Chef Manish Mehrotra is trying to revive the lost ingredients with his eccentric style

In my small tenure as a journalist, the chefs who I have interviewed, have had one thing in common: most were inspired by mothers or grandmothers, and in some cases, even their fathers. But the Indian Accent Chef Manish Mehrotra is not like them. The moment you ask him about what propelled him to be a chef, pat comes the reply, “Mine was not one of those stories inspired by a mother or a grandmother. It was a decision and a choice.” Good for us that he did decide—Indian Accent, as we know it, is one of the most popular restaurants in Delhi, and more importantly, it is one of the eccentric and interesting ones. Where else can you get flavoured candy-floss (buddhi ke baal)? That is not it; Indian Accent also serves the delightfully-tasty Phantom cigarettes—mint-flavoured candies which parents never bought you and yet the coolest kid in school always had a pack. “People get down Rolls-Royces and ask for Phantom cigarettes. There is a sense of nostalgia attached to the brand. It makes us feel like kids again,” says the man who strives to keep small things of our pasts, alive. If your mother was anything like mine, she probably raised you on chavanprash. We have all had chavanprash with warm milk or made a topping of it on a Monaco biscuit. But who would have thought of a cheese cake using chavanprash? Mehrotra did. “It sounds bizarre, I know. But chavanprash is one of those things that will vanish in one or two decades. We want to keep it alive, and hence the experiment. People, who come to dine, make a face when we suggest it to them, but they always order it. It is not a strong flavour, it is your regular cheese cake, with a hint of chavanprash, as an aftertaste,” explains Mehrotra. Mehrotra is one of those chefs, who have constantly kept away from media glare. He is not seen in Page-3 parties, nor is he found giving too many interviews—yet his popularity continues to rise. The reason; his style. He might be a seasoned chef today, but the hands who hardened him were the chefs at Thai Pavilion of The Taj Group. He informs us that the years he spent in Taj were the best (and the worst) years of his life. “Chefs would yell at me thousand times a day. When I messed up, they would wait for my shift to get over, and would ask me to do the dishes or dirty work,” says the man, who now is the Executive Chef at the Indian Accent. “We were learning to extract coconut milk; and my chefs would make us repeat the process throughout the day. So much so, that my hand would be moving in the same motion during sleep!” he admits with a laugh. He did learn a lot in those days. Today, he admits to breaking into ‘evil laughter’, while giving his current juniors a hard time in the kitchen. After a hearty conversation with Mehrotra, it is hard to believe that he is capable of giving anyone a hard time—but he apparently is. Why is it that chefs are full of torture stories—we wanted to know. Mehrotra explains that a kitchen is a like an orchestra. Even if a single instrument is out of tune, the music becomes a cacophony. “The moment an order comes in, every unit of the kitchen starts working in tandem. If even a small unit makes a mistake, then it will resonate with the whole kitchen orchestra. This is why the otherwise sweet chefs become devils in their kitchen. They cannot let anyone make mistakes.” While he does owe the most of his lessons to Taj chefs, he also owes something extra, something perhaps a little more important than all the learning. He met his wife while working at the Thai Pavilion. She used to work at the Konkan Café which was right across the Thai Pavilion. While he shies away from sharing his story, he does tell us that he fell in love with her while working there. We were curious to know—who was the better chef? He is quick to tell us that his wife is, but now she cooks at home. After working with the Taj Group for five years, he joined the Old World Hospitality Group, a company he has been associated with for 11 years now. Before the group started their most popular restaurant — Indian Accent — they sent Mehrotra to London, which he calls the culinary capital of the world. “It was like leaving a kid in the candy store. London had so many cuisines to offer, I went crazy there. More importantly, the kue ka mendhak in me died a royal death.” After his return, he started the Indian Accent, possibly the craziest kitchen of the country. Where else will you find foie gras stuffed galawat, masala miso Scottish salmon, masala wild mushrooms or achaari New Zealand lamb shank? Indian Accent, like its Chef, is a fine balance of the desi and the international. He claims that he can survive on mushroom risotto, and craves for the thele wala noodles occasionally. He loves his coconut and his garlic. He can’t do without his choppers, and cringes at the sight of a beetroot. When asked about the best compliment he has received so far, he shyly admits that women often come to him to say, “I want to take you home”. Then he breaks into laughter. While most Chefs of his stature are planning their own restaurants or have already opened them, Mehrotra tries to keep away from such things. He says that if he starts his own restaurant, then his focus will move away from food, and he’ll start concentrating more on the mundane things that make a restaurant work. He says that once he retires, he will be “out of the grind”. We do not have to worry about that for now. There will be a long time before that happens—till then we all can sit back and enjoy the amazing food plated with a bit of nostalgia and a lot of passion.