There's a chef on ony boat!

Vineet Bhatia takes his exquisitely crafted culinary experiences to the uber-rich

- POOJA BIRAIA JAISWAL

Andrew Denton, a well-known Australian television producer, and presenter, once said, "If Antarctica were music, it would be Mozart. Art, and it would be Michelangelo. Literature and it would be Shakespeare. And yet it is something even greater; the only place on earth that is still as it should be. May we never tame it." Denton would know as he would be on his eighth visit to Antarctica this January.

Hopping on a cruise to the southernmost end of the world, hobnobbing with seals and penguins at sub-zero temperatures-all for nearly 12 lakh per person is a dream in itself. What makes it dreamier are the wine and starters served on a table as you look at tall waves lash on to French glass windows as the cruise moves along the Drake Passage-the patch of sea with the choppiest waters in the world, at the tip of South America where the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans meet. Recently, Michelin-starred chef Vineet Bhatia, 55, set sail to Antarctica on board a French cruise liner with his son and a group of 150 passengers. Close to a hundred of those passengers were "uber-rich Indian residents and NRIs". The group set sail from the Argentinian city of Ushuaia, also called 'the end of the world. On board, he served "authentic, Indian comfort food" to "some of the wealthiest Indian families, all of whom were mostly vegetarians and Jains from Gujarat, Kolkata and abroad. There were children, youngsters and also the elderly," Bhatia tells THE WEEK. This was just one among his "plentiful ultra-rich, exquisitely crafted experiences”.