Progressive & deconstructed

By changing the way certain elements appear in a dish without sacrificing the strength of their flavours, deconstruction is taking over our palates, write Priya Ganapathy & Anurag Mallick

An itinerant chef who often picks up ideas on the move, Gaggan Anand fuses Japanese techniques and ingredients like Hokkaido corn, red prawn, toro (bluefin tuna), amazake (fermented rice drink) and matcha into his atypical ‘Indian’ menu. His recent Bengaluru pop-up reflected the classics from his Bangkok restaurant and his travels with the 15-course emoji menu pulling you into the whimsical wonderful world of Gaggan Anand. Like Wes Anderson meets gastronomy!

‘Yoghurt Explosion’, a take on the Indian dahi chaat has been on his menu from Day 1. The amuse-bouche of yoghurt flavoured with lemon and cumin or mango chutney is dropped in Sodium Alginate solution and transformed into a yoghurt bomb through a process of reverse spherification. ‘Lick it Up’ features three flavour profiles plated up — acidity from the tomatoes at the bottom, saltiness of the peas and mushrooms and spice on top. Guests lick the plate from the bottom to the top to get the right notes on the tongue while Gaggan plays Lick it up by Kiss from his curated playlist. For Idli Sambar, he reimagines the South Indian staple as an airy, fermented rice and lentil cake with fresh coconut chutney topped with sambar foam and fried curry leaf.

The Bhelpuri Cookie packs a punch of mustard while the Chicken Liver Pate with passion fruit is served on a saké biscuit. Lobster Charcoal is deliberately made to look like a lump of coal-fried black batter in a makhani sauce made from tomatoes, fresh cream, spices and cashew nuts filled with lobster masala. 

Chole Bhature is a deconstructed version of the North Indian dish of spiced chickpea and wheat flour bread, served as chana masala hummus filled within a bhatura pocket. Truffle Momo has a shell made with black garlic dough. There’s no pretence to make a dish look more Instragram worthy and Gaggan pushes the envelope with every bite. The sombre-sounding ‘Eggplant Funeral’ features eggplant grilled in a wood-fired oven, stuffed with dates and tamarind. The charred skin is used to make a salan-like sauce with peanuts, coconut, sesame, and tamarind.

To complete the ‘funeral’ look, it is decorated with little white flowers! The latter part of the meal is stacked with slightly more conventional Scallop Cold Curry, Bengali fish paturi and Crab Curry Rice. Desserts include Ghewar Mont Blanc with ethical foie gras from Spain and Irish coffee nougat made with Irish whiskey and ‘Orange Cardamom’.

Gaggan has always been frank about the things he loves and dislikes about India. Although he has lived in India for 29 years and visited and cooked here countless times… he has some misgivings. “I’m still making attempts to start something in India, but the problem is my dream doesn’t fit the dream of India vis-a-vis the hospitality scene — it’s like yin and yang. Almost there, but never happening. India remains an elusive and impossible dream for many reasons. The lack of ethics and the business model — a five-day week with nine hours a day is not a possibility. We don’t treat chefs as humans. There is a lack of empathy. We treat those who work in restaurants as nothing beyond ‘labour class’. I’m not willing to compromise on that.”

After an extremely turbulent phase in life on the personal and professional front, Gaggan Anand seems to be on a more even keel today. As a trendmaker of reconstructed food, where is he headed next? “Now I only cook what I want to cook. No more crowd-pleasers.”

Asked about his thoughts on AI entering the food arena, Gaggan quips “That will be the end of humanity.” But he still has dreams… dreams of being the best in the world. “I want to go where no Indian or Asian chef has gone.” His passion is contagious, and one is tempted to ask if there’s any pressure in Gaggan’s kitchen. He replies, “no pressure. It’s about being consistent. I’m a chill guy. But it’s super busy. There is intensity. It’s a circus, chaos, energy.” Despite a surge of trends like ‘farm to fork’, ‘nose to tail’, and ‘whole food, plant-based,’ one trend that irks him the most is veganism and mock meat. “Why do you need a vegan chicken nugget? Why can’t you eat medu vada?” he counters sarcastically. When asked about his favourite ingredient, pat came the reply, “I want to cook with just salt. I like chilli and citrus. With these three ingredients, you can make anything. I want to use cumin. I want to use basic things. I don’t want to have a menu. What I don’t like is sugar. The problem with India is that they love sugar. We are what we eat,” he sums up.

(The authors are travel/food writers and culinary consultants “loosely based” in Bengaluru. They run a travel/media outfit customising solutions for the hospitality industry, have authored guides and coffee table books, set up an award-winning restaurant and feature as ‘Dude aur Deewani’ in a food-based digital infotainment show. Follow their adventures on Instagram: @red_scarab or their Facebook page Red Scarab.)