Global chefs take back flavours from India

Chefs visiting India are taking back ideas, ingredients, flavours and techniques to infuse into their own dishes back home

- Mahalakshmi Prabhakaran

(top, left) Bartender Frida Lucia Gonzalez; and chef Jack Jarrot.

Indian onions made chef Jack Jarrot cry. "In the UAE, you can chop hundreds of kilos of onions and you wouldn’t tear up. Indian onions, on the other hand, are super fresh, flavourful, and so, for the first time in over a year, I cried as someone cut onions in the kitchen," he laughs.

The chef de cuisine at Sand & Koal, an open-fire restaurant at Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental, Abu Dhabi, Jarrot was in Bengaluru for a five-day fireside dining popup at The Polo Club, The Oberoi in September. While he’d vacationed in India before and was familiar with the country, this was the first time he was helming a popup here.

“If you cook only in your country, youre like a frog in a well that’s not exposed to other places and cultures.” This statement by Marvas Ng, head chef of Path, a modern Asian fusion restaurant in Singapore that was featured in Michelin Guide 2024, is like a distillation of Jarrot’s kitchen adventures in India. In Ng’s view, international popups and residencies are like creative labs that goad chefs to think beyond recipes they are too familiar with. “This is the reason us chefs always jump at an opportunity to cook elsewhere. You get to experience something new and you always end up taking back memories.”