Scaling impossible heights and bridging gaps through food are encoded into the DNA of one of the top chefs in the world, who is back in the kingdom to brush up the menu at his restaurant.
As he creatively entwines past favourites at his restaurant like the Um Ali ice-cream with classical Indian and Arab dishes like rasmalai (a popular dessert comprising paneer discs soaked in creamy condensed milk) and baklava, Michelin-starred Chef Vineet Bhatia might be at the top of his field today, but scaling heights is something he had to master before he even thought about the professional kitchen.
“Growing up, I actually wanted to be a pilot, like Tom Cruise in Top Gun, but when I applied to the armed forces, they told me I was 1.5cm too short, so then I looked to another Cruise movie – Cocktail – and decided to become a barkeeper,” the 55-year-old chef told GDN during a recent interview at Rasoi by Vineet, within the Gulf Hotel Bahrain hotel.
“Except, I was told, once again, that I was too short to serve drinks at the bar, and thus I ended up in the kitchen, but as I trained and travelled the world, I have always found a way to stand out and create, not just cook.”
Today, Chef Bhatia, who was the first Indian chef to be awarded a Michelin star, finds creative ways to bridge cultural gaps, using fresh local ingredients wherever he goes and combining them with age-old and nouveau cooking techniques to plate slices of Indian culinary culture.
Amongst his latest additions to his menu at Rasoi in Bahrain is a dish that tastes like butter chicken but served in a white sauce instead of the usual reddish-orange gravy.
“Food for me is an expression of love – it’s about being honest about yourself in everything you create – I like to showcase food the way I look to cook and eat, as well as the way I was brought up,” he added.
“The most important thing that I think chefs need is a passion to cook. If you have a hunger and desire to cook well, and you cook out of love, you will make a great dish, doesn’t matter which part of the world you are in. Love always wins.”
Chef Bhatia is back in Bahrain until the end of this week and is inviting diners to come visit his restaurant and check out some of his finest dishes, both old and new.
As well as his Bahrain restaurant, Chef Bhatia has several others under his wing, including the UK’s signature ‘KAMA by Vineet’ at Harrods’ dining hall in London. He was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) earlier this year and is also one of the very few chefs in the world to have cooked at the Arctic, the Antarctic and, as the GDN previously reported, at the Mount Everest Base Camp.
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