'I began with morning coffee for mom'

He started cooking at the age of two and was the winner of Masterchef Junior US culinary competition in 2014.

 14-year-old Logan Guleff is a television personality, cookbook author and owner of Logan’s Underground Supper Club. The talented young boy has won several food competitions including one which took him to the White House to meet Barack Obama and Michelle Obama.  Recently in the city as the celebrity mascot of Young Chef Olympiad 2017 (organised at International Institute of Hotel Management), Logan took time off to chat with Anushree Agarwal about his inspiration, experiments with Indian food and more.

Your inspiration to become a chef.

Well, a little bit of inspiration is drawn from Gordon Ramsay. He’s such an expressive personality and I want to be like him, rather, pull myself up to the same standards. Then it’s also the passion — I just like cooking and that’s how it’s been.

How did you begin to like cooking?

I started cooking when I was two-years-old. I began with morning coffee for mom. She makes dinner but she’s not a professional chef; in fact, there’s no hospitality background or anyone in the restaurant business in the entire family.

So everyone was like ‘how did this happen?’

It’s been a really big learning curve for me.

The craziest thing you’ve cooked...

I made smoked jackfruit once and also prepared lobster cannoli, an Italian dessert, which was pretty cool.

It’s your last dinner. What would you have?

I’ll have a big steak!

Your favourite cuisines.

Japanese, Indian, Italian and European. Once you start breaking down each European cuisine, there’s hardly any difference between each of them.

What do you like in Indian food?
I like the use of the spices — not the hot spices, but the flavourful ones like the curry leaves and all.

Any experiments with Indian food?

I’ve tried to make a curry powder which turned out pretty successful. Otherwise, I haven’t tried much else.

Tell us about your cookbook.

My cookbook is coming out soon, hopefully in the next month. It’s a graphic novel cookbook adventure series which should be lots of fun.

How do you balance cooking and academics?

It’s not that hard these days because I’ve always been home-schooled. I have a very flexible schedule. I can come to India, tour places, do events and everything that I like.