Being a chef the new cool; but here's why it's not so easy

By Anoothi Vishal

My journey started when I was younger,” says Aryaman Sokhal, solemn, wise and all of 13. “I liked everything on TV then.” Aryaman has been putting some confident finishing touches to a cake he has baked and brought out for my benefit. The words are in response to my obvious question: how and when did he start cooking. The Class VII Delhi Public School International, Delhi, student looks back at his “younger self” when, all of nine, he would watch cooking shows and want to whip up perfect desserts and starters.

Abhimanyu Batra, Aryaman’s classmate, equally sagacious, is chopping spinach for the wholesome soup that’s part of our meal. He wields the knife with an assurance that leaves me a bit shocked. Abhimanyu is not just confident with the tools of his trade but will not part with them even under duress. He has a collection of knives from all over the world, unshared, but obviously put to good use.

“I cook at least once a week,” he says: “When we get any ingredient like chicken or fish at home, the cook cooks half, while I cook the rest my way.” Not unexpectedly, he wants to be a chef. Or, well, “a cricketer”. The boys have been rustling up a gourmet meal for yours truly, one sunny Sunday afternoon in Surajkund. There have been excited preparations; recipes and menus have been discussed in their car pool, ingredients personally shopped for, and as I bite into the starter-soup-mains-dessert spread, the third amateur cook in the group pips: “Did you like what we cooked? Really?”

Arnav Kishore’s mother is a good cook, he says, so he follows her recipes, but is also fascinated by the fancy desserts and traditions like stuffed turkey on Thanksgiving that he sees on television. This afternoon, he has attempted a pasta aglio olio. Who says red and white are the only two preferences in Italianised-India? Or, Indianised Italia? Cooking is the new cool. We have been in the midst of this exploding pop culture for the past few years. On Instagram and Twitter, in restaurant conversations, in private parties, amongst real and virtual friends… So complete is the image makeover that even Bollywood is picking up cues: when Katrina Kaif asks Hrithik Roshan, grilling sweet nothings on a deserted island in Bang Bang, “You cook too?” one eyebrow raised, it is more than a question. It is gushing admiration.

Haute and Cool

But if cooking is cool, what is now even chicer is being a chef. Everyone wants to be one. Don the smart white jacket, be the patron saint of a fancy restaurant, or at least own one’s own Youtube channel. And yes, cook beautiful meals.

“I have to admit, being a chef is pretty cool, just like being a painter or a writer. It is creative plus it allows you to meet people and has glamour attached to it,” says Diva’s Ritu Dalmia. As one of India’s top chefs and a self-made one, Dalmia knows what she is saying.

In the late 1990s, when she started her first restaurant Mezza Luna as an untrained-but-passionate home cook, there was hardly any “culture of chefs”. The restaurant didn’t do well and Dalmia was even asked by some wealthy Dilliwallahs if she would come to their home and cook. “Being a chef was little more than being a glorified domestic help,” she remembers.

That things have changed is an understatement — thanks to middle-class Indian’s exposure to travel, restaurants and the explosion in media. Being a chef is perhaps seen as one of the hottest career options now — despite the reality of the kitchen that far outweighs any notions of glamour.

Dalmia, one of the few chefs in the country to accept interns in her restaurant kitchens, says the requests are so persistent that sometimes she has to sign promissory notes for those below 18 years, giving them her word that she will take them on once they come of age! Eeshaan Kashyap, a former medical student who gave up a career in biotechnology to turn professional chef, quips: “Being a chef is not just cool. It is sexy.” Kashyap graduated from Oberoi Centre for Learning and Development. He has helmed the Trident property in Kochi and an entire luxury liner. He admits that putting 16-hour days in a hot kitchen may not make hell seem glamorous but is candid that being a chef is “flattering and adventurous”. “You certainly stand out in a group if you are a chef…a sexy chef… It’s quite charming to break ice with women and sip drinks!”

What Kashyap is pointing to is the new social acceptability for chefs in a hitherto feudal country. The image makeover may have come through the media but also via a hike in salaries. While trainees in hotels may get paid fairly little, top standalone restaurants pay executive chefs competent sums. Dalmia says that at all her restaurants, the second-in-commands take home salaries of Rs 12-15 lakh per annum (“and they are all in their 20s”), while top independent restaurants could pay executive chefs around Rs 25 lakh per annum.

Also, the climate of entrepreneurship means that most people who want to be chefs inevitably want to open their own restaurants. Saransh Goila, India’s youngest TV chef and also popular on social media, says being a chef is cool because instead of being straitjacketed — like chefs in the past tended to be — it is now possible to blend many creative interests.

Goila, a Chandigarh boy, always wanted to cook. But he also wanted to be an actor. He decided that being a TV chef was thus his calling. He studied at the Taj-run school in Aurangabad. “While all my classmates wanted to open their own restaurants, I was clear, I wanted to be a TV chef because I had grown up watching chef Sanjeev [Kapoor].” Internet is another medium that has opened up alternative avenues. With three million Youtube views, Yaman Agarwal, 16, who calls himself a chef and pretty much cooks everything — from paneer butter masala to eggless cakes on his channel CookingShooking — is quite the child prodigy. “You can be a Youtube food celeb like him,” points out Goila, and do comfortably well financially because you get paid per hit. Purists , of course, scoff that this is not being a professional chef at all. “While it is great that people are cooking, we should be clear about the difference between hobby cooks and professionals,” says chef Sabyasachi Gorai, formerly with Olive Delhi (where he ran a school for chef aspirants) and now an independent consultant. But before we come to that, the other thing: boys and their cooking toys!

Boys Wanna Cook

As a 13-year-old when I cooked my entire birthday meal for the family, it hardly drew much attention. It was the done things — for girls to learn to cook early. At the cusp of Liberalisation, it was even a little regressive. Boys, on the other hand, pursued sports and things like engineering. Fast forward to 2014.

Not only is cooking and turning chef the new cool, it is also quite the guy thing to do in a rare subversion of gender stereotypes. Marut Sikka, one of the best known names in the Indian food and beverage (F&B) sector, says. “I had dabbled in travel and events and then decided to do foodbased catering events.” But when he was getting married in the late 1990s, Sikka says: “It was really tough to explain to anyone what exactly I did…what was the food business.” The post Liberalisation restaurant boom changed that as also television. Ask celeb chefs today and they will tell you how their inboxes are full not just of fan mail but people wanting to know how to be a chef. Of these, almost 70% are boys. Professional chefs, especially in hotels, have always been predominantly men. Even today, it is possible to count well known women chefs on one hand. But that may largely be because of tough working conditions — physically strenuous, long working hours with very little time for a personal life. The difference today is that while most chefs of an older generation strayed into the profession, people are now actively choosing to be a chef — or at least be in the F&B sector.

Kunal Chandra, associated with The Monkey Bar, who did his masters from the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Bra, Italy, in 2011-2012, says he opted for the course because he “wanted the exposure in Europe. I wanted to learn a new language. I wanted to learn the other side of food. I love cooking but I would never want to cook all day long. So I figured I might as well train to manage the business and food in multiple ways”. Chandra quips that many “cool chef” aspirants work for free at restaurants in Europe and America for a month or two “even if they do nothing more than peel potatoes” and come back to claim that they have worked at top restaurants abroad.

He also warns that while an interest in cooking is one thing, it is quite another to be able to or want to cook relentlessly. “If I love cricket, I’d be smarter trying to be a sports therapist or manager...rather than try to be a bowler for India.” Chef and cookbook author Michael Swamy says he always wanted to be in the food media but trained to be a chef as he did not want to be a “pseudo chef”. “There are many pseudo chefs around. Winners of reality shows can’t be called chefs,” he adds.

The writer is a Delhi-based food writer and curates food festivals.