COOKING FROM THE HEART

Chef RANVEER BRAR believes in keeping it authentic and simple. In this candid chat with Shraddha Kamdar, he traces his relationship with food from childhood, and talks about his comfort zone and the ethos behind his latest restaurant

- Shraddha Kamdar

There is a moment on a Kaun Banega Crorepati episode when Chef Ranveer Brar regales host Amitabh Bachchan and co-guests Chefs Garima Arora and Vikas Khanna with the history of how tea was discovered in China, the monopoly it held, when those tea-like leaves were found in Assam, and how it became a staple in India. In all of 55 seconds. It's sort of a signature for Ranveer, sharing these nuggets of information and history with his audience.

"Ever since I was a kid, I was not focused on memorising one sentence to get one mark," he reveals as we start our conversation on a laid-back afternoon. "For instance, if I needed to remember that leaves are green because of the presence of chlorophyll, I couldn't. I'd be like what's that?

Why is it created only in the day? Why isn't it present in the roots? And so on. And I'd go to the library, read books and do all it took to find out. At the end of the day, it stopped mattering whether I got the mark or not. I became that person for whom one question was a trigger for looking for the answers to many more." Over a period of time, he adds, there were 'aha' moments when he was able to finally connect the dots and process the information in a cohesive manner. It all comes out as these stories. And his audience loves them.

KEEPING IT SIMPLE