Gaggan Anand: The Pioneer

- Stefan Chomka

At Gaggan restaurant in Bangkok, diners are presented with tasting menu with a difference — each of the 25 dishes is listed using a single emoji. Examples have included a butterfly, a bunch of flowers, a lemon, an explosion and some lips.

This isn’t a crafty attempt by chef Gaggan Anand to appeal to Generation Z customers, however — having claimed top spot on the list of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants for the past four years, prices reflect this acclaim, meaning only the most dedicated of gastronomes tend to beat a path to his door. Instead, the emojis represent the various emotions associated with eating and the playfulness of Anand’s ground-breaking modernist Indian cuisine.

Opened in 2010, Gaggan is Anand’s successful attempt at redefining Indian food and elevating it to the top table of gastronomy, to sit alongside the likes of French and Italian cuisine. “Indian food has such a deep-rooted history, it has evolved in culture and history, but it hadn’t moved on like other cuisines,” he says. “In India, we’re extremely good at cooking good food family-style, but when it comes to fine dining it collapses. I wanted to change the perception of Indian food; that was the challenge.”

Eight years on and Anand has certainly done that. With a typical meal comprising a progression of small, highly impactful dishes, such as his renowned spherified ‘Yogurt

Explosion’ and ‘Lick it Up’ — where guests are instructed to lick the food straight from the plate while the Kiss song of the same name plays in the background — Gaggan is now regarded as one of the most progressive restaurants in the world. In short, it’s done for Indian food what elBulli did for Spanish cuisine two decades previously.