Indian accent is one of my favourite restaurants in New Delhi. It doesn’t need a food festival, promotion or even a menu change to entice diners back into its elegant environs. If any of the three happen, it is merely to emphasise that the restaurant boasts of possibly one of the best chefs in the country, Manish Mehrotra. Last week was yet another nibble into the culinary dexterity that makes up chef Mehrotra’s repertoire, only this time, he partnered with a young chef, Sabrina Gidda, touted as one of the hottest young chefs in London.
Gidda is of Indian origin, but interestingly works with Italian cuisine. At Indian Accent last week, chefs Mehrotra and Gidda put together a special three-day set menu that was a mélange of Italian and Indian favourites. Their flavour palates synchronised to provide a unique tasting experience.
But this article is about the chefs, not the food, which was, as can be expected, beyond expectations and a delightful revelation—from the deconstructed Calcutta Biryani to the take on the potato and leeks soup, now a potato and methi shorba.
Chef Gidda is a third-generation Briton, but her memories of India are intimately associated with food. Even today, she tells me that when she goes home on the odd weekend, her mum asks her to draw up a list of home food she would like to indulge in. Indian food is home. Then why Italian? Here is when Gidda’s journey gets interesting. She isn’t a trained chef at all. She loved to tinker about the kitchen at home, but it was in college whilst working in a restaurant that she had a taste of a real kitchen. A chef didn’t show up on a busy day and Gidda was drafted to help out. And it was love at first stir!
A student of fashion PR at the time, this was as far as one could get from high fashion—a commie life in a hot, busy, rude restaurant kitchen. But that kitchen was where she felt she belonged. It happened to be an Italian restaurant, and then she moved to another, picking up the craft along the way till she found herself working at a legal firm and running the catering outfit for the partners at the firm.
Over a hundred discerning legal luminaries enjoyed their food and entertained their high-powered clients there. It was a challenge and Gidda learnt how to play around with flavours and to always keep it interesting. She told me that the lawyers loved Indian food and flavours. One thing led to another and soon she got a break to start her own Italian restaurant, Bernardis, with the two Bernardi brothers in London. Bernardis is cool, casual Italian dining and has made a name for itself on the competitive dining landscaping, thrusting its young female chef into the limelight. She is now known as one of the first ladies of dining in London. Her heavily kohled eyes, with wingtip eyeliner and mascara worn with her chef whites, is an assertion of femininity in a male-dominated profession.
I ask her what it’s like out there in London. Is it a challenge being a female head chef? Kitchens are cadre-based and operate under military discipline and precision, but Gidda believes that female energy (so to speak) isn’t out of place in the profession any more. The profile of people turning to professional cooking has changed and with that so should the norms. Today, professionals like investment bankers are giving up their cushy jobs to pursue their passion in the kitchen. Hence handling them takes a whole other skill set, more nuance and courtesy not just in the restaurant, but out in the back as well. It’s an interesting perspective. Till a few years ago, we were discussing the role of women in a male-dominated bastion and here we are feminising the experience of working in a professional kitchen. Gidda, an untrained chef, has twice been the finalist for the prestigious roux scholarship for upcoming chefs in Britain.
She is a constant learner and says she is learning a lot from chef Mehrotra, and this dining duet has been an enriching experience. Could we possibly see a more permanent collaboration, maybe even Gidda starting a restaurant in India? This young chef is up for anything. It’s only just all starting for her. And we are left guessing for now. But maybe Rohit Khattar, the self-effacing brain behind Indian Accent, has an answer?
Advaita Kala is a writer, most recently of the film Kahaani. She is also a former hotelier having worked in restaurants in India and abroad
