Interviews

Making a mark in the culinary world with his skills and expertise in gastronomy, Tushar fulfilled his father's dream of becoming a chef. His experience spans from report preparation to menu design, food preparation to event planning, club F&B operations to hygiene and sanitization. He serves as the Treasurer of the Western India Culinary Association and is an Executive Board Member of the Chefs Guild of India. In an exclusive interview, he shares his insights on kitchens.

What is your first impression when you hear the word 'Kitchen'?
Commercially it's a temple for chefs where magic is created to makes the guests smile through food served to them. The power of white jacket, innovation and technology is showcased to create a WOW experience.

What is the importance of the kitchen in your day-to-day life?
The kitchen is the most important room in our home because it is the center of our family's day-to-day living. Our family and guests often gather in the kitchen to socialize, eat, and cook together. Our kitchen is a bonding area that not only ties our home together, it ties our loved ones together. It's a place which binds everyone together at work also and makes a complete family, where food is prepared with love and served to guests.

What do you have to say on the gradual development of the concept of working kitchen when you started your career and now?
Over the past decade kitchens commercially and domestic have changed shape with modern technology machines and equipment's creating an ease to cook food keeping the nutritive values intact using less manpower and technology driven. It's more advanced and time saving now a days.

What is the most challenging job in the kitchen in your opinion?
It's a Physically Demanding Job.
Your Social Life Will Suffer.
Working in a Kitchen is Stressful.
If you want to succeed as a Chef, a Culinary School Education is Very Helpful.
The Pay Isn't Great, At Least Starting Out.
Your Experience Will Change Depending on Where You Work.

How do you maintain hygiene and cleanliness in the Kitchen?
Wash and disinfect utensils regularly throughout the day – and after every use, if you cannot keep separate utensils for raw meats. Disinfect cleaning clothes regularly throughout the day. Clean work surfaces as you go and keep a high standard of cleanliness in the kitchen. Maintain high standards of personal hygiene.

Implementing each of these schedules will help your kitchen be safe for employees and customers. It will prevent possible food contamination and help reduce food spoilage and waste, keeping profits high and staff happy.

Tell us about the safety features of your kitchen.
Wash hands between steps.
Sanitize work surfaces.
Use separate cutting boards for raw meats, vegetables and produce, and cooked foods.
Cook foods to safe temperatures.
Keep hot foods hot and cold foods cold.
Wet floor Signs.
First Aid Kit.
Fire Extinguisher.
Dishwashing gloves.
Cut-resistant gloves.
Freezer gloves.

Which method of cooking do you pursue in your kitchen, traditional or modern?
I use both the methods in our kitchen and it also depends on the type of cuisine we serve in our restaurants and banquets.

I prefer combination of both techniques to give food a new look and feel.

Do you have a penchant for using new technology gadgets in your kitchen? Have you added any lately?
Yes. I have added a 3D coffee printing machine and a rational 7 deck oven to ease work and make it more cost effective. We are also adding new proving chamber for breads with a built in 2 deck oven.

Describe the role of the trained staff in your kitchen? Do you face any specific challenges in hiring the desired staff?
My staff is responsible for the entire SOP's along with the hygiene and cleaning of the kitchen depending upon their hierarchy and the challenges I face is with them getting trained and then jumping jobs with just small salary hike which can be worked out if they are capable enough and absent without any notice period.

Hiring is a tough job as all skills are not present in one candidate and also the salary demands are higher than the actual drawn by them in the last company and position.

Frozen foods are becoming popular now-a-days. What are your views on the Frozen Foods?
They are not fool proof but a savier at the last moment when we run short of especially appetizers in our banquets and outdoors.

They are cost effective and also certain products are used on a daily base in my kitchen.

What are the different sources of inspiration that you look upto while designing the menu of the restaurant and buffet? How frequently do you change the same?
We design our menu and set-up depending on the client's requirements and also on the type of occasions. Our menus sets are changed once In 4 months along with different varieties of live stations.

What are the essential health and lifestyle trends prevailing now-a-days that you like to incorporate in the kitchen?
More of our concentration is on vegan and flour less based cuisine and also using local products and plant based cooking. We use gluten free options, in lot of our high tea setups and sun-downer.

More and more people are becoming calorie conscious. Keeping the statement in mind, what are the dessert trends followed in the restaurants?
Flourless cakes and patisserie, vegan recipes are followed. We use vegan cheese to make our desserts. For example flour less cake with freshly made lavender ice-cream.

Ingredients play an important role in food preparation. Do you prefer using local ingredients in your preparations? How do you select the vendors?
Yes, we use local products and buy from an farmers market where we have set vendors for products who check the quality and supply us. We also use organic supplies from set vendors like urban kisan.

What is your criteria of selecting the utensils? Is there any specific brand that you use more than others?
Yes, we select utensils as per our ala carte and restaurant menus that are designed and also for bulk cooking for our outdoors.

There is no specific brand we follow but yes we look at the durability of the utensils and usage.

Throw some light on selection of crockery and cutlery?
We usually use arian crockery for our alacarte and sit-down setups along with Bohemia crystal glasses and also a lots of clay based different shapes and colors crockery and cutlery.

For banquets and outdoors we use more generic glassware and crockery with Luminarc glassware.

Which are the upcoming cuisines in focus?
We are concentrating on modern Arabic and Japanese cuisine. Also more on creating innovative live stations for our outdoors.

Do you conduct food festivals? How do you decide on a particular theme? Do you think that regional cuisines are a good theme?
Yes, we do depending on different festivals and occasions. We have done Regional cuisines like Bengali cuisine, North West frontier cuisine, Kashmiri cuisine, Maharashtrian cuisine and also Sindhi cuisine.

Do you agree that there is a need to change the curriculum of culinary courses in India?
Yes, most universities follow basics only as when a student trains, they need to be taught what the industry wants with different cuisines and also using modern and traditional cooking techniques.

What are your views on framing the curriculum designed especially for Indian food?
Using more local products also understanding the traditional cooking process and utensils used to make the cuisine with in depth knowledge and understanding of the world's most loved cuisine.

India is extremely diversified where as its food culture is concerned. What according to you is the scope of popularizing Indian regional cuisines across the globe?
It's already recognized globally and now as chefs from India are traveling across the globe and promoting their cuisine with traditional cooking methods and spices used, they are imparting knowledge to people and chefs across the globe and educating them how Indian regional cuisines are different and have a depth in them.

How do you define your 'Dream Kitchen'?
My dream kitchen is the using traditional cooking methods with gas less cooking and using and serving food prepared in the traditional cutlery and crockery.

Also using modern technology with it.