butter, cream and white pepper and the flavors of cooked marinate married to the flavors of tandoori chicken made this dish what it was, but today there no difference between Butter Chicken and Chicken Tikka Masala in most of the restaurants. One of the famous chefs and a renowned food critic used to make Chicken Tikka Masala with tomato soup. Same distortion I have seen in case of Dosa, an Omelet and all curries regardless of ingredients look greasy/oily. It’s a fact, that today more and more people get sick eating Indian curries than any other cuisine. Delhi Belly is a direct result of this new age cooking phenomenon that establishes the fact, that inadequate knowledge is dangerous thing. Indian restaurants are slowly contributing to their own decline and one of the reasons is the deteriorating standards of commercialized demonstration / teaching of various foods via dedicated programs on media channels. On other hand where the HALWAI shops use to do pittance of food business till late eighties are major grossers today, each outlet is serving over 800 to 2000 guests and are providing very basic food that is fresh like e.g. Thalli, Chana Bhatura, Dosa/Uthappam in their authentic form & no fusion and they are ruling the ‘Restaurant Industry’ to become the most profitable food business chains in the country.
There are many reasons for the decline of Indian food served in the restaurant Industry. Some of them I like to highlight;
· Since I remember even in fifties we served and presented the food we eat is the same way, as we do today. Same table cloth or placemat with silver style service and food brought to table in big bowls, today, sadly enough, only contents in the bowl has changed. In last fifty years food recipes, style of services has changed all over the world. No other food in restaurants is prepared in advance and served later, apart from Indian. If you are ordering Chinese, Continental, Mexican or even fast food is not precooked anywhere in the world. Food is prepared when the order is placed and served fresh, which is not the case of Indian food - we refuse to grow with time. On the contrary in India even McDonald and Burger King are compromising their food standards and sell nearly 60% of their food which has a life span of 10 minutes, precooked and stored in their heated bins.
· Fusion gone wrong. World wide fusion in food was introduced to enhance the food flavors, taste and appearance. Unfortunately, we never understood the depth of flavors of original recipes and started looking for instant flavors and taste and started using chemicals like Monosodium glutamate, Tomato Ketchup etc., to improve flavors and thus started the decline. I will be the last person to condemn fusion, but it has to be undertaken by people who fully understand and respect the importance of our heritage cuisine.
· In seventies and eighties when we tried to develop management trainees’ fresh from catering college as ‘Kitchen Chefs’ after training, this fresh breed of chefs with limited experience of two years were suddenly exposed to the glory, glamour and opportunities in the international food branches such as; Continental, Chinese, Thai or Italian. While working they got a chance to enhance their knowledge and experience with years of dedication and hard work. Whereas on other hand, these young chefs of the Indian food branch became fully qualified just after two years of training and became celebrities in just a few years. All this resulted in a great shortage of experienced chefs. The sad part is that even the best and most successful of them cannot produce delectable food when compared to those unqualified but experienced good cooks.
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· It is not that we only have those fly by night TV
chefs who cook for special effects. There
are some great Chefs as well, with
tremendous experience and productions skills. Such as Vikas Khanna, Ranveer
Singh Brar, Manjit Singh Gill, Manish Malhotra, Veenit Bhatia and upcoming
Kunal Kapoor. I bow before them and if you ask them, most probably they still
say that they are student of Indian cuisine and are still learning. I really
hope that people like them will influence the future of Indian food and not
TV’s bubblegum super chefs.
Lastly, I must narrate an interesting story of Indian food decline. One of the finest chef India produced is Imtiaz Qureshi, father of Mughlai and Awadhi cuisine. While working with ITC he must have seen dozens of mediocre qualified chefs getting elevated with limited experience and knowledge. Realizing the opportunity he started promoting his family member as Indian Mughlai Chef. Story is that nearly every member his family irrespective of his earlier profession(butcher/painter/tailor) is today working as Indian chef in various Restaurants’ and Hotels and funnily producing better food then qualified chefs, all over the world.
What we can do to stop the decline in the standards
of Indian food?
We all would love to see more Indian restaurants
servicing authentic Indian food. If you feel like eating delicious basic
Chicken Curry or Mutter Paneer or even basic yellow Tarka Dal- can you name two
to three good Indian restaurants near you? No. Indian food is our food, we grew
up on this, and unfortunately today we have to struggle to get this food for us
or our family.
I think time has come to change with time, try to produce fresh food for each guest similar to Chinese, Italian or Continental cuisines. I am sure we need to research and modify our methodology of cooking without compromising the quality, taste and flavor – And Believe me it’s not rocket science! Best Wishes.
My salute to these ‘Amazing Chefs’, as I bow to their commitment and skills with gratitude, needless to mention that I will remain a humble witness to their contribution and devotion in keeping the traditions of Indian Culinary Art alive and singing.
All these chefs are celebrities in their own right. Out of these, two chefs need a special mention Late. Pradeep Arora and Atul Mathur. Although I have worked with lots and lots of Chefs but these two were always my inspiration and I must mention that if the fate had been kind to them they had potential to be among the finest chefs in India.
Written by Anil Chak and Virat Varma
