Look who's causing a stir

From New York to London, from Delhi to Bangkok, chefs are redefining what Indian cuisine can be. Modern is no longer the experiment, it's the new traditional

- VIR SANGHVI

I had an excellent lunch at a collaboration between Manish Mehrotra and Prateek Sadhu at the Delhi Indian Accent. We sat in the main restaurant with Rohit Khattar, the proprietor, who had the vision and courage to put his faith in Manish. It took guts to open the first Indian Accent at the Manor Hotel in Delhi's Friends Colony.

In those days, modern Indian cuisine was not a thing. Everyone admired Atul Kochhar and Vineet Bhatia, whose London restaurants won the first two Michelin stars ever awarded to Indian restaurants.

But most Indian chefs were still not sure what the London chefs were doing. When Rohit and Manish did open the Delhi Indian Accent, there was still a total lack of interest from most customers.

Eventually public tastes matured, Indian Accent became a runaway success, Manish became India's greatest chef and his style of cooking influenced a whole generation of chefs.

Meanwhile, in Bangkok, Gaggan Anand was creating another revolution, all on his own. He took Indian flavours and created new dishes with them. Gaggan's approach to modern Indian food, in those early days, was captured by a single dish: Yogurt Explosion. A seemingly solid sphere of dahi, it exploded in your mouth, filling your palate with chaat flavours.

Gaggan went on to become the most successful Indian chef the culinary world has ever seen, and soon he moved away from the showy techniques and entered a territory where Indian flavours were still around but the food was difficult to classify in terms of a national cuisine.