'People thought only crooks and rogues worked in hotels': An interview with star chef Ananda Solomon

On Sunday July 31, Ananda Solomon hung up his toque as the corporate chef of the Taj’s business hotels division, bringing to an end an illustrious 25-year career at the group.

Solomon, who grew up in an army family in Pune but considers Kasaragod in Kerala as his hometown, spent time learning cooking at street food stalls in Thailand, in the iconic City Bakery in Worli, and in restaurants in France. But he became a marquee name at the Mumbai hotel once known as the Taj President and now rebranded Vivanta by Taj. In this unexceptional-looking establishment, he set up the Thai Pavilion in 1993 and the Konkan Cafe in 1998 – both considered among India's top restaurants – and reinvented the Italian restaurant Trattoria.

A few days before his retirement, Solomon went about his work as usual. He was up early, dressed in chef’s attire, preparing for the day. A near-constant clanging of pots and pans could be heard in the background as his team prepped. His cellphone rang incessantly. Ingredients had to be sourced, meals arranged and photographs clicked. In between, Ananda took out time for a chat amidst the wood-panelled interiors of Thai Pavilion.

Edited excerpts from the interview:

What were your influences? Were there any flavours or cuisines that particularly inspired you?
Everybody says the same thing, that the inspiration comes from my mother or grandmother, but I don’t think so. I like food. I come from a very simple South Indian family. While I was growing up in Pune, we never had the liberty of going to five-star hotels – they were very few in number anyway. It was not our way of life, so there is no clear answer as to how I got into this field. Some people are born with those fingers or God-gifted ability and maybe I am one of the lucky ones. I realised I can cook a little better than other people who are there and that clicked for me and works well to this day.

I like to keep it simple and straight. I don’t like to do too much to ingredients or mix too many things together. The reason for that is something like this: I am sure you must be going to temples or holy places. They do simple things but they taste so nice.

Or for example when there is a festivity at home, your mother or grandmother may make those kind of things only once in a year but it comes out perfectly. It is not that she is practising every day. But it is there within her to create that kind of a sweet or a savoury or anything. All she’ll do is make sure that she’ll go at the right time, to buy the right ingredient whether it is coconut or sugar or semolina.

Was there any opposition from your family when you decided you wanted to become a chef?
There was no opposition from the family as such but, in those days, nobody wanted anybody to be a kitchen cook. Ultimately… people might call you chef sir or something like that… [but] there is nothing like a celebrity chef. You cannot be a celebrity chef by just being on a powder ka dabba (spice box). You have to stand behind a hot stove… [and] you have to do a cook’s job in the kitchen. Whether it is in a five- or four- or ten-star hotel, the fact remains that you are a cook in a hotel. In those years, this was not appreciated because it was felt that only crooks and rogues went to work in hotels – basically runaways.

What did your training involve?
I began my formal training in the 1970s at the Dadar Catering College [now called the Institute of Hospitality Management]. The college was structured around discipline and the core ingredients required to be a hotelier, whether in the front or the back of the house. And discipline meant timeliness. If somebody has called you at 5 o’clock, do you come at that time or at ten to 5? It is important to make sure you are there on time – all these things are part of the culture of cooking.

For my industrial training, I went to small places like the City Bakery [in Worli] which was a very very different experience from what it is today. They were catering to the vicinity in a 4-5km radius, which is quite a huge thing in India where the population is dense. I also worked at a biryani shop at Mahim dargah. But that was what we all had to do, so I don’t see it as anything different.

I had decided to be in the kitchen right from the beginning. So after I passed out from this college, I joined the kitchen management training programme at the Oberoi Sheraton. After I finished the two-year programme, I was sent to France for six months, where I worked in family-run restaurants. This was my first trip abroad. French food is very intense, a lot of backend work is required. That was my first step outside and you cannot have anything better than a Frenchman teach you how to be meticulous, so I think probably that helped me become a different person with a different approach to food.

What I realised was that cooking is an art. You don’t come to know [that] when you join, because you don’t have an idea whether you can cook because everybody can cook well.

I’m sure you can cook something at home, but what happens here is that when you sell what you make then questions arise: about quality, about portion sizes, about how tasty it is. And the consumer is not supposed to know the technical skills of it, how it is made. He just puts a value to it. Whatever he is paying, is it worth it or not?

What changes have you seen in the food industry since you started?
It has evolved. What is there today might not be there tomorrow.

You have to be in sync with the trends, which change with changes in people’s habits. You can’t cook for nobody. You cook for a set of people who are there to relish the delicacies produced…

It was more difficult during the licence raj to get ingredients. Today it is easier. Now, the government is thinking “Make in India”, but for the hotel industry it may not be possible to grow vegetables. Weather conditions are different in different parts of the world. I’m sure they will relook at what they plan to do and allow this industry to grow and make it easier and more responsible, so people who are importing are also responsible that they are not just importing products.

There has been a lot of change from 1978, when I started, to now, but I can’t say 360 degree change has happened. It is a journey. Things will always change. It happened a little slow in the past [and] probably now the pace will increase… so you have to work harder to make sure you stay relevant in this field.

Could you talk about the founding of your three restaurants?
As I told you, my theme is very clear. I go back to the basics, do a lot of work on the culture, on the location of the country or the region where it is coming from. I meet people, try it out, master it perfectly, come back and see the challenges of replicating it in an unknown place, make sure you iron out any problems. I would not like to create a restaurant that is there for three or four or five years [and] then stop, because you don’t know where [to take it] after that.

Ultimately it is an economic thing. It is not only about showmanship, it has to be economically viable at the same time. So if you see whatever I have done has a lifespan. Trattoria has been there for 30 years. This restaurant [Thai Pavilion] is there for 24 years, and Konkan Café for 18 years.

These restaurants are here to stay. They have a very solid foundation, basically based on all these values which have enough and more bandwidth to evolve on the food front without comprising on the origins of the dishes. They are all based on immense research, immense work on honing those technical skills and the ability to replicate those things from back home in an environment like this in Mumbai.

What research did you undertake?
I have worked in different people’s homes and tried to do anything I could to learn. For Thai Pavilion, I worked at street food stalls because that is how you hone skills, not only by working in five-star hotels.

You got Goan women to make masalas by hand, grinding them on the traditional stone grinder, for Konkan Café…
These were people who I had worked with before. This helped me. They were people who had retired, they did commercial cooking but the style was home-style. And I strongly believe in that…

Was there a reason for using hand-ground masalas?
Everything has its own advantage. Mechanisation is good to a certain extent but everything cannot be mechanised. Some human element is there, no? Someone opening a packet made in a factory and giving it to you and something made by hand is always going to be different.

Is there a cuisine you like to cook at home? Any restaurants or cuisines that you like to try out?
I don’t eat out much because there is hardly any time. I have breakfast and dinner at home so that is my habit, and your body gets tuned to that.

It is very rare now that I get time to cook at home. Earlier I could get time when we were in Pune. However, I do practise at home… Before I do anything in the hotel, I do a lot of work at night at home, experimenting with stuff – that happens between 12.30 and 2 at night.

I love cooking French food – that is the base for all cooking, whether it is Indian or anything else. It is a global leader because you learn the basics from that kind of cooking.

What would your idea of the perfect meal be?
Depends on where I am. If I am in France, I will definitely have a Consommé Brunois, definitely have a steak and a crepe. I love Thai food. I also like Spain food. It’s so much close to our kind of cuisine. In India, I will eat everything but definitely not an Indian meal in the US or Indian food in France.

When you started, where these kinds of flavours available?
It was only in books. You had to look at pictures and you had to imagine that this is artichoke or this is pheasant. Everything I only read about became available at a much later stage. We were quite excited by truffles, they were supposed to be the diamond of the underworld. First time I held a truffle in my hand, I was sweating. But now it is a way of life.

What will you miss most about your job?
I am not going to miss anything. I am very clear. I don’t carry any baggage with me. I don’t own the place. They have paid me for what I have done wherever I have worked.

I got a call from a regular customer asking me if everything was okay, but I am very happy moving on. In fact I am just waiting for the 31st to move on in life. Even my colleagues are sadder than me.

In the last 25 years of my career, I have never had negative publicity anywhere. On the Web, anywhere, and even I am surprised. Perhaps, because of my approach to food, or commercialisation of food, I have managed to remain “cut free” as Mohammad Ali, who used to say, “I have a pretty face.” And hopefully in the future, by the grace of God, in the time to come, whatever I do I will make it prettier.