Far East gets closer

How Vikramjit Roy of Ahara in Singapore and Adwait Anantwar of Inja in Delhi are serving up a new cuisine: Indian Japanese

- VIR SANGHVI

Vikramjit Roy is one of India's best-known chefs. The sort of guy guests want to take selfies with. I first met him when he worked in the kitchen of Wasabi at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Delhi. I was eating omakase (a Japanese expression that translates loosely as, "Leave it to the chef") and was served two dishes that were not on the menu. I asked to see the chef and Vikram came out and confessed that both dishes were the products of his own imagination.

One day, Gautam Anand, then the top talent-spotter at ITC Hotels, came to lunch at Wasabi, was as knocked out by Vikram's food and stole him away from the Taj.

ITC broke with its own precedents to give this then largely unknown chef major breaks. The Pan-Asian at Chennai's Grand Chola became a chefdriven restaurant run by Vikram. When that was a hit, ITC brought him to Delhi and created Tian at the Maurya as a showpiece for his talent.

When Tian became a commercial and critical success, Vikram's future was assured. He left ITC to start many new restaurants. A couple of years ago, he turned his attention to the food of his native Calcutta and though Delhi's The Tangra Project was a critical hit, it was too large and suffered from a bad choice of location.