The pursuit of happiness in food

A chef outlines his experience of working in high-stress kitchens and what it will take to build a better future for the culinary industry to free it of its inherent toxicity

- Ashwin Ramachandran

Earlier this year, Noma, considered one of the best restaurants in the world, announced that it will be shutting down. While enlisting his reasons, Rene Redzepi - owner of the celebrated Copenhagen-based fine-dine and an influential che-flaments that operating a restaurant at the highest echelons of fine dining is both financially and emotionally unsustainable. Perhaps haute cuisine isn't supposed to operate in this way. And perhaps, as he told the New York Times in a recent interview, it is simply too hard.

Noma's new avatar will be more akin to a hybrid food-lab, dedicated to innovation and the development of new flavours. Occasionally, they will pop-up as a restaurant, too, so diners can experience the fruits of their cutting-edge research. To be honest, I am envious. This is what chef-dreams are made of - untethered creativity, boundless experimentation and the chance to design a wallet-emptying dining experience that provides the validation every cook wants.

I've been cooking professionally for the better part of 15 years now. During this time, I have worked as a commis, kitchen management trainee and junior sous chef. All these roles included working in different departments in 5-star hotels and entailed everything from managing the meat fabrication department (breaking down fifty kilos of goat carcass loses its charm pretty quickly) to overseeing the garde manger, being in the coffee shop, banqueting operations, specialty dining restaurants (where excellence in everything was the every-day want) and finally, as a "Head Chef" at my own small delivery kitchen based out of Grant Road in Mumbai. Excellence, here too, is an everyday need. The commonality underlying these vastly different roles, though, is that in each of these kitchens, it has been a hard life. Quite often, fulfilling and rewarding, but hard nonetheless.