What's Cooking?

Even after scaling the base of the highest peak, Chef Sanjay Thakur loves to stay close to his Indian roots. Having his name added in the Guinness World Records recently, he talks to DI about the record, his love for Himalayan food and more, at the World Heritage Cuisine Summit & Food Festival 2018 held in Amritsar this October.

- Susmita Srivastav

How does it feel to be in the Guinness World Records?

It feels great. Most of the time these records are about biggest dish or largest servings, but ours was the record of creating a whole restaurant! And that too not just under any normal conditions…we pitched it 11 km away from Mt Everest, which makes it the highest pop-up restaurant in the world! Different people from different countries have tried doing it many times but failed. So, yes, I feel very proud and happy that we managed to pull that off.

What inspired you to come up with the interesting idea of setting up the world’s highest restaurant at the base of Mt Everest?

The inspiration story is quite interesting. It was media that inspired me to do this. Our project, Himalayan Soil, which deals in promoting Himalayan cuisine and ingredients, started in 2009. But somehow, it was never picked up by the media. We got tired of seeing every other not-soimportant news being picked up by the media. Then, we decided to take it to a level that people just had to cover us. I have done pop-up restaurants before. This was supposed to be my 10th pop-up, so I thought, why not Everest? We decided to take it so high that no one could match it. Then, as you know, almost every media house picked up the story.

And how was the experience?