“Innovation and creativity have been my team’s forte,” says Chef Hemant Oberoi
Hemant Oberoi
Good afternoon, Rotarians, Rotaryannes and other distinguished guests. The Rotary Club of Bombay has been meeting at the Taj for 85 years. The man behind the delicious meals served at our meetings is our guest speaker for the day — Chef Hemant Oberoi. In his career, he has served food to many dignitaries, including Presidents, Prime Ministers, royalty, celebrities and corporate heavyweights from both India and abroad. The cuisine at Taj has evolved under his leadership. I would also like to share something personal about him — something that you may not know. On November 26, 2008, Taj lost 13 guests and 18 employees. A bullet missed Hemant by a hair’s breadth and even then he was the last one to leave the premises. This was because he was ensuring the safety of other guests. He touches your heart not only through the stomach but also with his actions. I have known him for two decades. It doesn’t matter how unreasonable or demanding the menu or a situation is — with a reassuring smile, he says, “Don’t worry. Everything will be done.” The power of his pan says more than what most pens do. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you India’s celebrated chef.
— R/Anne Vita DaniIt is a pleasure to be here, among the Rotarians. I have always shied away from you because at every meeting, I have been requested to change the lunch menu. When we made the changes, nobody accepted it and instead, wanted the old dishes back. So it has been difficult to please all Rotarians. In fact, even at home it is difficult to please all family members.
I joined Taj in the 1970s and the brand has grown immensely since then. We also grew as professionals — from trainee chefs to senior chefs. Of course, the junior chefs today are a different breed altogether. I call them ‘Gen Text’ and not ‘Gen Next’ because all they do is text. Some of them try to act very smart in my kitchen. But I am patient with them because I understand the kind of lives they lead. The only thing I tell them is to learn the basics.
I will briefly take you through our vision and the future. We do approximately 200 crores of food and beverages business in this hotel alone. It’s close to five million dollars all over India. Those are the kind of numbers we deal with. We have our share of flaws. After all, we are humans and not machines.
A lot depends on the mood. If my chefs are in a bad mood I tell them to go home instead of spoiling the mood of our guests. Chefs make a difference in everybody’s lives. That is the power of their knives. Sometimes the knives are sharper than the tongue and sometimes the tongue is sharper than the knife. India has seen many small restaurants. Earlier Punjabi, Mughlai and South Indian cuisines dominated the restaurants. In 1973, we came up with Tanjore, a restaurant that served regional cuisines such as Gujarati, Maharashtrian, Goan, Punjabi and Parsi under one roof.
In 2002, we thought of changing Tanjore and taking the brand to a different level. There was no competition between ITC’s Bukhara and us. We give full credit to ITC for creating a brand which, till date, runs strong. We wanted to create something different — without cream, butter and oil because people were becoming more health conscious. We started using olive oil as an option. That’s how we started Masala Art in Taj Palace, New Delhi; Masala Kraft in Taj Mahal Palace and Masala Bay in Taj Lands End, Mumbai; and then we opened Masala Klub
in Bengaluru.
After 26/11, we thought of changing the brand into something more contemporary. People had started eating with their eyes, more than their hands or the mouth. Visual appeal meant a lot. Indian food was considered to be all about curries. We wanted to change that perception and I took up the challenge. There is no butter chicken or dal makhani on our menu in Varq. Instead, we brought flavours from different regions of the country. It has been ranked amongst the 50 Best Restaurants of Asia by S. Pellegrino. The mantra for me has always been ‘don’t forget your roots and our cultures’. I also wanted to introduce temple cuisine to my customers. We have so many religious beliefs but we never talk about the cuisines. There is so much variety in our prasadam. So we introduced the Temple Cuisine Week in our Masala brand of restaurants.
We have about 18,000 to 20,000 dishes in our country alone. I don’t think people know more than 150 or 200 dishes. Every restaurant revolves around mutton rogan josh, dal makhani, palak paneer, matar paneer and kadhi with khandvi. They don’t go beyond that. Wasabi made it to the top 100 restaurants but when we considered opening Wasabi, everyone said it will be a failure. “Who will eat raw fish and meat?” they asked me. I said, “India is ready to spend money and change its food habits.” We were among the first to introduce something like this. I went to Japan to study Japanese food and visited almost 30 restaurants. Then we went to the restaurants in London and New York, where we saw Indians asking for green chillies. That is when we envisioned Wasabi. Forty-five percent of the city is vegetarian. It was a difficult task to please them and, that too, with Japanese food. We experimented for a year before opening the restaurant. We had to import eighty percent of the ingredients and vegetables. We created a trend with it. The things that go into making a restaurant and the food business are different when compared to other businesses. A week before the restaurant was to open, my colleagues, who were used to curry rice and biryani as well as the senior management told me it would not work. The food, they said, was insipid and asked me to change it. I tried to keep my patience and calm but it gave away after an hour. I asked them why they were telling me this a week before the opening. I threatened to quit. Fortunately, the restaurant was a success and it gave us lot of encouragement. We expanded our brands and incorporated new dishes. The Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai introduced the spicy szechwan cuisine at Golden Dragon for the first time. People did not know the meaning of szechwan. Till date it is our most successful restaurant. We managed to succeed because we were ahead of our times and kept reinventing ourselves.
I wanted the restaurant to be at par with restaurants in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai. Sometimes you get bouquets and sometimes you get the brickbats. The feedback that came in said ‘how can you change the dishes?’ When those dishes were on the menu, they were not selling. When we take them away, they are suddenly remembered. We Indians like to have a little sauce with the fried rice and noodles. We may sometimes eat it like a curry. But we took criticism in our stride and brought back some of the dishes. But I insisted on retaining the new ones. And that worked. For me, luxury has been a way of life. I get very irritated when people ask me why we charge so much. They never do that at a Bentley or Louis Vuitton showroom. We have the habit of bargaining and so we keep doing that.
Innovation and creativity have been my team’s forte. We have always given this city and the country restaurants that were ahead of their times. We have never repeated our themes. We also have in-house gardens, where we grow our own herbs.
I also want to talk to you about the power of a pen versus the power of a pan. In our country, we like criticising. I like food critics, who are knowledgeable and know what they are talking about. Knowledge reminds me of a high profile dinner, where I was serving a dish of duck and lamb in the main course. When the order taker asked one of the dignitaries if he will have the duck or the lamb, he first asked what the dishes were all about and then refused to have either.
So these are the kind of people you come across and sometimes you come across people who know a lot about food. In our field, we go through a lot of research work and do a lot of research ourselves. We experiment for a year before introducing a dish and it takes a minute for a food critic to thrash it. But I can assure you that they cannot make or break a restaurant. It is their opinion and we respect it. They say the pen is mightier than the sword but I think our pan is mightier than the pen! Thank you.
Some excerpts from the Q&A session:
Q: Why don’t we have a good Mexican restaurant in Mumbai?
Hemant: We had restaurants at the Taj President and Oberoi. But when we wanted to serve authentic Mexican food, it failed. Nobody was willing to accept the original cuisine.
Q: Why don’t you make Japanese salads? In London you need to take an appointment and may end up waiting for almost three days to eat those salads.
Hemant: We will try to give you the same but in fewer days. We are used to curry in a hurry!