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.
Cooking is an expression that crosses boundaries.
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.
Food should flirt with the palette. If the food doesn't flirt with your palette, then it's not fun enough.
If you're a happy person around food, you can be a professional chef. It's fueled by passion.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
My learning from my travels is that taste is objective. If a thing is tasty, it's universally tasty. Or, just not.
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.
Like a musician expresses himself through music and a writer's expression is in his writings, cooking is my mode of expression.
